The common fear of AI eliminating jobs is misguided. In practice, AI automates specific, often administrative, tasks within a role. This allows human workers to offload minutiae and focus on uniquely human skills like relationship building and strategic thinking, ultimately increasing their leverage and value.

Agentic commerce isn't just a substitute for existing online shopping. It can unlock new spending from high-income individuals whose primary barrier to consumption is time, not money. By automating purchasing, agents reduce this "time cost of consumption," potentially adding new, incremental dollars to the economy.

AI makes tasks cheaper and faster. This increased efficiency doesn't reduce the need for workers; instead, it increases the demand for their work, as companies can now afford to do more of it. This creates a positive feedback loop that may lead to more hiring, not less.

During major platform shifts like AI, it's tempting to project that companies will capture all the value they create. However, competitive forces ensure the vast majority of productivity gains (the "surplus") flows to end-users, not the technology creators.

The narrative of AI destroying jobs misses a key point: AI allows companies to 'hire software for a dollar' for tasks that were never economical to assign to humans. This will unlock new services and expand the economy, creating demand in areas that previously didn't exist.

The AI job impact conversation has moved beyond tech. Walmart's CEO expects AI to change every job and plans for flat headcount over the next three years, even while growing the business. This signals a new mainstream corporate playbook focused on productivity over job creation.

Political demands that new technology must benefit the specific workers it replaces are fundamentally flawed. This logic ignores progress. The goal shouldn't be to preserve obsolete jobs but to ensure technology benefits civilization as a whole by creating abundance while managing the difficult labor transition.

Backed by top tech leaders, the startup Mechanize operates on the thesis that fully automating all jobs is a technologically determined and desirable future. Their public goal is to accelerate this 'inevitable' outcome, revealing a deliberate and well-funded movement to replace human labor entirely, not just augment it.

Driven by demands for convenience, contactless culture, and automation, businesses are moving beyond traditional service counters. The rise of vending machines for diverse products like prescriptions, cars, and champagne signifies a broader economic shift toward a self-service "kiosk economy."