Corporations are hive-minded collectivist women. Same psychopathology, same resource extraction, same need for third-party validation. If you're alone, you're damaged goods. If you're taken, they'll fight for you.
Fifteen years ago the dance was slower, more human. Now juniors with shitcorp résumés and AI-generated code they can't debug are funneled into a future that doesn't need them. In three to five years the muscle atrophies completely. Problem-solving becomes a parlor trick for the nostalgics.
Governments will pivot to conditional basic income: be a good boy, get your stipend. The rest move to the country, raise chickens, pray the robots don't unionize. Your net worth freezes the day the last human-doable job dies. Zero savings? Government pod. House? Slightly larger pod. Land, house, boat? You're the new aristocracy—until the boat needs parts only drones can print.
Value collapses to biology. Good genes, youth, symmetry, cage-fight stamina, billionaire bait. Intelligence and strength are commodities; prettiness is scarce. Eugenics propaganda gets a software update: abort, enjoy, hate men, castrate the kids. AI will A/B test slogans until birth rates flatline.
Eventually the ledger balances. Self-euthanasia at sixty nets your family five years of bonus income. Fifty gets ten. It's marketed as mercy—no wars, no famine, just a quiet exit and a lump-sum condolence.
The American Dream of 1950 isn't coming back. And the robots won't stop at the border.