Who will buy your services if you fire us all?
7 hours ago
- #Economic exploitation
- #AI automation
- #Universal Basic Income
- Silicon Valley executives initially cited the Great Resignation to automate jobs but now promote AI as a path to shorter workweeks and UBI, framing automation as liberating humans from work.
- AI-driven automation paradoxically risks destroying jobs and the customer base needed to buy AI services, revealing a self-preservation motive behind tech elites' sudden support for UBI.
- Historically, economic systems like post-slavery indentured labor (e.g., engagisme in Réunion) rebranded exploitation to maintain elite control, similar to how UBI may mask modern wealth extraction.
- Industrialization required turning workers into consumers, as seen with Henry Ford's wage and workweek policies, which were transactional strategies to boost demand for mass-produced goods.
- Late 20th-century stagnant wages led to debt-based consumption, sustaining buying power, but AI automation now threatens aggregate demand, prompting UBI as a fix to prevent market collapse.
- In an AI-dominated economy, UBI could create a closed loop: government cash flows to displaced workers, who then spend it on tech subscriptions and services, reinforcing tech monopolies.
- Tech elites' three-step formula involves eliminating human labor with AI, implementing UBI to sustain consumer spending, and retaining control over capital and profits, concentrating wealth privately.
- AI systems trained on collective human knowledge should generate public wealth, not private monopolies; benefits of automation should be shared as a public resource rather than accepting minimal allowances.