Why capitalism won't let AI take your job

the based and logos-pilled truth about AI and late-stage capitalism

Compadres in cognitive chaos, it's again the time to get metaphysically silly.

Felix's fed up with everyone's doom-posting about artificial intelligence yoinking their jobs tomorrow.

"Automation is inevitable."

          "Automation is inevitable."               "Automation is inevitable."

                                   "Automation is inevitable."

                                                                                   "AI will replace you."

"Automation is inevitable."

               "AI will replace you."

                                                    "Automation is inevitable."

 "AI will replace you."

Silicon Valley prophet-puppets are out here repeating the same dialogue tree over and over again while TikTok-economists cry of approaching unprecedented unemployment rates and labor market collapse. But they are all missing something so based it hurts: capitalism literally can't let it happen.

The reason is not because the tech isn't bussin' (it is), not because AI isn't capable (no cap, it's cracked af actually—the fact that many people are "unimpressed" by a literally technological marvel is insane), but because there's a delicious dialectical contradiction at play that would make Hegel lose his shit. Here's the real 200 IQ take: capitalism needs you to have a job more than it needs AI workers or full technological efficiency. The system's drive for profit through automation contains the seeds of its own defeat, and the system is very well aware of that.

Capitalism might be the most powerful egregore we've ever spawned because we're its primary source of HP. It needs our daily grind, our micro-transactions, our FOMOs, our belief in the grindset to maintain its existence. Try to automate everything, and you're basically trying to delete the game's core mechanics. Jobs in our current system aren't just about producing things, let alone "meaningful" things - they're capitalism's way of creating consumers with enough monies in their inventory to keep buying buying buying "cogito ergo consume." We work to earn monies to buy the things we produce through our work (thus is the meaning of life, isn't it?). "Das System ist am Kopium," as spoke Nietzsche. The system is literally on copium, believing it can maintain its internal logic while simultaneously trying to transcend it. Not possible. No. Forget about that wet dream. We're destined to grind.

For example: a software company goes full automation, replaces their workforce with AI, thinking they've achieved sigma grindset, but (!) their ex-employees can no longer afford their subscriptions; their business clients, facing their own consumer exodus, start panic-selling; the dominoes fall until there's no one left to buy the AI services they created. Back then in the olden days, Henry Ford already figured this out when he doubled his workers' wages to $5 a day. He wasn't being a philanthropist - he just realized his automated assembly lines were basically meaningless if his own workers couldn't afford the cars they were building.

This creates a paradox: while it might be profitable for any individual company to automate their workforce, if every company does it simultaneously, they collectively destroy their customer base by leaving them without jobs or/and with less monies to spend. This doesn't mean automation won't happen – individual companies will still pursue it for competitive advantage, but it does suggest that capitalism contains built-in brakes against complete automation. The system requires some level of "inefficiency" (you, skinbag) to sustain itself. What emerges is a picture of capitalism as a system that must maintain a delicate balance between efficiency and inefficiency. It needs enough automation to drive profit and growth, but not so much that it destroys consumer purchasing power. This might explain why we often see jobs persisting even when automation is technically feasible and the creation of seemingly "unnecessary" jobs as old ones are automated. Understanding this paradox challenges both the techno-optimist view that full automation is inevitable and the standard economic assumption that markets always drive toward maximum efficiency. It suggests that the future might not be one of complete automation, but rather a new equilibrium between human labor and AI assistance, otherwise capitalism won't survive. Attempting a total automation through AI will simply be capitalistic suicide. That's why it won't happen. Just as "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than imagine the end of capitalism," it's easier to imagine winning a Super Smash Bros tournament using only Luigi's taunt than an economic system that could handle full automation.

To summarize, capitalism's need for consumers might be what saves human work from complete automation – not because we can't build the technology, but because the system itself cannot survive without employed consumers. Capitalism needs consumers more than it needs efficient production. The jobs aren't real, the value isn't real. We're safe as long as the system needs us to feed it.

P.S. (Because let's admit, our jobs are so meaningless on a grand scheme of things that its only true meaning is to make the market grow until shareholders start ejaculating to each other's mouths when they see the greenest candle on the chart.)