If AI Agents Take the Jobs, Who Buys the Stuff?

This Fred Pohl book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World

has a short story The Midas Plague in it where the problem is that post the development of cheap fusion resources are so abundant and production so efficient that keeping the economy working requires that people stay on a treadmill of consumption. This is such a burden that lower-class people are forced to consume more than upper-class people. The protagonist of the story gets his robots to consume his good and fears that he'll get in trouble for this but instead he gets a medal. The original version of the short story as it appeared in the April 1954 Galaxy magazine is linked from the Wikipedia article.

You're reaching from another, very narrowly scoped angle, but that's a wider problem with technology and automation. The economists since mid-20th century are talking about the UBI (universal basic income) to fight this problem:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income (wikipedia link)

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22eQ9iLBfY4 (Varoufakis explains the concept very well)

Of course, that's easier said than done a non-fully, air-gaped controlled economy.

There's an ultimate end-game here, but we're not culturally ready for it yet.

Right now, we attach income to work. You get job, you get paid. The two are bound at the hip.

For over 100 years we've been watching as machines take over doing the work. Society is more productive than ever, but with far fewer people. Right now we kinda gloss over this by creating "bullshit jobs". We have some social safety nets, but we scorn those who use them.

Fast forward another 100 years. Machines now produce everything. 1% of people have (necessary) jobs. 99% collect a "basic income", machines do all the productive work, all "income" flows back around as taxes to become redistributed as basic income.

Right now this sounds very dystopic. Culturally we still bind "job" to "worth" in a very visceral way. If I suggest "everyone gets paid, even if they dont have a job", that provokes a very intense response in some countries and a less intense response in others.

As mechanization increases, actual jobs decrease. This trend is obvious. As a whole the idea of creating a "bottom level" of society is quietly becoming mainstream. Generally pushing that "bottom level" upwards is happening.

It's not hard to forsee a future where production is sufficient, energy is cheap, the "bottom" is quite high, where we tax production (not people), where we dispense with the fiction of bullshit jobs.

Some cultures are more ready for it than others. And there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth along the way. Societal change has always been thus. But the end result is inevitable.

Think about it this way: You have a middle-man between the producer (builder, ie: home builder) and buyer (ie: someone who wants to buy the house). Now this middle-man might be providing a "real service" (or not, ie: capture) and now he is replaced by AI or a combination of.

There is no real "loss" here. The transaction between the buyer and the seller still happens. The middle-man has to figure out a different way to earn a living by providing a different service that AI can't provide. There will always be a buyer and a seller if the product is something you want to buy.

Most of the economy is made up by middle-man trying to offer a "service" or capture value in-between. Getting rid of them is not going to "collapse" the economy. Some people will be displaced but I am not sure why the value producers or acquirers will really care.

Regarding the popular belief that AI will take jobs... If 10 (or 2 or 20...) developers can be replaced by 1 dev using AI, why fire 9 (or 1 or 19) of them when your competitors now could be 10X (or 2X or 20X) more productive by giving AI tools to their 10 (or 2 or 20...) devs?

If you own an organization and can afford to pay the salaries of 10 (or 2 or 20...) souls, you'd have to be very cheap and short-sighted to prefer reducing your payroll instead of boosting your productivity 10X (or 2X or 20X).

I don't see AI taking jobs, I see AI:

- Taking companies/organizations owned by cheap people.

- Taking huge projects ―like building a browser or an OS from scratch― to small groups or even solo developers.

> If AI agents take the jobs, who buys the stuff?

Simple answer - the Department of War.

- "But what about the others" - you ask.

- "What others?" - is the answer.

The concept of "purchase", or monetary transaction may not exist in the future dystopian world.

For people who live low lives, barter is going to be good enough. For overlords, they can also barter with each other, because who cares about money when you can grab real stuffs? There are a handful of skilled human servants who serve the overlords, but they are not numerous enough for a mature market -- their overlords will provide them with whatever they need anyway.

I have long realized that monetary transaction is just one abstraction for the elites to buy human resources and nature resources. Some currency, like the USD, also serves as "entry ticket" for some transactions (like you cannot purchase X in bulk without USD).

My guess is spending by the wealthy will continue to grow. The economy will shift to serve their needs more and more. At a certain point, middle and lower class will no longer be needed. Everyone who isn't rich will exist in a secondary economy with their own markets.

Why is demand needed in a post-AGI world?

Free market economics depends on the idea that resources are scarce. If you don't have scarce resources you don't have trade because everything you want you either have or can have in abundance. Although it's probably the single most important thing for your survival, no one trades air for example.

In a post-AGI world where there is no scarcity and everything is as abundant as air (for those with the AI) trade halts.

I suspect conventional economics, like many things, simply stops making sense in a post-AGI world.

Confiscated AI profits will be distributed to consumers. Prices plummet. Abundance for all except homes in very nice locations will be relatively scarce.