June 25, 2026
Eat the rich? The bots already did
No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass
Even the rich won’t be safe if robots take every job, and commenters are not buying it
TLDR: The article argues that if artificial intelligence can do every job, both workers and the wealthy could end up powerless in a machine-run economy. Commenters mostly pushed back, mocking the doom spiral as oversimplified, ahistorical, or less urgent than the very real crises happening right now.
A doom-heavy essay claimed that if artificial intelligence gets good enough to do all human work, then not only office workers but eventually even billionaires, executives, and governments could become powerless. In this nightmare version of the future, regular people become a permanent underclass with no way up, while companies run on machines and humans are left fighting over scraps, welfare checks, or “human face” jobs. Cheerful stuff! But in the comments, readers basically said: hold on, this apocalypse fanfic has holes.
The loudest pushback was aimed at the article’s all-or-nothing vibe. One commenter compared it to the board game Diplomacy, arguing that power struggles are never that simple and that sweeping claims like “everyone loses” usually collapse on contact with real life. Another rolled their eyes at the whole premise and said they were far more worried about today’s political chaos than some far-off robot caste system. Translation: why panic about tomorrow’s sci-fi nightmare when today’s mess is already on fire?
Then came the jokes and spicy side-eyes. One commenter invoked Elon Musk and SpaceX with the unsettling line that a giant rocket is “basically a missile,” which instantly turned the thread from economic theory into blockbuster villain energy. Others said history has seen this movie before: every era thinks this time is different, and every era still ends with some people getting rich, some getting crushed, and everyone arguing online about it. In other words, the real consensus was not fear, but skepticism, sarcasm, and a lot of ‘please be serious’ energy.
Key Points
- •The article is built on a premise that AI could eventually perform all cognitive and physical work at human level or better and at lower cost.
- •It argues that, under that premise, businesses would replace most human workers, creating widespread unemployment or underemployment and removing traditional paths of social mobility.
- •The article describes a future economic structure with AI and robots doing most productive work, a small class of human owners and executives above them, and the state enforcing property rights at the top.
- •It proposes that governments could sustain consumption through taxation of AI-run economic activity and welfare transfers to people who no longer earn labor income.
- •The article further claims that owning capital, including shares in major AI firms, would not ultimately protect even wealthy individuals or AI industry leaders from disempowerment if machines take over real control.