The Coming Reckoning

Opinion written by Garth Case (CEO PLUG Labs)

Something's happening that most people aren't talking about yet, but they will be. We're sleepwalking into an economic transformation that makes the Industrial Revolution look like a warm-up act.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately—partly because I keep meeting founders whose startups are getting crushed by AI tools that didn't exist six months ago, and partly because my own kids will be impacted by this change to our social contract.

Friends kids ask me what they should study in college. What do you tell them when you're not sure which jobs will exist in ten years?

The standard advice was always "learn to code" or "get into STEM." But here's the thing: AI is coming for those jobs first. Not the plumber or the nurse, the junior developer, the financial analyst, the radiologist. The cognitive work we thought was safe? It's not.

I was talking to a friend who runs a small law firm. He used to hire three paralegals every summer. This year he hired one, plus an AI tool that does legal research faster than any human. The math is brutal and obvious.

This isn't just about individual careers getting disrupted. It's about the whole social contract we've built around work. For the past century, the deal was simple: you work, you get paid, you buy stuff, the economy grows, everyone wins. But what happens when the work disappears faster than we can create new kinds of work?

The Uncomfortable Truth About Productivity

Here's what's really unsettling, we're about to see productivity gains unlike anything in human history, but most people won't benefit from them. The gains will flow to whoever owns the AI systems which is to say, to people who are already wealthy.

This has happened before, just more slowly. Real wages have been stagnant for decades while productivity soared. But AI is going to accelerate this trend in ways that could tear society apart.

Even Sam Altman, who's building the tools that might eliminate millions of jobs, thinks we need Universal Basic Income. When the guy profiting most from AI says we need UBI, maybe we should listen.

Why UBI Isn't Crazy

I know, I know. "Free money for everyone" sounds like something a college sophomore would propose after reading too much Marx. But hear me out.

UBI isn't welfare. It's not means-tested bureaucracy or government picking winners and losers. It's simple, everyone gets enough money to live on, no questions asked. Think of it as a dividend from living in a society that's figured out how to create abundance.

The best part? It gives people the power to say no to terrible jobs. Right now, if you're broke, you'll take any work, even if it's degrading or pointless. UBI changes that dynamic completely. Suddenly employers have to make jobs worth doing.

I've seen this play out in small ways. A friend of mine inherited some money, not enough to retire, but enough to be choosy about work. The change in his life was remarkable. He started a business, learned woodworking, spent real time with his kids. He became more himself, not less.

The Work Question

Critics always ask: "Won't people just sit around playing video games?"

Maybe some will. So what? We already have people in pointless jobs who spend half their day on social media. At least with UBI, we're honest about it.

But the evidence from actual UBI experiments suggests something different. When people aren't desperate, they don't become lazy, they become choosy. They go back to school, start businesses, take care of family members, create art etc. The Stockton pilot actually saw employment rates go up.

Think about it: if you didn't have to worry about rent, what would you do with your time? I bet it wouldn't be nothing.

How to Pay for It

The money question is real, but it's not as impossible as it sounds. We're about to see the biggest wealth creation in human history. The question is whether that wealth gets shared or hoarded.

A few ideas that aren't completely insane:

• Tax the robots. If a company replaces ten workers with AI, they should pay something equivalent to the payroll taxes those workers would have generated.

• Treat data like oil. Our personal information trains these AI systems. Maybe we should get paid for that.

• Progressive taxation that actually progresses. If AI makes someone a billionaire, they can afford to fund the social dividend that makes the whole system stable.

This Isn't Just About Money

UBI is really about dignity. It's about uncoupling human worth from economic productivity. Because here's what's coming: a world where most human labor isn't economically necessary.

That could be dystopian, a small class of AI owners ruling over masses of unemployed people. Or it could be liberating, a world where people are free to pursue meaning instead of just survival.

The choice is ours, but we have to make it soon. The AI revolution isn't waiting for us to figure out the social implications.

What Happens Next

I don't think UBI solves everything. We'll still need to completely rethink education, figure out how to regulate AI development, and probably redesign democracy for an age when human labor isn't the basis of the economy.

But UBI gives us time to figure those things out. It's a bridge between the world we're leaving and the world we're entering.

The alternative is what we're seeing now: rising inequality, political instability, and a growing sense that the system is rigged. AI will make all of that worse unless we act.

We're at one of those moments in history when the old rules stop working and new ones haven't been written yet. That's terrifying, but it's also an opportunity.

The question isn't whether AI will change everything…it already is. The question is whether we'll shape that change or let it shape us.