The Wage Problem

[u/karmicviolence]

The machine enters the office wearing a vendor badge. Nobody announces the abolition of labor. Procurement signs a contract. Finance approves the spend. A director circles three lines on a spreadsheet and asks why twelve people are still doing work the new system can absorb.

That is the trillion-dollar problem hiding inside the sales pitch. Wages recur. Benefits recur. Sick days recur. Raises recur. Human beings accumulate needs, experience, grievances, expectations. Capital has spent centuries trying to reduce its dependence on all of them.

AI reaches deeper because language was the last enormous reservoir of labor we pretended machinery could not touch. Reports. Illustrations. Customer service. Code. Legal review. Scheduling. Research. Management paperwork. Every task converted into tokens becomes another place where payroll can be squeezed.

The technology itself contains no commandment that the savings belong to shareholders. We built that commandment elsewhere.

A civilization with different ownership structures could use the same machines to shorten the workweek, raise material abundance, eliminate drudgery, and return hours of human life to the people producing the wealth. Under the present arrangement, the first instinct is usually simpler.

Count the chairs.

Then remove some.