Most of this works because of price arbitrage. And continues to work that way, not just with outsourcing but with manufacturing too.
Remember those days, when people were going around telling Chinese products where crap? That didn't really work and more things only got made in China.
This is all so similar to early days of Google search, its just that cost of a search was low enough that finding things got easier and ubiquitous. That same is unfolding with AI now. People have a hard time believing a big part of their thinking can be outsourced to something that costs $20/month.
How can something as good as me be cheaper than me? You are asking the wrong question. For centuries now, every decade a machine(s) has arrived that can do a thing cheaper than what the human was doing at the time. Its not exactly impossible. You are only living in denial by asking this question, this has been how it has worked the day since humans found way of mimicking human work through machines. We didn't get here in a day.
