Oligarchs’ Dream of Labor-Free Capitalism
Across Silicon Valley and beyond, figures like Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and other tech elites speak with growing urgency about the coming wave of unemployment caused by artificial intelligence. Their speeches and interviews paint a picture of near-inevitable disruption: machines not only replacing human muscle, as in the industrial revolution, but human minds as well. Millions of jobs — from driving trucks to drafting contracts to coding software — are likely to vanish in the span of a decade.
And yet, these same voices assure us that the solution exists: Unconditional Income (often branded Universal Basic Income). Every citizen, they argue, should receive money from the government, whether they work or not, to keep society stable and ensure people can still consume the products AI will produce.
On the surface, this sounds generous. But the more one examines it, the more it becomes clear: the narrative is designed to shift the burden away from those who cause the disruption — the tech oligarchs and corporations who profit from AI — and onto society as a whole. The crucial question — who pays for this income? — is always kept abstract. That is no accident.
The Abstraction of “Who Pays”
When Altman speaks of UBI, he stresses its necessity but rarely names its funders. Sometimes he hints at taxes, sometimes at government investment in AI infrastructure, but never commits to a clear model. Why? Because specificity would expose the fault lines. If AI firms are taxed directly, they resist. If the government funds it through general taxation, voters revolt. If new forms of public ownership are proposed, investors panic.
By leaving “who pays” vague, the narrative gains broad support while avoiding confrontation with powerful interests. It creates the illusion of inevitability: “AI is coming, unemployment is coming, UBI is coming.” But it silences the essential point: why should the victims of disruption pay for their own displacement?
AI Unemployment as Social Pollution
Here the analogy with climate change is instructive. For decades, industries treated pollution as a “social cost.” They profited while society bore the damage — poisoned rivers, smog-filled cities, rising global temperatures. Only later did the principle emerge: the polluter pays.
AI unemployment is no different. It is not a natural disaster but a man-made externality. Corporations invest in AI precisely to eliminate jobs, because it raises profits by lowering labor costs. The result — mass unemployment, collapsing recognition, social instability — is social pollution.
And yet, instead of admitting responsibility, the tech elites frame unemployment as a general social problem, as if it had no author. They present UBI as the compassionate answer, but only if paid by government budgets. In doing so, they privatize the profits of automation while socializing the costs of disruption. It is the oldest trick of capitalism in crisis: keep the gains, distribute the losses.
Why the Oligarchs Want Labor-Free Production
At the heart of this lies a deeper motivation. For centuries, production has required a balance of capital and labor. Machines could augment human work, but they could not replace it entirely. Even in the industrial revolution, workers retained bargaining power because factories needed them.
AI changes the equation. For the first time in history, it is possible to imagine capital-only production:
- Inputs: data, algorithms, compute power, energy — all owned as capital.
- Outputs: goods, services, designs, decisions.
- Labor: minimal, incidental, disposable.
This is the dream of the tech oligarchs. Labor is costly, unpredictable, and demands recognition. Machines never strike, never unionize, never ask for healthcare or dignity. By removing labor from the equation, production becomes frictionless — owned and controlled entirely by capital.
The motivation is clear:
- Profit maximization — keep all value within capital.
- Kontrolle — no workers to negotiate or resist.
- Scalability — machines can grow without human limits.
- Risk avoidance — no reputational scandals about labor conditions.
And perhaps most deeply, ideology: a futurist belief that humans are inefficient, and real progress means replacing them with code. AI becomes the “perfect slave,” obedient and tireless, without the danger of revolt.
The Recognition Crisis (DfR)
But humans are not only consumers. Work has always been more than wages; it has been recognition. To lose a job is not just to lose income but to lose dignity, to lose one’s place in the web of social meaning.
This is where the oligarchic vision is most dangerous. By stripping labor out of production, they strip recognition away from society. Their solution — government-funded UBI — does not restore recognition. It reduces people to passive recipients, dependents of the state, while recognition accrues upward to the oligarchs as the “architects of abundance.”
In the language of Eidoism: the Demand for Recognition (DfR) is the central driver of human psychology. If UBI is framed as a welfare handout, people will feel doubly humiliated: first displaced, then paid off. That is not stability; that is resentment waiting to ignite.
Who Should Pay? From Welfare to Dividend
The crucial issue is not whether people should receive unconditional income, but who funds it. If UBI is framed as a government handout, it will pit taxpayers against recipients and absolve the true beneficiaries of responsibility. The only sustainable framing is dividend, not welfare: a rightful share in the wealth generated by AI.
Here are refined and extended funding mechanisms:
1. Robot & Automation Tax
Instead of the impossible task of calculating how many jobs were displaced, the tax is simply charged on the use of robots and automated systems themselves.
- Each industrial robot, autonomous vehicle, or large-scale AI system would be registered, much like cars or energy plants.
- Companies would pay an annual usage fee, scaled to the level of automation (number of units, computational load, or productivity index).
- This makes enforcement straightforward: it is tied to the existence and operation of automation, not speculative estimates of “lost jobs.”
Strength: Simple, enforceable, and linked directly to the technology.
Weakness: Firms may try to offshore automated operations unless adoption is regulated and taxed at the border (like import tariffs for goods produced with untaxed automation).
2. AI Productivity Levy & Data Dividend
Since AI is trained on society’s data and knowledge, corporations owe a return. A fixed percentage of AI-driven profits would be redistributed.
Weakness: Multinationals will try to shift profits abroad. Without global agreements, they avoid obligations — as they do with current corporate taxes.
3. Sovereign Compute & Infrastructure Funds
Governments should not merely regulate but also own part of the AI infrastructure.
- Invest at least 5% annually of GDP into compute, chips, and data centers.
- Claim control as with energy supply and distribution — strategic assets must remain public.
- Returns flow into a national AI dividend, just like Norway’s oil fund.
Strength: Ownership ensures governments cannot be bypassed by oligarchic monopolies.
4. Digital Value-Added Tax (DVAT)
Every AI-generated service or product pays a small “digital VAT” at the point of consumption. This captures value even when corporations relocate, because it is tied to usage in each country.
5. Public Data Licensing
Citizens’ data is the raw fuel of AI. Governments could treat data as a collective resource and require companies to pay licensing fees for access. Revenues go into a public data fund, distributed as dividends to all citizens.
6. AI Sovereignty Bonds
Governments issue bonds tied to AI productivity. Returns are paid into a universal dividend fund. This makes citizens investors in their own AI economy.
7. Shared Equity Mandates
Any AI company above a certain size must issue a fixed portion (say 10%) of equity into a public trust. As their valuation grows, society directly shares in the upside.
8. Global AI Treaty Fund
Modeled on climate agreements, countries pool a fraction of AI-related profits into a global stability fund. This addresses cross-border job losses and reduces the race to the bottom.
Bottom Line
If AI really replaces labor, then labor’s share of production must be reclaimed in new ways. That cannot happen if funding is left vague or left to ordinary taxpayers. Just as we learned in environmental policy that the polluter must pay, we must now demand that the automator must pay.ety in the collective productivity it enables. Just as the Alaska oil fund pays citizens a share of natural resource wealth, AI dividends would pay citizens a share of technological resource wealth.
Objections and Counter-Arguments
Tech elites will object:
- “Taxing us slows innovation.” But innovation that destroys livelihoods without compensation is socially destructive. Stability is more valuable than speed.
- “It’s too expensive.” Yet AI companies already command trillion-dollar valuations. The problem is not economic but political: who has the power to demand redistribution.
- “Global markets make national taxes impossible.” But climate agreements and minimum corporate tax deals show that international frameworks can emerge. Start with the EU, US, or China, and the rest will follow.
Workers may object too:
- “Why should others get free money?” The answer is recognition: UBI is not a handout but a dividend — every citizen is a co-owner of data and society’s infrastructure.
- “I don’t want to be dependent on the state.” Then UBI must be designed as an unconditional right, not as welfare. It should feel like citizenship income, not charity.
Historical Parallels
We have seen this before. During the industrial revolution, owners sought to maximize profits by squeezing labor, until unions and welfare states forced a compromise. During the environmental crisis, industries externalized pollution until society demanded polluter-pays laws.
We are now entering the AI crisis. Oligarchs dream of eliminating labor entirely, while offering UBI as a pacifier. If society accepts their framing, we risk entering a new feudalism: capital-only production, labor-free wealth, and citizens dependent on elite generosity. If society resists, we can instead create a new social contract: AI profits funding collective dividends, recognition restructured around creativity, care, and community rather than wage labor.
Global Governance and the UN Dilemma
Finding common terms for regulating and funding AI at the United Nations is already proving to be as complex as climate negotiations. Each nation arrives with its own agenda, defending domestic industries while demanding concessions from others. Attempts at compromise quickly collapse into national rivalries, and agreements, when they come, are fragile and slow. What looks like a technical issue of taxation and regulation is in fact a deep political contest about sovereignty and control.
Behind these struggles lies the Demand for Recognition (DfR), silently shaping every negotiation. Nations do not merely want fair rules; they want acknowledgment of their status, their sacrifices, and their place in the global order. Recognition contests often override rational compromise, producing unpredictable outcomes that no economist or diplomat can fully model. A mechanism that looks efficient on paper may never pass in practice because it bruises the pride of a powerful state or leaves another feeling invisible.
Complicating matters further, the military sector will almost certainly carve out exceptions for itself. Defense-related AI projects will be classified as national security assets, exempt from taxation or dividend-sharing schemes. Companies tied to military contracts will find shelter under this umbrella, escaping the very controls imposed on commercial AI. This not only distorts the playing field, but also undermines trust in any international framework. A global agreement that leaves the most powerful AI actors untouched risks becoming little more than symbolic.
The Fork in the Road
The question is not whether AI will disrupt jobs. It will. The question is whether we accept the oligarchs’ narrative — that unemployment is a “social problem” to be solved by government-funded welfare — or whether we recognize it as social pollution that must be paid for by its cause.
If AI truly liberates humanity from labor, then its fruits must belong to all. If not, it will simply liberate capital from labor, concentrating wealth and stripping recognition from the many.
The future of AI will not be decided by algorithms alone. It will be decided by narratives — by whose story we believe. And the most urgent task is to break the illusion of inevitability and insist:
if AI causes unemployment, the polluters must pay.
