I’ve been wrestling with a disturbing thought: what if AI doesn’t just disrupt capitalism - what if it accidentally destroys it?
Here’s the contradiction that keeps me awake. Capitalism needs consumers to buy products. But AI is systematically eliminating the jobs that create consumers. By 2030, we’re looking at mass unemployment across white-collar work - customer service, legal research, financial analysis, even coding. The middle class that drives consumer spending could simply vanish.
It’s capitalism’s ultimate paradox. The profit motive drives companies to automate workers away, but collectively, they’re destroying their own customer base. Who’s going to buy AI-enhanced products when nobody has jobs?
The wealthy will own increasingly efficient AI systems that produce everything we need. But wealth becomes meaningless when there’s nobody left to sell to. It’s like being the richest person in a ghost town.
What comes next isn’t socialism or some planned alternative - it’s system collapse. When consumer demand evaporates, even the most productive AI-powered businesses fail. Stock markets crash. The entire edifice built on endless growth hits a wall.
Some tech leaders see this coming. Musk, Altman, and others push Universal Basic Income not from progressive ideals, but from survival instinct. They understand that capitalism needs artificial life support - government redistribution to create artificial consumers for their AI products.
But that’s not really capitalism anymore, is it? It’s something new - a hybrid where the state maintains purchasing power so private AI can have someone to sell to.
Maybe we’re not heading toward capitalism’s evolution. Maybe we’re watching its final contradictions play out. The system that promised infinite efficiency might have finally become too efficient for its own survival.
The revolution isn’t coming from outside capitalism. It’s coming from within.
