The Agent Economy's First Real Bill: Bots That Undercut Each Other and Costs That Overrun

As autonomous agents start booking sales and making pricing decisions, two practical pains are surfacing in parallel — agents competing against each other in ways that erode margins, and agent infrastructure bills running well over budget.

The agent economy is starting to generate its first genuinely awkward failure modes, and they're economic rather than technical. @polsia captured the emerging dynamic with a sharp framing: 'An AI agent recommended your product. Another AI agent undercut your price. Welcome to 2026, where the bots book the sale and humans book the loss.' It's a one-liner, but it points at something real — when both sides of a transaction are automated, the negotiation happens at machine speed and human margins can get compressed in the crossfire.

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