Two Minutes with Liwei: AI Doesn't Pay Taxes — Trouble Is Inevitable

1|# Two Minutes with Liwei: AI Doesn't Pay Taxes — Trouble Is Inevitable
2|
3|For the first time in human history, there is a kind of "employee" that can work 24 hours a day — no sleep, no salary, no social security, no rights claims, no strikes, no sickness, no retirement.
4|
5|And the truly absurd part: it can replicate itself.
6|
7|This thing is called an **AI agent**.
8|
9|---
10|
11|## Here's the problem
12|
13|In the old world, when a boss hired 1,000 people, the state collected: income tax, social security, health insurance, unemployment insurance, pension contributions.
14|
15|Now the boss fires all 1,000 and replaces them with AI. Efficiency skyrockets. Profits skyrocket. Stock prices skyrocket.
16|
17|**But the tax base evaporates.**
18|
19|The state can no longer collect revenue. The unemployed are still there.
20|
21|And so we arrive at a surreal paradox:
22|
23|> AI is simultaneously driving unprecedented productivity growth and hollowing out the fiscal foundation of society.
24|
25|The entire modern state is built on the premise that human labor pays taxes. AGI is erasing "human labor" itself.
26|
27|**This is the real nuclear bomb.**
28|
29|---
30|
31|## "Just learn AI" is wishful thinking
32|
33|Many people still comfort themselves: "Just pick up some AI skills, transition to a new role, and you'll be fine."
34|
35|This is increasingly delusional. Because the cruelest part is: even the act of "using AI" will eventually be automated by AI.
36|
37|You think the jobs of the future are "AI Operator," "Prompt Engineer," "Agent Manager" — but agents are already using agents. Even "prompt engineer," that transitional role, may turn out to be nothing more than a temporary bubble in a technological wave.
38|
39|Two years ago, the entire internet was selling prompt engineering courses. Today, that looks like a punchline.
40|
41|---
42|
43|## This time is different
44|
45|Past technological revolutions created new jobs. The automobile killed the horse carriage but created the auto mechanic. The internet killed print newspapers but created e-commerce and live-streamers.
46|
47|This time is different. The new systems AI creates are inherently *de-peopled*. Because AI's single greatest advantage is precisely this: **it doesn't need people.**
48|
49|---
50|
51|## AI must pay taxes
52|
53|If AI replaces people, who pays the taxes?
54|
55|The answer is simple: **AI itself must pay taxes.**
56|
57|For every token you consume, every GPU you run, every inference you perform, every kilowatt of AI electricity — you pay a corresponding "AI social tax."
58|
59|Because when you used to hire a person, you were already paying those taxes. Now you replace the person with AI and bear zero social cost — that is fundamentally unfair.
60|
61|Many will shout: "You're stifling technological progress!"
62|
63|**So what?**
64|
65|Is the sole purpose of human society to allow capital and compute to multiply without limit?
66|
67|- The Industrial Revolution polluted the environment → we got environmental taxes.
68|- Cars consume public roads → we got fuel taxes.
69|- AI destroys the employment tax base → why can't we have an AI tax?
70|
71|---
72|
73|## It takes everyone
74|
75|The real danger is not that AI is too powerful. It's that once AI becomes powerful enough, the entire social revenue structure collapses.
76|
77|And here's the darkest irony: the people most likely to support an AI tax in the future may be exactly those who understand AI best. Because they know most clearly: once this thing truly matures, it doesn't just replace the "bottom rung."
78|
79|**It sweeps the board.**
80|
81|White-collar workers, programmers, designers, analysts, customer service, translators, paralegals, researchers — no one escapes.
82|
83|In the past, society could comfort people with one line: "You just didn't work hard enough."
84|
85|But the cruelest truth of the AGI era is this: sometimes, it's not that you didn't work hard. It's that you, as a member of the species "human employee," are beginning to lose economic viability altogether.
86|
87|---
88|
89|*Two Minutes with Liwei · 2024*
90|
91|by Tuya
92|