Big part of it, as far as I can tell. Slight further (and darker) twist: our economic model is dying, but nothing substantive is being done to make appropriate

Big part of it, as far as I can tell. Slight further (and darker) twist: our economic model is dying, but nothing substantive is being done to make appropriate revisions. Essentially: we have excessive, but still increasing, numbers of people with skills and in economic classes / roles that are "tertiary" and beyond. As processes have been made more efficient over time, and the surplus wealth has been accrued in an ever more concentrated fashion, we increasingly seem to have a sort of "surplus" (oh boy, can it get more Dickensian?) of people in something of a "middle class limbo". Of course, the very efficiency that has pushed workers out of roles, is efficiency that means we (can) produce plenty for the people presently around. Further, it's basically always the case that people ultimately pushed out of roles contributed in substantial ways, even if just indirectly, to "our" ability to replace them. But, the "tally sheets" we use to divvy up resources, account for contributions and "deductions", etc., are more and more fundamentally broken. Throwing the so-called "AI" into the mix only makes this worse. ... I'm a bit too tired and pressed for time right now to try to really tie this off nicely, but, hopefully the outline of this (current iteration of this) hypothesis is clear enough. It's an argument (in the sense of dialectical &/ rhetorical debate) that has come up many times. For example, Vonnegut's "Player Piano" springs to mind. But, I do think we're finally at a point where there will need to be some adjustment in economics, culture, etc. Or, we're heading into "French Revolution" territory. Also, it's not as though humans haven't been through this before - not only at times like during the "Reign of Terror", but also, when people like John D. Rockefeller were in their heyday. At that time, Rockefeller, for example, became quite community-oriented himself. He made substantial contributions to the well-being of society / humanity, in ways that often went beyond simple provision of money for charitable efforts. No idea which way things go this time... Edit: correction - when I wrote "produce plenty", I was in a mindset focused on NA / Europe, in particular. Simply the areas I'm most familiar with. Throwing countries like India, China, etc., into the mix, makes the situation more complicated and difficult. Far too much there to touch on right now.