by, Renee Wood

Preface: A Capitalist Looks Ahead

Let me preface this blog by saying I am a capitalist. I have always believed in the idea of supply and demand, and that businesses should be owned by private entities with limited government control. When I say limited government control, I am referring to the market rather than protecting the public from environmental hazards, ensuring equal access for everyone, or protecting against any other kind of harm to the public. Those things do need some kind of government regulation, whether state or federal.

I’ve always believed making money and spending it on the things an individual wants is the best motivator in a country’s progress. However, there are always going to be the elderly, severely disabled, and those who are truly down on their luck. Any civilized nation has to accommodate them — unless they want to start throwing people off bridges to pretend they don’t exist.

And although we are not literally doing that, some recent political rhetoric comes disturbingly close. When a president suggests that people with mental illness should be removed from the streets and placed into institutions without due process, or when federal guidance is rolled back in ways that weaken the right of people with disabilities to live in the community, it raises real concerns. Disability rights organizations have argued that these policies undermine the hard‑won protections that allow disabled people to live outside institutions. It may not be a bridge, but it is a shove — and it is happening through policy instead of physical force.

The Coming Shift: AI and the End of Employment as We Know It

Now we are entering a new era. AI is expected to replace many jobs — not just repetitive ones, but administrative work, logistics, customer service, data analysis, and more. We have built our entire understanding of survival around working hard to meet our needs and then working harder to get what we want.

But what happens when work is no longer required to keep society functioning? What happens when automation can do most of it?

Why Democracy Still Matters

First you must envision what our society would look like when employment is not necessary to make society function. Automatic pickup of garbage would replace sanitation workers. Most primary care could be done by AI. There will always be a need for hands‑on medical care, but keeping track of a person’s overall health could be more effectively done by AI. Programming, data analysis, logistics, and even McDonald’s orders will all be done by AI. That is just the tip of the iceberg, so work to keep society functioning will not be necessary anymore. That will free many people up to do other things with their time. Employment will no longer be the value of who a person is. People will have to discover what their true value or purpose is in life.

Imagining a Post‑Work Society

So what are the economic systems that could possibly keep the average person’s freedom and power, yet take care of everyone’s needs since working will not be necessary?

Not to worry — we have people who have been doing this for years, such as people with disabilities and the retired elderly, who can be mentors on this road.

Four Possible Economic Systems for an AI‑Driven Future

I’ve briefly studied four different systems that might be possible. I will list them in the order of what I think might work best in the United States, but go over each separately:

– capitalism with UBI (Universal Basic Income) 

– social democracy 

– democratic socialism

– a reimagined communism that is not authoritarian (and not atheist) 

Capitalism with UB

I first remember hearing the term Universal Basic Income from Andrew Yang, who was a presidential candidate in the 2020 election. I remember thinking, “Wow, what a great equalizer!” No more going down and proving disability to get a check. Everyone gets the same basic income. If you want more than that, you can go out and get a job and still keep that basic income. It would literally save billions in government services. Will it cost more than that to give everyone a basic income? I don’t know. But the red tape it would save — the yearly administration costs for all the safety‑net programs — would be huge. At the time I just thought it was a good idea. Now I think it will be necessary with AI’s ability to effectively do many jobs.

In this system, businesses would still be privately owned and operated. Since AI is not a person, there is no need to pay income for its work. The income generated from AI could be distributed to the people. There is a pitfall, though: if AI‑driven employment is under private ownership, wealth might be centralized to only a few people in the AI industry. This would not be good. However, capitalism with a universal basic income would probably fit best in our current economic system when human work is not necessary for the functioning of society.

Social Democracy

Another economic system that could work in a society with heavy automation, therefore less reliance on employment, is a social democracy. This relies on strong safety nets, universal healthcare, free education, high taxes on automation‑driven profits, and government investment in public goods.

It’s hard for Americans to imagine a society not reliant on workers, and workers not reliant on income for their basic subsistence. But what do we do when that becomes a reality? Do we create pretend employment, as we do now in sheltered workshops for the disabled, where they pretend to work for a pretend paycheck because we’ve learned that employment is a necessity? The definition of work is the output of energy — and that is a necessary part of life, but not necessarily employment. That is only one way to expend energy. I think people could find a more productive way to spend their time than pretending to be employed when employment is not necessary for the functioning of society. What do we do in a society where there is no work? The jobs are mostly filled with robots, AI, and automation. We have to think of a society that maintains people’s needs without the ability to generate income from employment.

There are some benefits to a social democracy, though. It reduces inequality and maintains our democratic freedoms.

Democratic Socialism

Another economic system we hear a lot about in current local elections is democratic socialism — these candidates call themselves Democratic Socialists. This is a middle ground between socialism and communism. Although these candidates are winning some of their elections, it would be very hard to implement this type of economic system in the United States. This would shift major industries to public ownership (I’d like to see how the government takes public ownership from a private business without a real fight). Private businesses would still exist but would be limited. It prevents private industry from owning all AI wealth (not necessarily a bad thing, but then who gets the wealth? The government? That’s not going to go over well). Supposedly this would prevent inequality — but where humans exist, there will always be inequality.

A Reimagined Communism (Not Authoritarian, Not Atheist)

The final economic system that could support most people in society who do not work because there is not much work is communism. Now, when I speak of communism, I’m speaking of a theoretical communism rather than a historical view of communism.

What started me thinking about this whole economic thing is President Trump’s comment about all communism being atheistic. That is just factually not true. Although Karl Marx did say the implementation of communism would make the need for religion fade away, he did not require atheism to be included in a communist economic system.

Historically, communism has had authoritarian leadership, but that is not required either. The authoritarian leadership led to suppressed freedoms and poor economic outcomes. Remember, that was under authoritarian regimes rather than democratic ones. In theory, communism as an economic system requires: needs are met without wages, everyone contributes what they can, AI production is shared collectively, and no private ownership of major resources. The latter might be a real sticking point for the U.S.

I think communism is more for smaller communities where everyone knows one another and trusts one another. I think it would be hard, even under a democratic political system, to implement an economic system of communism. It sounds very fair in theory, but people would have to be honest and kind to make it work. I don’t know if that can be the reality in a world as big as the U.S.

The Human Question: What Will We Do With Our Time?

The bigger issue I see with an AI‑driven society is what people will do with their time when they have more of it. “Idle hands lead to the devil’s work,” my grandma used to say. There is some truth to that. In the disability community, where people either can’t work or are discriminated out of the workforce, you see a higher presence of alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental health issues. We also saw this during COVID when many in the general public were not working for extended periods of time.

Conclusion: The Future We Build Will Be the One We Choose

I do not have the correct answer for what economic system will fit best in the U.S. when AI and automation make it unnecessary to be employed. What will we do with our time? How will we find purpose and meaning in our lives? How will we fill basic needs such as housing, utilities, food security, healthcare, etc., when there is not enough work for every working‑age American? These are the questions I want you to think about.

As AI reshapes the world around us, we’re being pushed into a future that doesn’t look like anything we’ve lived through before. Maybe the real challenge isn’t choosing the perfect economic system, but accepting that the systems we’ve relied on for generations were built for a world where human labor was the engine of everything. That world is disappearing. The question now is whether we can build something new — something that protects democracy, guarantees basic needs, and still honors human dignity when work is no longer the measure of a person’s worth. We may not have the answers yet, but we do have the responsibility to start imagining them. Because if we don’t, someone else will, and the future they design may not be one we want to live in.