At three in the morning, AI writes a report in an office with the lights off. In a factory with no people, robotic arms assemble parts. One side makes knowledge, the other makes things. No one has come to work at either one.
AI and robots will handle much of the work people do now with fewer workers. Not just factories and logistics. The same goes for accounting, translation, design, analysis, and coding. New jobs will appear too. We still do not know whether the total number of jobs will rise or fall. Even so, if one person takes on the work ten people used to do, one new job will not bring back all ten of the old paychecks.
So the problem of the future is not just the number of jobs. Who will own the factories and AI that keep running without people?
A paycheck is like a pass into a factory. You receive part of what is produced while you work inside. An equity stake is a name written in the shareholder registry. Even if you do not enter the factory, you receive dividends as long as production continues. The fewer people an automated factory needs, the wider the gap becomes between those who depend on paychecks and those who own productive assets.
Wouldn't it be okay if things became cheaper? If prices fell enough, life could improve. But necessities like housing, electricity, and healthcare cannot be expanded quickly enough to become cheaper at the same speed that jobs disappear. If prices stay the same while paychecks shrink, goods will be abundant but people will not have enough money to live.
Taxes will still be necessary in the future. We need to collect taxes to run schools and social safety nets. But it will be difficult to identify all the profits created by automation through taxes alone.
A robot tax is difficult to start with. We can count robotic arms fixed in a factory, but we cannot count how many AI agents are being copied on laptops. It is also difficult to tell from appearances alone whether a machine replaced a person or helped one. Would we tax a kiosk while exempting a mobile app that does the same work? Companies could rent robots or call on AI running on servers overseas.
Taxing computing power or electricity use would leave loopholes too. A model that completes the same task with less computation would pay less tax, while an inefficient model would pay more. It also seems strange for an AI that helps medical staff and an AI that replaces one hundred customer-service agents to pay the same tax simply because they used the same amount of electricity. It is difficult to accurately measure the computing done inside phones and at overseas data centers, too.
Consumption taxes can be collected when automated products are sold, but in the end the person who buys the goods pays them. The lower a person's income, the greater the burden. Corporate taxes and excess-profits taxes are closer to actual earnings, but companies can change the country where their profits are recorded through patent fees, internal loans, and transfer pricing. The factory operates in Korea, but the accounting profit remains in another country. When paychecks shrink, income-tax revenue shrinks with them.
Each tax has its own logic. But none of them can find every bit of the wages automation has eliminated and every bit of the profit it has created.
The bigger problem is that most taxes are imposed after production is over. When people earn money, we collect income tax. When they buy things, we collect consumption tax. Then we redistribute cash and services. This is necessary, but it is redistribution after the fact. The factories and AI are still owned by a small number of people. As people are pushed out of production, it is not enough to adjust only the stages where they earn and spend money.
We need to contract with citizens for ownership and rights to returns starting from the stage when production facilities are built and AI is developed. We should not stop at distributing money to spend. We should also distribute a share of what production creates.
In the future, the state could be both a government that collects taxes and an investment holding company owned by all citizens. Instead of managing companies directly, it would secure equity, royalties, and rights to a share of excess profits in companies backed by citizens' money and guarantees. One side of the contract would record the money and guarantees provided by the government. The other would specify the share that would return to citizens if the venture succeeded. Citizens would not remain mere recipients of support. They would become co-shareholders in production.
Korea already has the beginnings of this. The Fund of Funds, launched in 2005, invests public money in private venture funds. The National Growth Fund will supply 150 trillion won to advanced industries over the next five years. It will bring together 75 trillion won in government-guaranteed bonds and 75 trillion won in private capital for loans and investments, and will directly purchase equity in some companies. In May 2026, it approved a plan for the Advanced Strategic Industries Fund to directly invest 370 billion won in FuriosaAI. A system in which citizens share the risk and receive company stock has begun.
Someone is still missing. The Citizen Participation Growth Fund raises 600 billion won from citizens, while the government contributes 120 billion won as subordinated capital and absorbs part of its members' losses first. But the opportunity to earn returns is open only to people with money to spare to invest.
What if some of the equity and rights to returns the government receives in exchange for investment and guarantees were placed in a separate generational fund? Children without the money to buy stocks would receive the same dividend rights.
Similar systems already exist. Alaska puts at least one-quarter of its mineral rental and royalty income into a permanent fund, which it uses for resident dividends and public services. Norway invests its oil revenues in overseas assets and uses the expected long-term returns in its government budget. The U.S. government has also included conditions in 27 of its 40 semiconductor-support projects requiring companies to share some of the gains if profits significantly exceed expectations.
AI is not oil. There is no reason for the state to take all the value created by companies and researchers. Nor is there any need to demand equity in every form of support. Basic research should be widely shared. When the government pays for a particular company's factory construction or guarantees its loans, and profits become concentrated in one place, it can receive equity or rights to returns.
This is not anti-capitalist. Capitalism gives the side that takes the risk a share of the success. The government would not take away existing shares or manage companies. It would make an advance contract with companies seeking support and receive a minority stake without management rights or rights to returns. Venture capital firms receive equity as compensation for risk, and banks receive interest. If only the citizens' money and guarantees bear the risk without receiving a share of the success, that actually goes against the principles of contracting. This is not about eliminating capital. It is about inviting more people to become owners of capital.
Government investments can fail too. That is why the generational fund should invest across multiple industries and countries, and disclose losses transparently. It should be managed by an independent institution so that governments cannot withdraw the principal and spend it before an election.
Dividing all the returns in cash is not the answer either. If housing, electricity, healthcare, and care are in short supply, injecting money alone will raise prices first. Some of the returns should be distributed, and some should be used to increase the supply of housing, power plants, power grids, and care facilities. The first dividend may not be a number in a bank account. It may be a newly built home or a hospital that is closer by.
I imagine a birth registration form from the year 2100. Under the name and nationality, it says “productive-asset dividend rights.” This is not a bank account that guarantees a fixed amount of money. It is the right to share in the returns earned by the generational fund. It cannot be sold or pledged as collateral, and it returns to the fund when the holder dies. What a child inherits is not a bundle of money, but the right to receive their share of the wealth that will be created in the future.
If we use citizens' money and guarantees to build factories and AI that need almost no people, we must share the fruits with future generations too. We cannot decide who the shareholders are after the factory is complete. From now on, we need to leave a place in the contracts for children who have not yet been born.
