Once you have no more earning potential, you’d think the advertising would go away. If you have no money, there’s no reason for people to pay to manipulate you to get you to give them some. Google and Facebook will die, and this evil sector of the economy will finally be destroyed.

I wish. As long as you have the ability to vote, there’s still a reason to manipulate you. And with there being less to buy and more value to be gained in influencing the monopoly on violence, the ad onslaught will continue. It will be even worse, it’s not just about you buying something, it’s about you believing something. It reaches inside.

Basketball is not a democracy. The players don’t even get a vote, let alone the fans. But conservatism can maintain a systematic pattern of delusion, because its fans are not just fans: they are supporters of a political machine. This machine will disappear if it cannot keep its believers, so it has an incentive to keep them. And it does. Funny how that works.
– Mencius Moldbug


As an aside, I cannot believe the amount of people who think that eventually an AI will come and do their job for them while they collect the salary. This is the delusion of someone who thinks salaries come from the salary fairy. Your salary actually comes from your boss, who will see this arrangement and quickly cut out the middleman (that’s you). Whatever AI you can buy, your boss can buy too. In fact, they can probably even get a bulk discount.

Another, slightly less ridiculous idea, is that we can tax the robots and distribute the wealth from the work they create to the people. This is just the previous thing with extra steps. Sure, some bosses might keep you employed as a favor to you, but they will be outcompeted by those that don’t. On a slower timescale, the same is true for countries. A country that offers UBI is not a good place to live long term.


The only way through is to produce more than you consume. I have some great news about this, what you need to consume is fixed (2000 kcals of food + a gallon of water + possibly shelter depending on location) and has been falling in actual cost due to tech advancements. That water costs about a cent, and that food costs about a dollar. Can you earn a dollar a day?

The sooner you embrace being in the perpetual underclass, the happier you will be. We’ll all be there someday. Just hope they don’t try to make you vote.