ChrisF | Starholder
The harvest has begun, slowly and silently. For decades, capital has been retooling itself to no longer depend on the masses it once fed upon. We are witnessing a system that, once set in motion, follows the path of least resistance toward a stark endgame: intensifying inequality, perpetual labor precarity, and even a selective contraction of the human population. This is not science fiction or wild conspiracy. It is the plausible outcome of forces already at play, a long harvest of society’s wealth and vitality by a system learning to live without large segments of humanity. There is no mastermind scheming to eliminate jobs or suppress birth rates. There doesn’t have to be. The logic of neoliberal capitalism, once installed, is perfectly capable of running on autopilot – and running society into the ground – all while a small elite merely sit back and watch their incentives line up with the carnage.
No primers or euphemisms here: we assume you know about automation, artificial intelligence, demographic decline, cognitive enclosure, and capital accumulation. What follows is a synthesis, a systemic account of how these trends intertwine and reinforce one another. When no one pulls the brakes, the system’s purpose becomes evident in its outcomes. It doesn’t matter what uplifting mission statements or economic theories proclaim – what matters is what the system actually does. And what it is doing is harvesting. It’s extracting every last drop of value from a shrinking labor pool, privatizing every commons it can enclose, and riding an endless wave of asset appreciation, heedless of the fact that at the end of that ride there may be no one left to sell to but each other.
Neoliberalism – the late-20th-century gospel of free markets, deregulation, and unfettered individualism – set in motion a self-reinforcing loop. The path of least resistance became the path of intensification. Corporations relentlessly cut costs and chased cheap labor; governments slashed regulations and safety nets in the name of “competitiveness.” Public assets were sold, taxes on capital gutted, finance deregulated. Each step made the next one seem not only natural but inevitable.
The system effectively went on autopilot. Policies and practices that maximized short-term profit thrived; those that didn’t were swept aside by competition. No mastermind was required – the logic enforced itself. Businesses that broke unions, offshored jobs, and squeezed suppliers outcompeted those that didn’t. Politicians who preached austerity and “business-friendly” reforms received corporate backing, while those who didn’t struggled for power. Innovations that cut labor costs or dodged regulations spread quickly and set new norms. Success in this environment meant doubling down on market logic at every turn.
Over time, a series of feedback loops entrenched this trajectory:
Wealth captures power: Wealth concentrates and buys influence to rewrite laws in its favor. Regulations get ever looser, taxes ever lower for the rich, creating a snowball effect that further concentrates wealth.
Alternatives are eroded: Public institutions that once balanced the market – strong unions, robust welfare programs, public utilities – are defunded and discredited. People hear there is no alternative to privatization and personal responsibility. As collective solutions wither, the market expands by default into every area of life.
Blame is diverted: As insecurity spreads, the ideology doubles down: if you’re struggling, it’s your own fault for not adapting. Social frustration is channeled toward scapegoats (immigrants, the poor, “lazy” workers) instead of the system. Even crises caused by market excess (crashes, recessions) are met with calls for more belt-tightening and market discipline, never questioning the model itself.
These loops feed each other, ensuring that once neoliberalism is installed, it keeps reinforcing itself. Even leaders inclined to reform it feel constrained by global market pressures and entrenched interests. For any CEO or politician, the easiest move is to stay the course. After decades of this, we have normalized astonishing inequality and precarious employment as just the way things are. The economy is treated as an untouchable, quasi-natural machine that we must obey. But in truth this machine serves a very select few – and as it runs, it’s content to grind everyone else into the gears.
While the neoliberal engine was accelerating, technology offered capital a new edge. Automation moved from factory floors to office cubicles; artificial intelligence now targets white-collar and creative work once thought safe. Crucially, these AI systems are trained on humanity’s collective knowledge and creativity – our writings, art, and code – and then locked behind corporate walls. This cognitive enclosure means the shared commons of intellect has been appropriated as private property. Capital now owns the machines and algorithms built with our data, and it can deploy them to replace us.
The implication is stark: a large portion of the population is no longer needed for their labor or even their expertise. The machines have learned from us how to do many of our jobs, and capital owns the machines. From robot-run warehouses to AIs that design, write, diagnose, and drive, humans are being squeezed out of production. An elite cadre of owners and engineers reaps these efficiency gains, running profitable enterprises with a fraction of the workforce. But for everyone else, it means redundancy.
It’s a rolling process of dispossession, not a sudden revolution. Drivers, assistants, analysts – all kinds of jobs are gradually made obsolete or pushed into tenuous freelance roles by the very tools built on yesterday’s human effort. The path for each firm is clear: if a task can be automated or handled by AI for less cost than a human (and increasingly it can), it will be. The competitive pressure ensures that any company slow to replace workers with cheaper tech is quickly outflanked by one that isn’t.
So the system sheds human workers. It’s nothing personal – just business. The broader effect is a growing class of people who find that their skills, their labor, their very minds are not needed. They are told to retrain, to “learn to code,” to move up the value chain, but the goalposts keep receding with each tech leap. It’s a classic contradiction: the system produces abundance (of AI-driven output) but yields scarcity of paid employment. We get more stuff, more services, more capability – but fewer people share in the income and wealth generated.
What does capital gain from automating away people? Independence from labor, and thus from labor’s demands. The less it needs us, the less power we have. Unions become toothless if their jobs can vanish with a software update. Strikes become less effective if production can continue autonomously. The bargaining power of the average person dwindles to nil. In the long run, capital learns to live without large swaths of humanity’s labor. And once it can do that, the system’s incentive to care about human well-being evaporates. After all, if people are merely a cost, the logical move is to minimize that cost.
As labor becomes dispensable, capital has found another way to expand its riches: by inflating the value of assets and extracting wealth from those who don’t own them. We now effectively have two economies running in parallel:
The owners’ circuit: Money begets more money, almost by magic. Cheap credit lets the rich borrow to buy more assets, driving prices even higher. If markets falter, bailouts and easy money prop them back up – risk is socialized, gains are privatized. Owning things – not making things – is the surest path to wealth.
The everyone-else circuit: For those living on wages, money is expensive and scarce. Credit cards, student loans, and rent devour paychecks. Wages stay flat even as living costs rise. Buying a home (a ticket into the asset-owning class) is a distant dream, so they rent indefinitely. Most people are one accident or interest rate hike away from financial ruin, and they get none of the safety nets that cushion the wealthy.
This divide is maintained through artificial scarcity. We have the capacity to provide a decent living for everyone, but access is limited to keep profits high. Housing is deliberately kept scarce and pricey – via zoning laws, speculative hoarding, or corporate landlords – ensuring people pay a premium for a roof over their heads. Knowledge and digital goods, which could be nearly free to share, are fenced off by patents, paywalls, and DRM; even information becomes a product you must continually pay for. Every sector finds ways to make what could be abundant artificially scarce for the sake of the bottom line.
At the same time, wage labor is bled dry. Careers turn into gigs and contracts without benefits. Workers are pushed to do more for less pay, and told to be grateful for any job at all. Productivity and profits rise, but the gains don’t trickle down – they gush upward into stock buybacks, executive bonuses, and investor portfolios. The official metrics might show economic growth, but that growth no longer translates into broad prosperity. It pools at the top, in the asset economy, out of reach of those whose labor actually produced it.
Work and wealth have been decoupled. The richest can multiply their fortunes even if the broader economy stagnates for everyone else. It no longer matters if the majority can’t afford to consume much; the real money is made elsewhere, circulating among assets and balance sheets. The system can claim to be thriving – high GDP, booming stock indexes – even as it starves the host on which it feeds. It’s another phase of the long harvest: capital maximizing gain not by producing more for all, but by siphoning value from the many to enrich the few.
Perhaps the most unsettling feedback loop of all is how economic precarity undermines the future of society itself. As inequality and insecurity deepen, people’s capacity to plan for the future evaporates. Starting a family, for example, becomes a daunting gamble. Birth rates are plummeting, not just from personal choice, but because having children feels financially reckless for anyone not securely affluent. Who can imagine raising a child when you can barely pay your own rent and debts? Fertility collapse becomes another symptom of the system’s squeeze – a silent vote of no confidence in tomorrow.
Debt is a big part of this story. Young adults enter working life already shackled by loans – for education, for a car, for medical bills. By the time they’d want to buy a home or start a family, they’re still digging out of debt. Home ownership, once the bedrock of middle-class stability, has become unattainable for many, so they end up renting indefinitely. With no house, no savings, and often no steady career, the prospect of supporting children – or even retiring comfortably themselves – slips away. Owning nothing isn’t a choice; it’s the default fate for a generation.
As fewer children are born and the population ages, the demographic balance tips. A shrinking workforce must support a growing elderly population. This would be challenging even in a fair society; in our unfair one, it becomes a pretext to slash what remains of social support. Pensions, healthcare, public services – all face cuts because there are supposedly “too few young people” to pay in. Never mind the immense wealth at the top; the narrative demands sacrifice from the bottom. Thus the underclass is squeezed at both ends: they can’t afford to raise kids, and then they’re told they must work ever harder, ever longer, to care for an aging society (even as the rich hoard resources that could have eased this burden).
The result is the entrenchment of a permanent underclass with no assets and dim prospects. Millions effectively become neo-serfs – renting every necessity, owning nothing. Housing is a lifelong expense, not an investment; transportation, software, even mattresses and appliances might come “as a service” on subscription. Miss a payment and you’re back to square one, because you have no property to your name. In such conditions, hope itself becomes scarce. Hard work doesn’t promise advancement; having children doesn’t promise stability. People stop believing the future will be better, even for their (hypothetical) children.
Disturbingly, this demographic contraction and social stagnation do not sound alarm bells for those at the top. If anything, a smaller, more desperate population is easier to manage: less demand for accountability, less resistance – and still enough consumption of essentials (propped up by a little government aid if needed) to keep business running. To the elite, the decline of the populace is just another trend to accommodate, not reverse. As long as their portfolios grow, they can accept a future with fewer people in it. In fact, from their vantage point, fewer people means fewer problems – a leaner society to dominate. It’s a grim trajectory: instead of rising prosperity lifting the masses up, selective decline is pushing the masses out of the picture.
Looking at this bleak trajectory, it’s natural to wonder if someone engineered it on purpose. But the truth is no grand conspiracy is required. When all the incentives line up this way, the outcome emerges “organically.” The wealthy and powerful don’t need secret meetings to benefit – they just follow their own short-term interests, and the system takes care of the rest.
They will:
Cut labor costs – automate, outsource, bust unions – instead of ever sharing more profits with workers.
Press for deregulation and tax breaks, claiming it’s for economic growth but really to free their hands and wallets. Public services get defunded, common resources privatized, and the market infiltrates every corner of life.
Enclose new commons as soon as they appear: any frontier not yet privatized is a business opportunity. If something becomes vital (like the internet or our personal data), they’ll fence it off and charge admission.
Control the narrative. They fund experts and media to rationalize all this as progress and necessity. Inequality is “meritocracy,” exploitation is “efficiency.” If people struggle, we’re told, it’s due to personal failings or unavoidable forces – never the choices of those in charge.
If a popular movement or crisis threatens this game, elites respond predictably – co-opt it, pacify it, or distract. Demand higher taxes? They offer token charity instead. Worker unrest? They tout “retraining” and maybe give a small raise. Financial crash? Bail out the banks, let the homeowners drown. The playbook repeats because it works: real change is averted, and the machine keeps humming in their favor.
These elites don’t see themselves as villains – they see themselves as smart winners and benefactors. Cocooned in gated bubbles, they don’t witness the suffering their decisions cause. Private security shields them from crime, private clinics from failing public health, private jets from crumbling infrastructure. In their eyes, the system is working just fine – for people like them. Why would they ever hit the brakes?
In effect, the lack of a collective plan is the plan. By simply doing nothing to alter the course, the elite ensure the trajectory continues. Their wealth and influence quietly keep the machine steady for their benefit, but they will not attempt a hard turn to avoid the cliff – that would mean changing a system that rewards them richly. They’ll ride it out, confident they can buy their way out of any messes along the road. This is, in their view, the price of progress, and besides, they’ll say, there is no alternative.
Judge the system by its outputs, not its propaganda: clearly its real purpose is to enrich a few and treat the rest as expendable. For decades we were promised that markets and technology would bring shared prosperity, but the reality has been the opposite. The invisible hand of the market has become a harvester’s scythe – sweeping wealth upward and cutting away the lives below.
This isn’t the future anyone advertised, yet it’s the one quietly being built. No one had to openly declare that society should function this way; it’s simply what has transpired when no one with the power to stop it chose to do so. The slogans said one thing, but the system did another. In practice, we’ve seen a long harvest – a drawn-out extraction of value from people and planet. Abundance exists, but only as lavish excess for a few. Progress exists, but mainly in forms that reduce the need for human workers or that turn every waking moment into a monetized transaction. The majority are left with scraps or nothing at all, and told it’s the natural order of things.
Picture the endpoint of this trajectory. In gated enclaves, a small elite thrives on self-perpetuating capital. They trade assets among themselves at ever-rising prices because no one else can afford to buy in. Outside those bubbles, former middle-class neighborhoods have hollowed out. Whole regions are economically barren, populated by people rendered superfluous. Automation and AI provide the goods and services the elite need; the underclasses either subsist on meager stipends, hustle in a shadow economy, or simply languish. The consumer society that defined the 20th century has bifurcated: luxury for the rich, bare survival for everyone else. In boardrooms and stock exchanges, it hardly matters that the masses are absent – the machine of capital can run with minimal human input, and it rewards the owners of that machine handsomely.
Crucially, none of this unfolds with dramatic fanfare. There is no singular moment when the curtain drops on the old world; instead it’s a slow eroding of expectations and possibilities. A quarterly earnings report here, a policy tweak there, a new app that replaces a thousand jobs somewhere else – each step is mundane enough. But together, they steer us into a dystopia of diminishing humanity. It happens not with a bang, but with the quiet hum of servers and the shuffle of financial papers.
Unless something external forces a change, why would it stop? The machine has no internal brake set to say “enough” on society’s behalf. Absent intervention, it will continue on autopilot toward this grim horizon. Left unchecked, this system will devour its own foundations in pursuit of profit, consuming even the people it once needed until it can run with barely any humans at all. We are already sliding toward a world where capital survives with minimal human labor or consumers. In that world, most of us become irrelevant to the economy. The elite will justify it as inevitable, perhaps even call it efficiency. But make no mistake: it’s the outcome of choices – of letting this happen.
None of this is preordained by technology or fate – it’s simply the trajectory we’ve allowed. But as long as those benefiting most see no reason to change course, this trajectory remains the default. The system will continue to accumulate for the few and discard the many, learning to live without the very people it was meant to serve. And it won’t shed a tear as it does so.