AI automation risks killing its own customers

The piece highlights a fundamental flaw in the Silicon Valley "productivity" narrative: if everyone is an agent and no one is a customer, the economy collapses. It inverts Henry Ford's $5-a-day logic into a "UBI-for-subscriptions" model where displaced workers funnel state cash back to AI monopolies, highlighting the long-term risk of training data cannibalization. The essay draws historical parallels to 19th-century indentured labor and argues that AI should be a public utility rather than a private rent-seeking engine.