[kipchak]

This is already to some extent a solved problem. The top 10% of households in the US for example are 50% of spending, the "horses" to a large extent already don't matter to the economy. This is similar to the relationship between US consumers and workers in undeveloped nations during globalization. Historically this tends to be resolved when it creates an unsustainable level of political instability, but there are many new ways of managing this.

https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/05/tracki...

[orthoxerox]

How many of these top 10% of households will have their breadwinners be replaced with AI? The LLM boom is aimed at them, professionals, knowledge workers, not at landscapers and plumbers.

[dalyons]

90% of the 10% will be doomed. The remainder, the 1% overall lives off capital not labor, they’ll be fine.

[33MHz-i486]

that is incorrect, the 0.1% (>50m) live purely off capital. the 1% are still mostly highly paid specialized labor and despite high savings their capital would not sustain their lifestyle outside a brief retirement.

[daemonologist]

In the US, 99th percentile household wealth is ~$14M, which at historical rates of return is enough to live opulently indefinitely. (Of course although we're discussing a scenario where capital holds most of the cards, who knows if those returns would be dependable.)

[33MHz-i486]

if you dig into whats actual safe to distribute after inflation and taxes, or conservative FIRE mid-life recommendations, its around 1-2% of principal per year . From 14m, 10-20k/month, about the budget of the white collar household in a major metro. Which is nice but hardly opulent. Rent, healthcare, and kids (or some expensive hobbies) eat that up in hurry.

[confidantlake]

20k a month being the budget of a white-collar household? We obviously live in very different worlds.

[jp_sc]

Yes, but it’s 20k and all the time in the world.

[palmotea]

>>> I guess if global population drops by 80-90℅ you suddenly get a "sustainable" economy, as everything is repriced the economy of scale needs a much smaller scale.

> How many of these top 10% of households will have their breadwinners be replaced with AI? The LLM boom is aimed at them, professionals, knowledge workers, not at landscapers and plumbers.

The point of AI is to make inequality even more extreme. A well-off worker is still a worker, and it's the dream of every capitalist to not have to pay any of them a dime.

For supposedly smart people, software engineers are really dumb. We should have unionized a decade ago, at the height of our power. Instead too many of us inhaled libertarian propaganda and identified with our bosses instead of our own class.

[gls2ro]

I keep reading this idea and I think something is missing.

Lets take this to the extreme: only 2 people remain with capital and AI all the rest are replaced.

Now these two people how do they make money? they pay each other so there is no extra value created thus the amount of money as value symbol remains constant.

But here is an even more interesting question: As their AI can create anything why would they pay each other? So why do they need money?

[nearbuy]

> Now these two people how do they make money? they pay each other so there is no extra value created thus the amount of money as value symbol remains constant.

The money just circulating around is actually more or less how a normal economy works. If you have a two person world where one person makes food and the other makes tools, the money just bounces back and forth between the two people as they trade tools and food. It facilitates trade by acting as an IOU in case the first person doesn't need to trade tools at the exact moment the other needs to trade food.

AI and robotics will one day be able to produce food and tools without human labor. So there could be plenty of wealth created. The question is how do we distribute that wealth when humans aren't needed to make it? We need a new distribution system that isn't based on pay for labor. A lot of people suggest UBI.

[chii]

UBI only works if the technology advances to a level where there is zero scarcity. I dont believe AI will produce that level of abundance.

[nearbuy]

There is no reason to have UBI if there is zero scarcity. There is no reason to have money at all without scarcity.

UBI is a system for dividing up scarce resources.

[DangitBobby]

Different AIs will be optimized for different types of tasks, or have completely different capabilities e.g. huge data access versus physical bodies. It could be more efficient for different firms to optimize and specialize their hardware and software for these use-cases and exchange for use of the labor of the other rather than for everyone to have a fully generalized fleet. I imagine this will be true even for incredibly advanced AI but who knows.

[palmotea]

It's pretty obvious: once automation and wealth concentration get so extreme, the economy will get weird and stop being "capitalist" as we understand it.

For instance: it'd expect money to become near-meaningless, and the economic activity of the trillionaire class will consist mostly of direct extraction and consumption of resources (basically a personal autarky). There may be some barter of things like energy, raw materials, and maybe a small amount of proprietary items.

Given the lack of need to pay labor and the direct control of more resources than they'll ever need, the trillionaire will direct the world enonomy to towards pet projects (e.g. an Elon Musk commanding his robot army to build a giant steel pyramid on the moon in his honor, because why not? It'll be cool!).

[dnnddidiej]

That sounds off intuitively. The lowest earners are the base making higher earner possible both through their labour and consumption.

[kipchak]

This is the normal economist understanding for how things should or aught to work (Ford paying his workers so they can buy his cars), but it is not necessarily how they must work in practice.

Colonial economies did not require the lowest earners to contribute to demand nor Rome when it transitioned from small farmholders to consolidated farms and slaves, or modern gulf states. The examples are arguably unhealthy as economies long term, but practically they may persist for fairly long periods of time.