[Parts 4] AI Promises a World Without Money. So Why Do the Layoffs Keep Coming?
After reading that sentence, I sat still for a long time.
And then, finally, I understood.
The people leading AI tell us:
A world is coming where money disappears — and everyone enjoys a life of culture and leisure."
Musk. Kurzweil. Bill Gates.
These aren't baseless fantasies. The technology really is moving that way.
So why did I feel not comfort, but unease, every time I heard those words?
For a while, I didn't know.
Then I read Harari — and I understood.
I used to wonder about this.
Why do they only speak of hope?
Why don't they warn us about the bleaker scenario on the other side?
Now I understand.
They're just human. They speak about what they can see from where they stand.
And where they stand — they are already wealthy.
Even if the dark scenario comes true,
they are far more likely to end up on the superhuman side.
People with no reason to worry
are telling hope stories to people who have every reason to worry.
The problem is that their voices carry far.
Ordinary people hear the message, and hope the bright version arrives.
They worry, quietly — but then another busy workday swallows the thought whole.
While we wait, corporations act.
The same person who talks about a world without money lays off thousands.
At first it looked like hypocrisy.
But it isn't hypocrisy. It's a structural problem.
Companies don't operate in future tense. They operate in present tense.
This quarter's earnings,
stock price,
cash flow,
cost structure.
A public company's CEO is bound to shareholder value more than personal philosophy.
If you don't cut, the stock falls. The company's survival is threatened.
Personal optimism cannot beat the system.
Technology is preparing to go to Mars.
I'm still working out this month's credit card bill.
In Essay 3, I wrote this:
The dinosaurs didn't know they were disappearing.
AI produces the average — faster and cheaper.
Companies use that average to drive down costs.
And in that gap, the price of my expertise gets quietly squeezed.
The job title might survive.
But if the rate falls, life begins to collapse.
And this shift happens not through anyone's malice,
but "rationally" — within the current logic of capital.
"This goodwill might last for decades. But when a crisis hits, the temptation to throw the surplus people overboard will become overwhelming."
I lingered on that sentence for a long time.
People change,
interests change,
power shifts,
and people tend to grow curiously stubborn as they age.
There is no guarantee that today's goodwill holds tomorrow.
If my life depends on the philosophy and kindness of a small number of individuals,
that is too unstable a foundation to stand on.
What we need is a system that works without requiring benevolence.
This is the real problem.
AI is advancing at speed.
But institutions are failing to keep pace.
Ordinary people are busy surviving.
Politicians have yet to take this seriously.
Entrepreneurs keep preaching optimism.
There's an unspoken assumption: that when technology raises productivity, the wealth automatically trickles down to everyone.
That has almost never happened in human history.
The Industrial Revolution was no different. Productivity exploded —
but getting that wealth back to workers took decades of institutional struggle.
There is no reason the AI era will be different.
And yet, almost no one has started fighting that fight.
I have no interest in mocking optimism.
Technology really is changing the world.
But one thing is clear.
Even if money becomes unnecessary in the future,
in the present, money is still power.
And corporations operate inside that power structure.
So instead of reading tech news,
I watch where the wealth that technology creates actually flows.
I pay attention to whose interests the rules governing that flow are designed to protect.
by technology.
do not build themselves.
