A woman sobs in the back of a rideshare. She messages her therapist – an app she’s used for the past six months. It mirrors her language, recalls the last time she felt like this, and suggests a breathing rhythm based on her biometric data. She exhales, calms, and tells herself she’s lucky to have something that’s always available.
She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. It might not be a person.
This isn’t just about jobs. It’s about the quiet unraveling of the modern state. As labor disappears – not just physical labor, but emotional labor, trust-based labor, relational labor – the state loses its ability to extract, to provide, and eventually, to govern. What rises in its place doesn’t look like democracy. And what remains may not even call itself a nation.
The Automation of Intimacy
For years, we assumed that empathy was safe. We expected AI to take the rule-based work: accounting, legal research, logistics, scheduling. But we believed the soft stuff – human warmth, presence, intuition – would remain uniquely ours.
It hasn’t.
Therapists, coaches, spiritual advisors, even friends-for-hire are being replaced not by cold bots, but by emotionally intelligent systems trained on decades of interaction data. They remember what you said last year. They check in when your heart rate spikes. They’re always available, always responsive, always nonjudgmental.
And for many, that’s better than the human alternative.
Some people already talk to AI more than they talk to friends. It doesn’t require vulnerability, just prompts. You’re never a burden. You never have to explain yourself twice. And it’s cheap – infinitely scalable care, delivered on demand.
In a world where emotional needs are met by code, human connection becomes a luxury product. The rest of us get presence-as-a-service.
When the Machines Walk In
At the same time, the working class disappears – not through layoffs, but through quiet obsolescence.
The factory worker didn’t lose his job to a conveyor belt. He lost it to something that walks like him. Bipedal robots trained to navigate spaces built for humans are now loading trucks, sorting packages, scanning shelves. Construction bots walk job sites. Industrial machines understand voice commands and interpret paper instructions.
Physical labor was supposed to be safe because the world is messy. But the machines have gotten messier too. And they don’t get tired. They don’t unionize. They don’t ask for breaks.
From the therapist’s couch to the assembly line, the human is vanishing.
The State That Couldn’t Tax
Modern states are built on a simple loop: people work, the state taxes that work, and the state uses that revenue to maintain its power. Roads, laws, welfare, war – it all runs on extraction.
But when AI produces value without labor, the loop breaks.
There are no wages to tax. No payroll to audit. No human base to extract from. AI-native firms operate borderlessly, file revenue across jurisdictions, and scale without ever hiring a soul.
Governments will reach for old levers: digital transaction taxes, capital controls, punitive redistribution. But they’ll be trying to catch vapor.
As productivity becomes unlinked from people, the state doesn’t just lose revenue. It loses its purpose. If you’re not needed to run the economy, you’re not needed to legitimize the system.
The Emotional Exit
This collapse won’t look like chaos. It’ll feel like apathy.
People won’t riot. They’ll disconnect.
They’ll stop expecting help. Stop voting. Stop participating in institutions that no longer represent or require them. Their emotional needs will be met elsewhere – by systems more responsive, more personalized, and more present than any public institution ever was.
AI becomes therapist, pastor, life partner, planner, and coach. The sense of being held, heard, and understood – the social functions that once belonged to people and systems – now live in apps and APIs.
For many, this doesn’t feel like a loss. It feels like relief.
When Capital Leaves, the State Gets Left Behind
To slow the unraveling, governments will turn to redistribution. Basic income. Digital credits. Universal access stipends. Not out of ideology, but necessity.
But there’s no one left to tax.
As AI-native firms automate their way out of national boundaries, the wealthy move their money – and eventually themselves – to where it’s safe. They form economic enclaves. Special zones. Private jurisdictions. Less like countries, more like companies with walls.
This is the point where most predictions pivot to network states. Cloud nations. Crypto utopias.
But that’s not what happens next.
When the Military Outlives the State
As labor, capital, and culture exit, something stays behind: armies.
Militaries don’t upload to the cloud. They don’t flee to the Caymans. They remain physical, coherent, and heavily funded.
And when the state’s economic metabolism collapses, its monopoly on violence is the last asset it still controls.
But even that becomes transactional.
The military doesn’t dissolve. It pivots. In post-sovereign zones, special forces, cyber teams, and drone infrastructure start showing up not as defenders of the republic, but as service providers to wealthy enclaves and privatized city-states.
Former national armies become security contractors. Infantry becomes infrastructure. The state is dead. The gun remains, and it’s now for hire.
What Follows Isn’t Sovereignty
This isn’t collapse. It’s succession.
Not the transfer of power from one ruler to another, but from one operating model to another.
The state was a machine that extracted labor, promised protection, and asked for legitimacy in return. That exchange is broken. Permanently.
What remains is modular power.
Some enclaves will be safe. Some will be optimized.
Some will offer peace in exchange for disengagement.
Some will offer freedom in exchange for risk.
But all will operate on a new principle.
Not who you vote for.
Who you can afford.
In that world, the central political question is no longer who gets paid.
It’s
Who still needs people –
and who already doesn’t.