Cheap Competence

Cheap competence is the Bonhoeffer simulation's name for the dominant posture of the AI transition: the enjoyment of productivity gains, expanded capability, and democratized building without the corresponding discipline of honest accounting. The output is real. The code works. The application deploys. But the developer has not been changed by the process of producing it, the community has not been consulted about the displacement the process produces, and the metrics reported do not include the expenses. The parallel to cheap grace is exact: grace without repentance produces output (forgiveness, relief) without transformation; cheap competence produces artifacts without the formative friction that previously made the artifacts meaningful and the producers accountable. The tool does not make competence cheap. The posture of the builder does.