the end of artificial employment by Roman Kirif.
The real scandal of our time is not that artificial intelligence
is replacing human labor.
The scandal is that so much of that labor
was misallocated to begin with.
AI is not the killer.
For decades, vast portions of the workforce
have been diverted away from productive enterprise
into roles sustained not by consumer demand,
but by the state, subsidized credit, regulatory protection,
government contracts, and legal coercion.
Entire departments and job functions
endured not because they created value,
but because they were politically entrenched
and institutionally shielded from market forces.
This was never sustainable.
In a free market, every expense must be justified
by service to the consumer.
But under interventionist rule, firms
become bureaucratic shells, propped up by privilege.
Jobs no longer exist to produce,
but to manage compliance, simulate productivity,
perform DEI rituals, and coordinate
ever-expanding layers of meaningless supervision.
What we're witnessing today is not a disruption caused by AI.
It is the terminal stage of the state's order.
AI merely hastened the reckoning.
It exposed the absurdity of arrangements
that should never have existed.
They are not being replaced by machines.
They are being destroyed by truth.
Yet the deeper tragedy is not the liquidation
It is that no real jobs are allowed to replace them.
The economy is no longer permitted to reallocate labor.
The state has rendered economic correction illegal.
In starting a small business, regulation
and taxes often strangle you before your first invoice.
You cannot grow organically, compliance costs
and reporting burdens scale faster than your revenues.
You cannot hire freely.
Labor laws and credentialing barriers
exclude the most productive and most willing.
You cannot even work informally.
Licenses, audits, and fines ensure
that peaceful production outside state channels is criminalized.
Meanwhile, the few mega-corporation still standing,
capable of navigating the legal labyrinth,
are bloated beyond reason, hemorrhaging staff.
They never needed, but were afraid to cut.
These firms are so deeply entwined with the state
that they cannot function without its support,
yet are simultaneously being suffocated by its mandates.
The very system that once protected them
is now destroying them.
This is not capitalism and crisis.
This is capitalism denied.
The result is an economy that cannot grow or correct, only decay.
The illusion of productivity has collapsed.
The scaffolding that sustained it is crumbling,
rather than loosen its grip, the state tightens it.
This is no temporary downturn or a technological disruption.
It is the end game of interventionism,
a regime collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions.
It is state capitalism devouring itself.
For more content like this, visit mises.org.
