Is AI making the elite give up on the system?

They understand better than anyone where unrestrained, extractive corporatism leads. When most people are poor, insecure, or out of work, the system stops producing real wealth. The pyramid breaks once there’s nothing left to extract.

At the top, this is already accepted. The belief isn’t that the system can be fixed. It’s that it will eventually crash.

A small group of technocrats thinks AI is the solution. In their vision, humans don’t matter as consumers anymore. AI agents replace us, buying data and compute from each other, paying in crypto. Money keeps moving, just without people.

Even if that fantasy worked, the result is the same: collapse for most humans.

That’s why many elites have lost faith in the system that made them rich. They’re no longer trying to preserve it. They’re preparing for what comes after.

They seem to believe a real scarcity is coming, not enough food, energy, housing, or medicine. In that world, bunkers aren’t enough. The real strategy is to get as rich as possible and build the power to control people when things fall apart.

If collapse is inevitable, accelerating it can feel rational. Better to crash the system early than lose control over what’s left.

So they invest in crypto while devaluing the dollar. Cut their own taxes while raising costs on the poor through tariffs. Fire government workers, triggering business failures. Cut healthcare and social programs, pushing more people into poverty.

These choices don’t protect the system. They weaken it.

The result is a self-fulfilling collapse, driven not by inevitability, but by elites who no longer believe the system is worth saving.

A managed underclass

What’s more likely than total collapse isn’t the system breaking, but the system hardening.

Full collapse is risky even for governments. It destroys tax bases and control. Unless a state is fully authoritarian, chaos is bad strategy. So instead of letting things fall apart, governments are more likely to freeze the system in place.

That’s where the managed underclass appears.

People are still employed, but powerless. Work exists, but it’s monitored, replaceable, and tightly controlled. Wages keep people functioning, not advancing. Income no longer translates into influence.

AI doesn’t replace people here, but oversees them. Algorithms decide access to work, credit, housing, and services through scores and automated rules. Not force, just management.

The result looks stable: calm streets, working services, an economy that still moves. But it’s brittle. A society that manages people instead of representing them doesn’t adapt. It suppresses pressure instead of releasing it.

Summary

Whether you are a person who works in tech or elsewhere, it’s good to know what the real risks and consequences are. As tech people assume to hop on another ride to profitability, this time only those at the top are going to win and could leave the rest far behind. We have to be aware what it is we are supporting, and if we want it.

It’s important to understand here, that AI itself is not all that bad. But when governments and tech corporations use it in a way that benefits only themself and harms most of us, it’s when we need to act.