These are notes I have taken from forums of those who work in the tech industry and their responses to the rise of tech CEOs entertaining the idea of a permanent underclass.
The permanent underclass is going to be the majority of society that has not adopted or embraced technological innovation, putting them in a position of permanent economic disparity. Those who have escaped the permanent underclass are people who have successfully banked on advancing technology, resulting in a future where the economy is split and those in the ‘overclass’ generate their own income and operate in a market that excludes the underclass. Those who are the most excited to develop it are incredibly young tech CEOS.
Currently the economy has shifted where large parts of its functions are built on more and more people borrowing money to pay for luxury goods, it is being held up by individual debts. Oftentimes business models are relying on selling products below costs to increase consumer loyalty, destroy competition, and increase prices as it has become a consumer’s only option. Normal businesses simply cannot compete, the economy becomes more volatile, and the people who benefit from these kinds of business models are those already wealthy.
To understand their perspective, if working in a megacorporation could give you everything to make you satisfied and comfortable in life, and said job was attainable, why would you not join them?
In the end, there is no guarantee you can sell your labor enough to keep your home from getting paved over for a data center. There will be a point with tech companies that keeping a small group of laborers is not worth the security risk. This creates a labor fallacy, as the workers believe that there is a fixed amount of economically valuable jobs that capital cannot eliminate through automation. All jobs are at risk of automation, and all jobs are at risk of transformation into work that can be deemed as dehumanizing, undignified, or simply unfulfilling. A labor move seems simple on paper, but in practice it is less feasible, a prime example of which are miner towns in the United States where there are laborers with skills that aren’t in demand in the local area, and cannot move because of family placement, a lack of connections, and a lack of money to move.