Gods of the Algorithm: Building Trillion-Dollar Empires on Starving Humans

 

Gods of the Algorithm: Building Trillion-Dollar Empires on Starving Humans

https://rakeshinsightfulgaze.blogspot.com/2025/07/blog-post_30.html

Once, economies were built by people for people. You made something, traded it, and earned something back. Whether it was grain, cloth, metal, or meat, your value was visible. The barter system may have been basic, but at least it didn’t erase the human being from the equation.

Now we’re building an economy that celebrates the removal of people entirely.

Artificial intelligence has been branded as the next leap in human progress, a thinking, optimizing, self-training machine that can outperform humans in almost everything. We’re told it will “free us,” “enhance productivity,” and “unlock potential.” What it’s actually doing is replacing us, while funneling the spoils into the hands of a tiny elite.

Take India, hailed as the world’s fastest-growing major economy, aiming for a $5 trillion GDP milestone. On paper, it’s a superpower in the making. In reality, it’s a nation with the highest number of unemployed people in its history. As of mid-2025, unemployment is officially around 5.6%, but that’s a fantasy. Over 70% of economists say the real number is likely to double, maybe triple. Youth unemployment is catastrophic: over 83% of jobless Indians are between 15–29. Millions of educated young people have degrees and nothing to do with them. Another 100 million, mostly women, have stopped even looking for work.

And India’s not alone. This isn’t an isolated failure. It’s a global trend that the system is producing more degrees than jobs, more data than dignity, more automation than opportunity. The same tech giants that promise empowerment are replacing humans with algorithms at every turn. They celebrate efficiency, but the cost is livelihoods.

We are watching the middle class get hollowed out in real time in India, in the U.S., across Europe, and in Africa. Everywhere. AI is killing jobs faster than policy can react. In developing nations, where millions still depend on manual labor and informal work, automation isn’t just disruptive, it’s catastrophic. In advanced economies, it’s pushing workers into permanent gig status: flexible, precarious, disposable.

And the kicker? This isn’t just an economic suicide mission; it’s a paradox. Because you can’t run an economy without consumers. People without jobs don’t spend. And if AI replaces the producers and the buyers, who exactly are we building this productivity paradise for? You can’t sell goods in a marketplace full of ghosts.

We are told to “reskill,” “adapt,” and “pivot.” But to what? Compete with neural networks trained on the entire internet? Enter a job market that values outputs per second over meaning? The game is rigged. AI doesn’t just replace tasks, it devalues human participation.

Meanwhile, the top 1% keep winning. In India, they now hold over 40% of the wealth. In the U.S., it's more than 35%. A few trillionaires race to automate the entire supply chain while the majority of the population struggles to pay rent. We’re not creating opportunity, we’re concentrating power. These aren’t CEOs anymore. They’re digital pharaohs, ruling over algorithmic empires, untouchable by policy, immune to protest.

This isn’t innovation. It’s mass erasure. A society where art, writing, coding, and labor are all offloaded to machines isn’t a society, it’s a simulation, run for the benefit of a financial elite while billions are told to “stay competitive.”

AI should have been a tool to ease suffering, reduce labor, and expand creativity. But in the hands of the profit-obsessed, it has become a scalpel used to carve out the human soul of the economy. If we let this continue unchecked, we’re not headed for a digital utopia, we’re accelerating toward collapse. Because no civilization survives when it renders its people obsolete.

So go ahead, build trillion-dollar AI companies. Celebrate your growth metrics, your optimization, your generative breakthroughs. Just remember: if no one can earn, no one can spend. If no one can participate, no one will care. And if humanity becomes economically irrelevant, there won’t be a future left to automate.

 Note: Share this with your Congressman, Senator, or any policymaker shaping your future.