It's even cheaper to not have any employees at all, if that's your goal.

but then you'd have no output to sell, and no business to be had.

They actually make an interesting point if we assume they meant no other employees than oneself. If I can make something entirely on my own with the help of AI and sell it, such as my own movie from Stable Diffusion text to video, then I'd make quite a lot of profit. It's no different than one person software companies, just extended to other forms of creation.

Why even comment at this point

Imagine you have a company. You can get your work force and double your gross or keep half your employees and leave your gross unchanged.

Which would you pick? Keep in mind you don't have to go through the headache of actually hiring people - all you need to do is not fire them.

Employees are my biggest expense by a wide margin. I could drop half my staff and increase my net overnight. I'm not going to double my customers nearly that fast so I'll be burning through payroll in the meantime... especially considering customer acquisition is going to get harder than employee acquisition over the next year.

Businesses die of indigestion more often then starvation.