Asterisk essay argues post-AI humans will only have relationships left — with a skeptic's marginalia
GrantCuster · x · 2026-11-01
Grant Custer shares an annotated collage of Clara Collier's Asterisk essay "After Work, We'll Have Each Other," on the emerging consensus that once AI does all economically necessary labor, relationships are what's left — economist Alex Imas's "relational sector," where the human touch is the last scarce good.
- Collier argues this is really a return to pre-industrial labor culture, when work itself carried no dignity and identity came from dense social webs — and she fears the relationalists are right.
- Her counterexamples: aristocrats who didn't need to work became clanish, policing group membership; modern labor markets let people earn respect through impersonal skills and contributions, freeing relationships rather than enslaving us to them.
- Custer finds it thought-provoking but possibly one-sided (plans to reread David Graeber) and notes a missing analysis: how much of our lives work now consumes, and how that already hurts relationships.
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