Topic

Consumer

Who buys the output when the worker has been fired.

Henry Ford understood that if you replace the worker with a machine, you also replace the customer. A consumer economy cannot survive the abolition of the consumer. Every story about AI productivity gains is implicitly a story about who can still afford to participate in the economy that those gains supposedly enrich. This topic follows demand-side consequences: shrinking middle-class purchasing power, the four-day workweek argument, universal basic income, and the harder questions about what comes after wage labour.

Columns (2)

  1. Who Buys the Slop When the Worker Is Fired

    Henry Ford paid his workers enough to afford the cars they built. The AI economy is firing the same customer. A column on the consumer demand problem nobody in the pitch deck wants to address.

  2. The Rent Is Too Damn Inference

    The generative AI economy is a landlord economy. Every prompt is a rent cheque. A column on per-token pricing, API lock-in, and the enshittification curve.

Parallels (1)

  1. Then · 1914

    Henry Ford raises wages to $5 a day so his workers can afford the cars they build.

    Now · 2025

    OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google race to replace the knowledge workers who are the only people left who can afford a $200/month subscription.

    A consumer economy cannot survive the abolition of the consumer.

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