“The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”— Voltaire
It is fascinating how relevant this quote still is today.
Especially now, in the age of AI and robotics.
Some billionaires and technologists seem convinced that artificial intelligence will soon replace most human labor. Robots will build the products. AI will write the code. Autonomous systems will transport the goods. Machines will grow the food. The poor, they imagine, will simply become unnecessary.
But there is one enormous problem with this vision:
The monetary system of today cannot function without humans.
Not just a few humans.
Billions of humans.
Especially poor and middle-class humans.
Because the monetary system is not merely a production system.
It is a human exploitation system.
It requires workers.
Renters.
Borrowers.
Taxpayers.
Consumers.
People competing for jobs.
People needing and using money to survive.
Without that pressure, the system breaks down.
A robot does not need a salary and does not pay for goods or services.
AI does not pay rent.
A machine does not take a mortgage.
A warehouse robot does not dream of buying a larger TV or a luxury SUV.
Machines can produce.
But they do not participate in monetary circulation.
And that changes everything.
The Great Contradiction
Many billionaires now dream of a future where a tiny elite owns the AI systems while the rest of humanity becomes increasingly irrelevant.
But irrelevant to what?
If millions lose their jobs due to automation, who buys the products?
Who pays the rents?
Who services the debt?
Who keeps consumption going?
The current system still only recognizes human beings as “capital.”
Not machines. Machines can do the work but not pay for the goods.
And that means the system quietly depends upon vast numbers of ordinary people remaining economically dependent.
The monetary system and advanced AI doing most or all productive labor simply cannot coexist long-term.
Voltaire understood this centuries ago. The rich needs the poor.
Extreme wealth only exists relative to inequality. There must be a big supply of poor and middle class consumers to uphold the rich.
A billionaire is only a billionaire because millions of others possess comparatively little.
The pyramid requires a base.
Without a large population beneath the wealthy:
- labor collapses
- consumption collapses
- debt expansion collapses
- monetary circulation collapses
The rich do not float above the system.
They depend on it completely.
The Overpopulation Misunderstanding
This is why many discussions about “overpopulation” completely miss the deeper issue.
Of course humanity must live sustainably.
Of course population must stabilize voluntarily through education, security, and well-being.
But many people speak as if humanity itself is the problem.
As if fewer humans somehow automatically solve everything.
Yet the current monetary system itself depends upon massive populations participating in it.
A world of only a few hundred million people with advanced AI and robotics would not resemble modern capitalism at all. The logic of wages, labor competition, endless growth, and mass consumption would begin to dissolve.
Because what happens when technology can increasingly produce abundance with minimal human labor?
The entire logic of money starts breaking apart. The monetary system cannoy exist without humans.
And that leads us to an uncomfortable but unavoidable conclusion:
Our only real choice is to replace the monetary system itself.
What other choice is there?
If fewer and fewer people are needed to work because AI and robotics can increasingly produce what humanity needs, then eventually there are not enough people participating in the monetary system to keep it functioning.
Not enough people working = no monetary system.
And no monetary system while humanity still depends entirely upon it for access to food, housing, healthcare, and survival = no stable Earth with billions of people.
That is the real danger.
Not technology.
Not AI.
But clinging to an outdated system that no longer matches technological reality.
Which means humanity faces a profound transition.
We can continue trying to preserve a system based upon scarcity, competition, ownership, debt, and wage dependency.
Or we can begin designing what might be called a truly humanitarian system. The Humanitary system.
A system where advanced technology serves humanity, nature and the planet directly.
A system where access replaces artificial scarcity.
A system where the wealth of society is measured not by how many billionaires exist at the top, but by how secure, free, healthy, and fulfilled ordinary human beings are.
A World of “Billionaires”?
Ironically, that could create the first true world of “billionaires.”
Not billionaires in monetary terms.
But billions of human beings living with abundance, security, dignity, and access to the necessities of life. Living lives with just as much, or maybe even more, time and access as the billionaires of today.
Advanced technology will eventually force humanity toward a completely different realization.
Not that everyone can become a billionaire in monetary terms.
But that the very need for billionaires may disappear.
Because if AI, robotics, automation, renewable energy, and intelligent resource management can provide abundance directly, then humanity no longer needs to organize society around artificial scarcity and survival-based competition.
In such a world, we could all become “rich” in the ways that actually matter:
Abundant access to:
- secure housing
- healthy food
- healthcare
- education
- technology
- creative freedom
- free time
- meaningful contribution
- safety and stability
Not because everyone owns billions of dollars.
But because access itself becomes abundant.
That is the direction technology is quietly pointing toward.
The real question is whether humanity continues trying to force this new technological reality into an old monetary framework designed for scarcity, competition, and wage dependency.
Or whether we finally begin designing a system that reflects the abundance now becoming technically possible.
The Real Crisis
Perhaps the real crisis is not overpopulation.
Perhaps the real crisis is that we are trying to preserve a monetary system that increasingly contradicts technological reality itself.
A system where human beings must constantly struggle for money in order to access resources that modern technology could increasingly provide with minimal labor.
A system where endless consumption and economic growth are required simply to keep people employed.
A system where pollution, waste, planned obsolescence, inequality, and artificial scarcity become structural necessities.
And now, as AI and robotics rapidly advance, the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
Because once machines can do most productive labor, the monetary system starts losing the very human dependency it was built upon.
Which leaves humanity standing before a profound choice:
Continue trying to preserve the old system through increasingly desperate financial mechanisms.
Or begin creating a new one.
A world where advanced technology serves humanity, nature, and the planet directly.
A world where wealth is no longer measured by how many humans stand beneath you.
But by how well we manage to make life work for everyone.
Want to explore a future where humanity has moved beyond this outdated world of money, ownership, and artificial scarcity and made everyone a “billionaire”?
Then follow the former billionaire Benjamin Michaels into the world of Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity.
And please share this article if it resonates. The more who reads this, the bigger chance we have of creating this new world…
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