Humans vs AI: The Fight for Life Itself

 

AI Will Push Up the Cost of Living — But Not Wages: The Resource Struggle We’re Not Talking About

Most conversations about Artificial Intelligence focus on the wrong things. We argue about job losses, “the future of work,” or whether the AI investment bubble is about to burst. We worry about deepfakes and robots replacing coders. But as economic writer Fred Harrison warns, these are surface-level distractions.

The real threat is something far more fundamental.

AI is about to drive up the cost of the very resources necessary for human survival—land, energy, water, and raw materials—while leaving most people’s wages stagnant or falling. The result? A rising cost of living without the rising income needed to pay for it. In short: AI won’t just replace some jobs. It will compete with us for the physical basis of life.

And if we don’t change how our economies are structured, humanity may lose that fight.

AI Isn’t Just Software — It’s a Resource-Hungry Competitor

To function, artificial intelligence needs massive amounts of energy and physical space. Data centers don’t float in some digital cloud. They sit on land, consume electricity, require water to cool servers, and rely on mining for essential minerals.

This means AI doesn’t merely enter the economy as a tool. It enters as a rival.

The more AI expands, the more it:

  • Bids up the price of electricity.

  • Uses up water that communities depend on.

  • Competes for land that could house people.

  • Consumes metals and minerals that manufacturing and infrastructure also rely on.

As AI scales, it displaces humans from the resource base that sustains life.

This competition is not metaphorical—it’s literal.

The Wealth Won’t Go to Workers — It Will Go to Rent Seekers

Fred Harrison highlights a critical economic mechanism that most commentators ignore: economic rent.

This is income earned not by producing anything, but by owning and controlling scarce resources—especially land and natural monopolies. As AI boosts productivity, the profits do not flow to workers or consumers. They are captured by the owners of:

  • Land

  • Energy infrastructure

  • Water rights

  • Mineral extraction

  • Data networks and private platforms

AI, instead of reducing costs, amplifies monopoly power. And those monopolies will charge more for everything.

This is why wages will not keep pace with the cost of living: the gains from AI will be siphoned upward into rent, not shared broadly across society.

Why Economists Are Looking the Wrong Way

Mainstream economists fixate on employment numbers, GDP, and productivity statistics. They rarely look at who controls land, resource access, or monopoly privileges.

But Harrison argues that these are the real engines of inequality.

If AI accelerates resource monopolisation — and all signs suggest it will — then no increase in wages or economic growth can offset the rising cost of living. People will work harder and earn less in real terms, while housing, fuel, food, and utilities become luxuries rather than basics.

We aren’t headed for a world where humans don’t work.  We’re headed for a world where work no longer pays for life.

The Necessary Solution: Tax Rent, Not Work

Harrison’s answer is not to resist AI, halt innovation, or break machines. Technology is not the enemy. The economic structure governing it is.

To ensure AI benefits humanity, we must:

  • Shift taxes away from wages, business activity, and trade

  • And toward economic rent — especially land and resource monopolies

In other words:
Tax what no one created (land, resource rights, natural monopolies), instead of taxing what people do (work, invest, build).

This reform would:

  • Stop AI from pricing humans out of existence

  • Prevent resource hoarding and speculative bubbles

  • Allow innovation to lower the cost of living rather than raise it

  • Ensure that technological progress benefits everyone — not just asset owners

This is not about stopping AI. It’s about preventing an automated rentier economy from rendering people economically irrelevant.

The Stakes Could Not Be Higher

If we fail to restructure the economy, we are not simply headed for job displacement.
We are headed for a resource conflict between humans and machines—where the machines are empowered by corporate monopolies and extractive ownership models.

The collapse won’t be technological, it will be economic and social.

But if we adopt the right economic principles — if we ensure that the value of land and natural resources is shared instead of captured — then AI can increase prosperity, reduce the cost of living, and free humans from unnecessary toil.

The choice before us is stark:

A world where AI serves humanity — or one where humanity serves AI.

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