If AI causes mass unemployment, who buys the products? A classic paradox revisited
Happy-Radish-317 · reddit · 2026-11-04
A Reddit post wrestling with the demand-side paradox of AI-driven mass unemployment: if companies like Walmart automate cashiers, drivers, manufacturing and farming, the displaced workers lose the purchasing power that buys the products — companies would be eliminating their own customer base. Invoking the tragedy of the commons, the author asks whether firms, foreseeing this, might lobby to ban AI instead. A familiar but still central tension in AI-and-jobs debates.
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