How we get another Great Depression.

In a capitalist economy, corporations only produce goods when there are customers who can afford to pay for them. They don’t do it just for fun or simply because people want these goods. Their mandate is to maximize shareholder profit.

After the advent of an artificial labor force, production still incurs costs because people own the key resources: land, mineral rights, bandwidth, energy, and so forth. Even if labor costs drop to zero, these other costs remain.

As AI and robotics replace an ever-larger share of human labor, wages disappear. Without wages, most people lose their buying power. Without buyers, suppliers stop producing goods they can’t sell. The economy grinds to a halt, leaving only the wealthy—those who own AI, robots, natural resources, or privileged assets like intellectual property—to trade among themselves.

The end result is a Great Depression on a scale bigger than the one in 1930.