What happens to stocks, investing and generally capitalism when automation and robots do everything?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you guys don’t read enough, but we are getting very close to having robots grow and manage our crops, take over trades, medical procedures and even 1st year legal associate jobs are in danger of being automated out.

I can’t help but imagine a large segment of an unemployed population growing disillusioned with capitalism itself. They vote. And if they vote for UBI and in their natural self interest it just feels like capitalism will suffer and some new form of society will form.

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question. We are rapidly getting to the point of mass layoffs for white collar and even some blue collar jobs soon. Plus AI doing a lot of coding and all other types of sht. You people need to read more about what’s coming.

1. Crops- you do know that crop management is almost entirely automated for a lot of it now? Only takes a single farmer to drive a combine harvester.

2. Trades- again, a lot of it is already automated at a certain level, especially the way big firms have things managed. The difference is that they have control of the algorithm. If you think a firm is going to give control to a system they don't control, good luck with that.

3. Medical procedures- I doubt people will be interested in having robots do this work, and if you can't get patient consent, what do you have?

4. First year associate jobs- okay, yes basic work can be automated, but you are still going to need an expert to review the work- judges don't tend to like hallucinated case cites.

5. Coding- not my area, but I have heard that companies which have actually used AI coding have ended up spending so much time debugging it that they are rapidly reconsidering.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/new-findings-ai-coding-overhyped

There is a cost side to all this, you know? I just think you are getting way ahead of where it will actually end up.

I don't know why you think this. Also, there are now many healthcare deserts in the US and Canada and other countries...if your option is to have the robot operate or 100% die...you will take your chances.

Personally, I am generally fine with a robot performing my surgery considering all the horror stories I hear from my Doctor relatives about human error. There will likely be one Medical professional in the operating room overseeing in some capacity.

The medical deserts are because there aren't enough people in those rural areas with enough income. That won't change with robots (who can't load a dishwasher as of right now).

+1 - And to be clear, the robots aren't ANYWHERE close to being able to perform medical procedures independently. I guess the best you could hope for in the near future is an actual surgeon controlling the robot remotely and even that has a million caveats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question.

Didn't respond to this part earlier. Amazing as always how it all comes back to people just wanting more money. Since 2000, the S&P500 has grown 612%, or 8% a year. That's pretty good! But OP wants MORE MORE MORE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You ever wonder what logically could happen to the entire concept of capitalism? As I save money and buy tech stocks and so forth I am like “will this be worth it in 20 years given ai, robots and automation”? I mean think about how we’ve got “agentic assistants” at Saleforce causing white collar job losses, LLM progress every day, so much ai, and companies are now starting to release robots that can lay bricks and do laundry. What happens to human jobs?

In turn, what happens to the concept of owning stocks or investing? How does the advent of humans being second class to more qualified robots work and will companies values still grow? How will people be able to afford stocks if they have no jobs?

I asked this of Grok and this was the response:

Here’s a clear-eyed, non-utopian take on where this is probably heading over the next 10–30 years.

1. Most current white-collar and many blue-collar jobs disappear or shrink dramatically
• Agentic AI (like Salesforce’s Agentforce, Adept, Anthropic’s computer-use models, etc.) is already automating large chunks of knowledge work: support tickets, basic legal research, accounting reconciliation, software development, radiology reads, etc.
• Physical robots are crossing the cost-effectiveness threshold fast. Boston Dynamics/Figure/Hyundai, Tesla Optimus, 1X, Agility, Unitree, etc. are all targeting $20–40k price points within 3–8 years with 5–10× human speed on repetitive tasks. Bricklaying (Construction Robotics, Monumental), folding laundry (FoldiMate-style + dexterous hands), elder care, warehouse work, fast-food cooking, trucking (after regulatory approval) — most of these go to zero marginal labor cost once the hardware is paid off.
Result: 40–70 % of current jobs (depending on whose study you like: Goldman 2025 says 300 million globally, Oxford 2013 said 47 % in the US, McKinsey keeps revising upward) become either fully automated or “human-in-the-loop for exceptions” that supports 1 human overseeing 20–100 robot equivalents.
2. Company profits explode, stock markets keep going up (for a while)
• Labor is 50–70 % of costs in most industries. Replacing it with capital that costs 5–10 % of wages per year causes operating margins to balloon from 10–20 % to 60–90 % in many sectors.
• We’ve already seen this preview in software: Microsoft/GitHub Copilot turns one senior dev into 3–5× output → margins go from 35 % to 45 %+. Physical world version will be bigger.
• So yes, the S&P 500, Nvidia, TSMC, Tesla, the robot companies, the energy companies feeding the data centers, the copper/uranium/lithium miners — all keep compounding at absurd rates for another decade or two. The people who own capital capture almost everything.
3. The “how do unemployed people buy stocks?” problem
This is the core contradiction. You have three main historical ways societies have solved “not enough jobs”:
a) Massive political redistribution (UBI, sovereign wealth funds, “robot tax,” negative income tax, state ownership of the robots, etc.)
b) Massive make-work / service-sector bloat (the 20th-century solution: everyone becomes a therapist, diversity officer, yoga instructor, OnlyFans creator, etc.)
c) Social unrest / collapse / authoritarianism (the bad one)
We’ll probably get a mix of (a) and (b) with some places flirting with (c).
Current realistic paths people talk about:
• Alaska-style permanent fund but national/global: every citizen owns one “share” of the nation’s robot/AI capital, paid as a dividend (Yang’s “Freedom Dividend,” Sam Altman’s Worldcoin idea in richer form, etc.).
• Very high wealth / capital-gains / corporate taxes that fund UBI (the Nordic model on steroids).
• Government becomes the employer of last resort in “human” jobs (care, arts, local services) that are deliberately kept human and subsidized.
• Ownership democratizes: 401(k)s, sovereign funds, and retail brokerage keep growing; people live off a mix of UBI + modest investment returns.
4. Who actually owns the stocks in 2040–2050?
Top 1 % already own ~54 % of U.S. stock market wealth (Fed data 2024). That number will probably climb to 70–80 % unless policy intervenes hard. The bottom 50 % own <1 % today. Without redistribution, the median person will have almost no stock exposure and live entirely on whatever transfer system exists.
So the realistic outcomes are:
Best case (20–30 % probability): coordinated policy response → citizen endowments or UBI funded by 30–50 % tax on capital returns → most people live modestly comfortable lives with a lot of free time, own some index funds through auto-enrollment, and the economy keeps growing.
Middle case (50 % probability): patchwork UBI + continued financialization → top 10 % own almost everything, bottom 60–70 % live on $20–40k/year equivalent transfers, gig work, and family money. Markets still go up, but politics gets ugly.
Worst case (20–30 % probability): policy gridlock + inequality → markets still go up for owners, but mass unemployment + resentment → authoritarian backlash, capital controls, nationalizations, or worse.
Bottom line for you right now
If you’re accumulating tech stocks, robot companies, energy, and broad indexes over the next 10–15 years, you’re betting on the “profits explode” part, which looks extremely likely. The political response is the wildcard, but even in fairly aggressive taxation scenarios (say 50 % capital-gains + wealth tax), the pre-tax returns will be so high that post-tax returns still beat almost every historical asset class.
So yes — keep saving and buying, but be mentally prepared that “owning the robots” might eventually become partially socialized. The next decade or two of compounding still looks phenomenal for anyone who has capital today.

Change with AI will be real and certain jobs will require less people but new jobs will be created. None of what you suggest is really likely though. The changes will be big but managable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you guys don’t read enough, but we are getting very close to having robots grow and manage our crops, take over trades, medical procedures and even 1st year legal associate jobs are in danger of being automated out.

I can’t help but imagine a large segment of an unemployed population growing disillusioned with capitalism itself. They vote. And if they vote for UBI and in their natural self interest it just feels like capitalism will suffer and some new form of society will form.

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question. We are rapidly getting to the point of mass layoffs for white collar and even some blue collar jobs soon. Plus AI doing a lot of coding and all other types of sht. You people need to read more about what’s coming.

None of those things are likely. At least not the way you present them. Let's look at first year associates. You will still need them. But maybe not as many. AI will not run things. Someone has to run the AI. So a 50% cut in biglaw first year associates is probable over the next 40 years. Not a radical change.

As for layoffs now because of AI ----- no there are none. AI is not there yet. Companies may blame it on AI but that is BS.

[Anonymous]

Watch Terminator, Terminator-2.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you guys don’t read enough, but we are getting very close to having robots grow and manage our crops, take over trades, medical procedures and even 1st year legal associate jobs are in danger of being automated out.

I can’t help but imagine a large segment of an unemployed population growing disillusioned with capitalism itself. They vote. And if they vote for UBI and in their natural self interest it just feels like capitalism will suffer and some new form of society will form.

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question. We are rapidly getting to the point of mass layoffs for white collar and even some blue collar jobs soon. Plus AI doing a lot of coding and all other types of sht. You people need to read more about what’s coming.

You should learn more about farming. The use of automation in agriculture is fascinating (and widespread for years now) but changes are dependent on robotic ability not AI. If we could make a robot delicate enough to pick produce that's currently being picked by hand, or prune grape vines that have to be pruned by experts, we'd be using it. Planting and fertilizer schedules are already handled in software, watering already automated woth soil sensors.

By biggest peeve about the AI fan boys is they never do any research about the sectors they think AI will upend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question.

Didn't respond to this part earlier. Amazing as always how it all comes back to people just wanting more money. Since 2000, the S&P500 has grown 612%, or 8% a year. That's pretty good! But OP wants MORE MORE MORE.

Tenet of capitalism: to drive the profit motive and the accumulation of capital.

According to Adam Smith, a self-interest is the driver of the economy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you guys don’t read enough, but we are getting very close to having robots grow and manage our crops, take over trades, medical procedures and even 1st year legal associate jobs are in danger of being automated out.

I can’t help but imagine a large segment of an unemployed population growing disillusioned with capitalism itself. They vote. And if they vote for UBI and in their natural self interest it just feels like capitalism will suffer and some new form of society will form.

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question. We are rapidly getting to the point of mass layoffs for white collar and even some blue collar jobs soon. Plus AI doing a lot of coding and all other types of sht. You people need to read more about what’s coming.

1. Crops- you do know that crop management is almost entirely automated for a lot of it now? Only takes a single farmer to drive a combine harvester.

2. Trades- again, a lot of it is already automated at a certain level, especially the way big firms have things managed. The difference is that they have control of the algorithm. If you think a firm is going to give control to a system they don't control, good luck with that.

3. Medical procedures- I doubt people will be interested in having robots do this work, and if you can't get patient consent, what do you have?

4. First year associate jobs- okay, yes basic work can be automated, but you are still going to need an expert to review the work- judges don't tend to like hallucinated case cites.

5. Coding- not my area, but I have heard that companies which have actually used AI coding have ended up spending so much time debugging it that they are rapidly reconsidering.

https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/new-findings-ai-coding-overhyped

There is a cost side to all this, you know? I just think you are getting way ahead of where it will actually end up.

I don't know why you think this. Also, there are now many healthcare deserts in the US and Canada and other countries...if your option is to have the robot operate or 100% die...you will take your chances.

Personally, I am generally fine with a robot performing my surgery considering all the horror stories I hear from my Doctor relatives about human error. There will likely be one Medical professional in the operating room overseeing in some capacity.

The medical deserts are because there aren't enough people in those rural areas with enough income. That won't change with robots (who can't load a dishwasher as of right now).

+1 - And to be clear, the robots aren't ANYWHERE close to being able to perform medical procedures independently. I guess the best you could hope for in the near future is an actual surgeon controlling the robot remotely and even that has a million caveats.

We get that...although human-guided robots are in use today. There was just an article about a doctor performing a surgery in another country controlling a robot.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/exclusive-groundbreaking-remote-robotic-surgery-patient-africa-doctor/story?id=122946197

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question.

Didn't respond to this part earlier. Amazing as always how it all comes back to people just wanting more money. Since 2000, the S&P500 has grown 612%, or 8% a year. That's pretty good! But OP wants MORE MORE MORE.

You’re on the financial thread, bud. If you’re looking for the bleeding heart, altruist, martyr olympics, communist forum you’ve come to the wrong place.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, is anyone else worried their saving and scrimping each month with automatic contributions to 401ks and so forth could be all for naught if capitalism as an entire model falls because work as a primary need evaporates?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You ever wonder what logically could happen to the entire concept of capitalism? As I save money and buy tech stocks and so forth I am like “will this be worth it in 20 years given ai, robots and automation”? I mean think about how we’ve got “agentic assistants” at Saleforce causing white collar job losses, LLM progress every day, so much ai, and companies are now starting to release robots that can lay bricks and do laundry. What happens to human jobs?

In turn, what happens to the concept of owning stocks or investing? How does the advent of humans being second class to more qualified robots work and will companies values still grow? How will people be able to afford stocks if they have no jobs?

I asked this of Grok and this was the response:

Here’s a clear-eyed, non-utopian take on where this is probably heading over the next 10–30 years.

1. Most current white-collar and many blue-collar jobs disappear or shrink dramatically
• Agentic AI (like Salesforce’s Agentforce, Adept, Anthropic’s computer-use models, etc.) is already automating large chunks of knowledge work: support tickets, basic legal research, accounting reconciliation, software development, radiology reads, etc.
• Physical robots are crossing the cost-effectiveness threshold fast. Boston Dynamics/Figure/Hyundai, Tesla Optimus, 1X, Agility, Unitree, etc. are all targeting $20–40k price points within 3–8 years with 5–10× human speed on repetitive tasks. Bricklaying (Construction Robotics, Monumental), folding laundry (FoldiMate-style + dexterous hands), elder care, warehouse work, fast-food cooking, trucking (after regulatory approval) — most of these go to zero marginal labor cost once the hardware is paid off.
Result: 40–70 % of current jobs (depending on whose study you like: Goldman 2025 says 300 million globally, Oxford 2013 said 47 % in the US, McKinsey keeps revising upward) become either fully automated or “human-in-the-loop for exceptions” that supports 1 human overseeing 20–100 robot equivalents.
2. Company profits explode, stock markets keep going up (for a while)
• Labor is 50–70 % of costs in most industries. Replacing it with capital that costs 5–10 % of wages per year causes operating margins to balloon from 10–20 % to 60–90 % in many sectors.
• We’ve already seen this preview in software: Microsoft/GitHub Copilot turns one senior dev into 3–5× output → margins go from 35 % to 45 %+. Physical world version will be bigger.
• So yes, the S&P 500, Nvidia, TSMC, Tesla, the robot companies, the energy companies feeding the data centers, the copper/uranium/lithium miners — all keep compounding at absurd rates for another decade or two. The people who own capital capture almost everything.
3. The “how do unemployed people buy stocks?” problem
This is the core contradiction. You have three main historical ways societies have solved “not enough jobs”:
a) Massive political redistribution (UBI, sovereign wealth funds, “robot tax,” negative income tax, state ownership of the robots, etc.)
b) Massive make-work / service-sector bloat (the 20th-century solution: everyone becomes a therapist, diversity officer, yoga instructor, OnlyFans creator, etc.)
c) Social unrest / collapse / authoritarianism (the bad one)
We’ll probably get a mix of (a) and (b) with some places flirting with (c).
Current realistic paths people talk about:
• Alaska-style permanent fund but national/global: every citizen owns one “share” of the nation’s robot/AI capital, paid as a dividend (Yang’s “Freedom Dividend,” Sam Altman’s Worldcoin idea in richer form, etc.).
• Very high wealth / capital-gains / corporate taxes that fund UBI (the Nordic model on steroids).
• Government becomes the employer of last resort in “human” jobs (care, arts, local services) that are deliberately kept human and subsidized.
• Ownership democratizes: 401(k)s, sovereign funds, and retail brokerage keep growing; people live off a mix of UBI + modest investment returns.
4. Who actually owns the stocks in 2040–2050?
Top 1 % already own ~54 % of U.S. stock market wealth (Fed data 2024). That number will probably climb to 70–80 % unless policy intervenes hard. The bottom 50 % own <1 % today. Without redistribution, the median person will have almost no stock exposure and live entirely on whatever transfer system exists.
So the realistic outcomes are:
Best case (20–30 % probability): coordinated policy response → citizen endowments or UBI funded by 30–50 % tax on capital returns → most people live modestly comfortable lives with a lot of free time, own some index funds through auto-enrollment, and the economy keeps growing.
Middle case (50 % probability): patchwork UBI + continued financialization → top 10 % own almost everything, bottom 60–70 % live on $20–40k/year equivalent transfers, gig work, and family money. Markets still go up, but politics gets ugly.
Worst case (20–30 % probability): policy gridlock + inequality → markets still go up for owners, but mass unemployment + resentment → authoritarian backlash, capital controls, nationalizations, or worse.
Bottom line for you right now
If you’re accumulating tech stocks, robot companies, energy, and broad indexes over the next 10–15 years, you’re betting on the “profits explode” part, which looks extremely likely. The political response is the wildcard, but even in fairly aggressive taxation scenarios (say 50 % capital-gains + wealth tax), the pre-tax returns will be so high that post-tax returns still beat almost every historical asset class.
So yes — keep saving and buying, but be mentally prepared that “owning the robots” might eventually become partially socialized. The next decade or two of compounding still looks phenomenal for anyone who has capital today.

Change with AI will be real and certain jobs will require less people but new jobs will be created. None of what you suggest is really likely though. The changes will be big but managable.

“New jobs will be created”. That’s your take? That’s heavy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you guys don’t read enough, but we are getting very close to having robots grow and manage our crops, take over trades, medical procedures and even 1st year legal associate jobs are in danger of being automated out.

I can’t help but imagine a large segment of an unemployed population growing disillusioned with capitalism itself. They vote. And if they vote for UBI and in their natural self interest it just feels like capitalism will suffer and some new form of society will form.

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question. We are rapidly getting to the point of mass layoffs for white collar and even some blue collar jobs soon. Plus AI doing a lot of coding and all other types of sht. You people need to read more about what’s coming.

You should learn more about farming. The use of automation in agriculture is fascinating (and widespread for years now) but changes are dependent on robotic ability not AI. If we could make a robot delicate enough to pick produce that's currently being picked by hand, or prune grape vines that have to be pruned by experts, we'd be using it. Planting and fertilizer schedules are already handled in software, watering already automated woth soil sensors.

By biggest peeve about the AI fan boys is they never do any research about the sectors they think AI will upend.

Ummmm yeah that’s why I mentioned it. Robot farming and robots using sht like laser eradication of weeds and so forth is on the horizon. So many people on here have no clue how on the cusp we are of seismic change related to what tasks robots can perform.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question.

Didn't respond to this part earlier. Amazing as always how it all comes back to people just wanting more money. Since 2000, the S&P500 has grown 612%, or 8% a year. That's pretty good! But OP wants MORE MORE MORE.

You’re on the financial thread, bud. If you’re looking for the bleeding heart, altruist, martyr olympics, communist forum you’ve come to the wrong place.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, is anyone else worried their saving and scrimping each month with automatic contributions to 401ks and so forth could be all for naught if capitalism as an entire model falls because work as a primary need evaporates?

If you look back through history, whenever new technology comes out, people say stuff like this. Or say "we will only need to work 4 hours a day in the future" because of clothes washers, etc. I'll take the null hypothesis of "as a whole, things don't really change in this manner".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you guys don’t read enough, but we are getting very close to having robots grow and manage our crops, take over trades, medical procedures and even 1st year legal associate jobs are in danger of being automated out.

I can’t help but imagine a large segment of an unemployed population growing disillusioned with capitalism itself. They vote. And if they vote for UBI and in their natural self interest it just feels like capitalism will suffer and some new form of society will form.

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question. We are rapidly getting to the point of mass layoffs for white collar and even some blue collar jobs soon. Plus AI doing a lot of coding and all other types of sht. You people need to read more about what’s coming.

You should learn more about farming. The use of automation in agriculture is fascinating (and widespread for years now) but changes are dependent on robotic ability not AI. If we could make a robot delicate enough to pick produce that's currently being picked by hand, or prune grape vines that have to be pruned by experts, we'd be using it. Planting and fertilizer schedules are already handled in software, watering already automated woth soil sensors.

By biggest peeve about the AI fan boys is they never do any research about the sectors they think AI will upend.

Ummmm yeah that’s why I mentioned it. Robot farming and robots using sht like laser eradication of weeds and so forth is on the horizon. So many people on here have no clue how on the cusp we are of seismic change related to what tasks robots can perform.

Do you think weeds are being pulled by hand now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you guys don’t read enough, but we are getting very close to having robots grow and manage our crops, take over trades, medical procedures and even 1st year legal associate jobs are in danger of being automated out.

I can’t help but imagine a large segment of an unemployed population growing disillusioned with capitalism itself. They vote. And if they vote for UBI and in their natural self interest it just feels like capitalism will suffer and some new form of society will form.

Basically is my VTSAX going to be worth 1000% more in 2050 is my question. We are rapidly getting to the point of mass layoffs for white collar and even some blue collar jobs soon. Plus AI doing a lot of coding and all other types of sht. You people need to read more about what’s coming.

You should learn more about farming. The use of automation in agriculture is fascinating (and widespread for years now) but changes are dependent on robotic ability not AI. If we could make a robot delicate enough to pick produce that's currently being picked by hand, or prune grape vines that have to be pruned by experts, we'd be using it. Planting and fertilizer schedules are already handled in software, watering already automated woth soil sensors.

By biggest peeve about the AI fan boys is they never do any research about the sectors they think AI will upend.

Ummmm yeah that’s why I mentioned it. Robot farming and robots using sht like laser eradication of weeds and so forth is on the horizon. So many people on here have no clue how on the cusp we are of seismic change related to what tasks robots can perform.

Do you think weeds are being pulled by hand now?

Willfully obtuse is a bad look.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, if you really understood what Grok is and how it works, you would understand that it was basically confirming your own bias for you and telling you what you want to hear. You could have easily nudged it to explain the opposite.