You can’t automate the consumer

[Fade Runner 2049]

We keep hearing the same breathless prediction: AI will replace most jobs because corporations won’t have to pay humans anymore

No wages, no breaks, no healthcare. Just pure, uninterrupted profit. Okay cool

If you automate away the entire workforce, who the fukk is left with money to buy shyt? Are CEOs planning to sell electric cars, luxury handbags, and fast food to other AI models? Maybe the chatbots will start placing bulk Amazon orders.

You can automate everything, cut costs, and boost margins all you want, but if the population can’t participate in the economy, the whole system collapses on itself. It’s not just about replacing jobs; it’s about replacing the very foundation that keeps capitalism running: consumers with income. You can’t extract infinite profit from a society you’ve made economically obsolete.

Andrew Yang laid out a basic income plan to prepare for this shift, nobody wanted it. Bernie pushed for fair wages, healthcare, and worker protections, he got labeled a socialist threat. The moment anyone tried to build a cushion for the fall, the system swatted it away. Now the ground is coming fast, and we’re pretending the laws of supply and demand won’t follow us down.

 

[O.T.I.S.]

I agree

And on top of that, there’s no guarantee the service will work due to some sort of human error (there is always human error) or due to consumers probably not wanting AI services for EVERYTHING.

Eventually, human competition will probably still exist just for the simple fact that everything has a drawback and some consumers might not accept the drawbacks of AI services…


Speaking of drawbacks, what does anyone think those might be? (And not the supposed workforce/labor drawback either)

 

[Amestafuu (Emeritus)]

We keep hearing the same breathless prediction: AI will replace most jobs because corporations won’t have to pay humans anymore

No wages, no breaks, no healthcare. Just pure, uninterrupted profit. Okay cool

If you automate away the entire workforce, who the fukk is left with money to buy shyt? Are CEOs planning to sell electric cars, luxury handbags, and fast food to other AI models? Maybe the chatbots will start placing bulk Amazon orders.

You can automate everything, cut costs, and boost margins all you want, but if the population can’t participate in the economy, the whole system collapses on itself. It’s not just about replacing jobs; it’s about replacing the very foundation that keeps capitalism running: consumers with income. You can’t extract infinite profit from a society you’ve made economically obsolete.

Andrew Yang laid out a basic income plan to prepare for this shift, nobody wanted it. Bernie pushed for fair wages, healthcare, and worker protections, he got labeled a socialist threat. The moment anyone tried to build a cushion for the fall, the system swatted it away. Now the ground is coming fast, and we’re pretending the laws of supply and demand won’t follow us down.

You have a real question but you have failed to factor how greedy these companies are. They expect consumption to be the same.

 

[HabitualChiller]

If you automate away the entire workforce, who the fukk is left with money to buy shyt?

This is a very valid question, and I've never heard anyone give an answer on it. Let me ask Deepseek right quick.

Edit: OK, so it's a lot of shít that Re-ho-icans won't go for (UBI, Taxing AI/robots/their owners, lowering the cost of goods due to them [hopefully] requiring less resources to make)...

And some that might actually go through (government job guarantees [which will likely be ass])

 

[cyndaquil]

I asked this in the other AI thread. How would this work? If consumers have no money how do the corporations make a profit?

 

[TRUEST]

They may not. But they certainly won’t give up. Don’t say never. Ever.

 

[CopiousX]

I asked this in the other AI thread. How would this work? If consumers have no money how do the corporations make a profit?

This is a very valid question, and I've never heard anyone give an answer on it. Let me ask Deepseek right quick.

Edit: OK, so it's a lot of shít that Re-ho-icans won't go for (UBI, Taxing AI/robots/their owners, lowering the cost of goods due to them [hopefully] requiring less resources to make)...

And some that might actually go through (government job guarantees [which will likely be ass])

I tthink we may return to Rome. The primary buyers of goods back then were Rich nobles and the government itself. The general public just lived on handouts from the government as urban poor. This was due to slavery, which is a direct parallel to the utility AI brings to the wealthy corporations.

Spoiler: how rome used slaves similarly to AI

In Rome, slavery basically made the general public irrelevant in society. The biggest buyers of items ended up being other rich people with their own company of enslaved people producing wealth for themselves. So one noble would have a vineyard operated entirely by slaves. Another noble would have a quarry for marble operated entirely by slaves. If one of them wanted wine, and the other one wanted some new pillars for their mannor home, they would trade. Joe Maximus schmoe , the peasant, was completely cut out from these transactions. And the government itself would tax the rich people and do business with them.

Spoiler: Future Analogy to Rome

In a modern sense, the future governments would give out cheese to the public to keep them from revolting. And gov will tax The billionaires and Icorporations while also subcontracting to them to get stuff like Amazon web services. The billionaires in turn would trade with each other, whether they want fancy cars, fancy software, or more productivity equipment for their slave labor (AI)

I suspect that most of the trade in the future will be B2B, not B2C like it is these days. I say this because different automation companies must specialize. Open AI will be specializing in automating speech, but they'll need another corporation specializing in automating construction work or automating network infrastructure in order to keep growing. Similarly a corporation that automates agriculture, would need another corporation to automate its accounting. So a lot of B2B AI transactions will occur

I suspect the challenge for the few of us still living in the free world before AI does everything, willl have the task of acquiring enough wealth to have our own automation and our own land so that we don't become one of the many peasants in New Rome living on a handouts.

 

[African Peasant]

At the end of the of the process, they won't need money coming the common folk. They will use it between themselves.

They will have the natural ressources and AI robots to transform them. And they will buy those stuffs between them. The Henry Ford model of 'you need to pay your employe so they will buy your stuff will be over'.

The masses will became useless, outside of some sick perverted use

#staywoke

 

[⠀X ⠀]

They don’t care

 

[African Peasant]

I tthink we may return to Rome. The primary buyers of goods back then were Rich nobles and the government itself. The general public just lived on handouts from the government as urban poor. This was due to slavery, which is a direct parallel to the utility AI brings to the wealthy.

Spoiler: how rome used slaves similarly to AI

In Rome, slavery basically made the general public irrelevant in society. The biggest buyers of items ended up being other rich people with their own army of enslaved people producing wealth for themselves. So one noble would have a vineyard operated entirely by slaves. Another noble would have a quarry for marble operated entirely by slaves. If one of them wanted wine, and the other one wanted some new pillars for their mannor home, they would trade. Joe Maximus schmoe , the peasant, was completely cut out from these transactions. And the government itself would tax the rich people and do business with them.

Spoiler: Future Analogy to Rome

In a modern sense, the future governments would give out cheese to the public to keep them from revolting. And gov will tax The billionaires, while also subcontracting to them to get stuff like Amazon web services. The billionaires in turn would trade with each other, whether they want fancy cars, fancy software, or more productivity equipment for their slave labor (AI)

I suspect the challenge for the few of us still living in the free world before AI does everything, willl have the task of acquiring enough wealth to have our own automation and our own land so that we don't become one of the many peasants in New Rome living on a handouts.

It's over

 

[Vandelay]

UBI and totalitarian power

 

[ItsPeople]

At that point things that humans traditionally made won’t be needed and everything else would devolve into trade between the rich and the government.

It’s happening right before our eyes, just look at the hollowing out of the middle class and replacing humans with AI.

The rich aren’t even doing it for the money per se. They just want earth to be their playground and bring it back to a time where there was peasants and a noble class.

Nothing new is under the sun.

 

[Windows 91]

People will probably just keep consuming using an increasing amount of credit and buy-now-pay-later services. We kinda see it already with the explosion of Klarna type applications. People are funding vacations and making big purchases despite being completely broke. End result going to be some kind of debt slavery where the corporation owns you in some way.

 

[CopiousX]

People will probably just keep consuming using an increasing amount of credit and buy-now-pay-later services. We kinda see it already with the explosion of Klarna type applications. People are funding vacations and making big purchases despite being completely broke. End result going to be some kind of debt slavery where the corporation owns you in some way.

I worry that even debt slavery won't be profitable for companies. consumer loans as a concept won't even be a thing anymore outside of the Uber wealthy when the unemployment rate is 80%



Why on earth would the MasterCard AI department lend money to you when they know you're not going to get a job, while they can just lend it to open ai or Boston dynamic that have guaranteed contracts? I'd assume the same lending privileges would go to the top shareholders of these companies cuz they would be multimillionaires and billionaires living on interest/dividends

 

[Chrishaune]

They don’t care

I don't know how long it will take people to realize this. They want everybody they don't know dead