Cycle Log 25
Humanoid Robotics, National Acceleration, and the Coming Post-Labor Economy
China, although it has some facets that may seem totalitarian, is advancing in humanoid robotics and automation at an unprecedented rate. You could say this is simply the result of the raw intelligence and discipline of the Chinese people — but I think there’s more to it than that. The Chinese government openly recognizes that automation will displace millions of workers, and it has begun to explore policy frameworks to cushion that impact [1][2]. While not a formal universal basic income, there is growing discussion within China’s policy circles and research institutions about expanded social insurance, reskilling programs, and basic security mechanisms for displaced workers [2]. This emerging dialogue, combined with state-led coordination across industries, gives Chinese citizens a sense of stability — a feeling that technological change is guided rather than chaotic. That collective coordination, supported by direct government investment and information-sharing across sectors, is accelerating their progress far beyond what fragmented Western economies have yet achieved [3][4].
The New Paradigm
We are entering an era where robots will either replace people’s jobs, leaving humans obsolete and unpaid, or they will become companions and helpers, elevating the human condition. The outcome depends entirely on how consciously we manage this transition.
Without intervention, countless families will fall into poverty or violence just to survive. But if we embrace it intelligently, we could create a world where a robot in every home helps raise children, wash dishes, tend gardens, and care for animals.
That shift is essential if we want to maintain a thriving human population on Earth.
If America fails to focus on automating farm work first in order to create an abundant food supply that is inexpensive and equally accessible for the poorest of Americans, we risk a dangerous inversion — the higher-level jobs will be replaced by AI first, leaving manual labor as one of the few remaining occupations until it too is also replaced by humanoid robotics.
What most people don’t realize is that this curve won’t merely rise — it will fold upward on itself once supply chains become automated. Right now, robots are still built, transported, and maintained by human labor, which limits the pace of change to something roughly exponential. But as soon as those same supply chains become roboticized — when machines begin manufacturing, assembling, and shipping other machines — the curve shifts from exponential to runaway compounding. Each new improvement accelerates the next. Factories will no longer just produce robots; robots will design and build robots, each generation optimizing itself for its particular niche. That recursive feedback loop means the replacement timeline collapses: what once took decades could unfold in only a few years.
Businesses, of course, are highly incentivized to automate, but they fall into a crucial fallacy:
Who will buy your products if no one has income?
The UBI Equation
Here’s the solution:
All companies employing humanoid robotics should contribute to a universal basic income tax.
If, within the next decade, 99 % of the American workforce becomes robotic and only 1 % of the population remains gainfully employed, who will buy your goods? Nobody. Civil unrest will erupt long before we reach that threshold.
We must think not only ethically, but strategically — in terms of the accelerating pace of progress. Whoever perfects advanced humanoid robots first will dominate global markets, exporting them worldwide and generating trillions in value long before the economic shock of widespread job displacement is fully felt by the very companies deploying them.
A post-labor economy doesn’t mean humanity does nothing. It means people are finally free to focus on art, poetry, storytelling, and spiritual evolution — when the mundane tasks of existence, the grinding toil of survival, are taken care of.
Because right now, we are still Lulu in the Abzu — worker-beings mining gold for the gods, performing endless labor in service of powers greater than ourselves.
So what will it be? Will we remain the Lulu, or will we become a master race like the Anunnaki themselves, and employ a new Lulu — a robotic race — to do our labor?
America’s Dilemma
The solution is straightforward: tell companies that from their profits — after costs — a percentage will go back into sustaining the social body. That percentage can start small and rise over time.
Companies like Amazon are racing to entrench themselves before such regulations arrive, but eventually, this contribution will be vital to their own survival. Without circulating money through the hands of the people, even the largest corporations will collapse. The economy would become nothing more than a closed loop of mega-companies trading with each other while human demand evaporates.
If we don’t collaborate soon, both in the construction of these robots and in our policies which can affect continued quality of life for our people, we risk not only losing the robotic age to China, where humanoid assistants will fill homes across the globe first [4], but also descending into civil war long before universal basic income stabilizes the system.
In my estimation, we’re still at least five years away from reaching 40% workplace replacement by artificial intelligence [5][6][7] — but that window is closing fast.
Mathematical Simulation: Automation Timeline Analysis
To test that five-year intuition against hard data, we can model automation growth under exponential scaling — using a Moore-like law where every 18 months brings roughly a 1.5× capability increase in AI and robotics, adjusted for real-world adoption friction.
Starting from a 25 % automation baseline in 2025 (current global average of automatable tasks) [5][7][8], the compounded projection yields:
30 % automation by 2027
40 % automation by 2029
50 % automation by late 2029
This curve assumes about 70 % adoption efficiency (meaning not all technological capability is deployed immediately due to costs, regulations, and infrastructure lag).
A single leap in embodied GPT-level AI could shift global automation from 30 % to 50 % within 24 months.
If that level of replacement were to occur without a universal basic income or large-scale social redistribution, society would fracture under its own weight. The majority of the population would experience an economic collapse unlike any in modern history — purchasing power would vanish, consumer markets would implode, and civil unrest would become widespread as wealth consolidated around those controlling automation. The absence of a universal safety net would turn efficiency into instability, pushing nations toward social breakdown or authoritarian containment.
Mathematical and Empirical Basis
This projection combines exponential modeling with real-world scaling data:
Exponential Growth Pattern — Assuming a 1.5× improvement every 18 months (similar to Moore’s law) and 70 % adoption efficiency, the model reaches 30 %, 40 %, and 50 % automation in 2027, 2029, and late 2029 respectively [7][8].
Empirical Validation — Studies from McKinsey [5], Goldman Sachs [8], and OECD [9] show that between 25 % and 46 % of tasks in advanced economies are automatable within the next decade.
Temporal Alignment — The 24-month leap corresponds to one 18-month doubling period plus a six-month adoption lag, matching the cadence seen in real AI and robotics development cycles [7].
Together, these factors make the 30 %-to-50 % leap both mathematically predictable and empirically grounded within current technological trajectories.
Conclusion
The question should not be why it has to be one way or the other — why must we choose between universal basic income and societal collapse…
The real question is: what path will we take when the mathematics themselves reveal an undeniable vision of our potential futures — when the only thing that determines whether humanity ascends into a collective heavenly utopia or collapses in on itself, embracing mass depopulation and the survival of the uber-wealthy and their chosen human ‘pets,’ is our willingness to pay attention to the macroeconomic factors impacting the American people, caused by mass job displacement, and to participate collectively in the creation of new machines despite our companies’ secrets and differences?
Eventually, every person will have multiple robots — companions and servants designed to meet their every need, to generate value for their families, and to allow humanity to devote its energy to higher evolution. But until we reach that equilibrium, we stand on a precipice. Without wisdom and foresight, humanity could collapse into a dark paradigm of extremes; the haves, manifesting as near-godlike, interplanetary mega-corporate conglomerates, and the have-nots, reduced to beggars in the streets or, at best, subsistence living like literal serfs on borrowed land.
References
State Council of the PRC. New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan (2017).
Stanford DigiChina Translation.
https://digichina.stanford.edu/work/full-translation-chinas-new-generation-artificial-intelligence-development-plan-2017UNDP China & China Institute for Income Distribution. Universal Basic Income in China: Feasibility, Effects, and Policy Pathways. March 2020.
https://www.undp.org/china/publications/universal-basic-income-chinaMinistry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). “China to Boost Density of Manufacturing Robots.”
State Council English Portal — January 20, 2023.
https://english.www.gov.cn/statecouncil/ministries/202301/20/content_WS63c9d296c6d0a757729e5e28.htmlReuters. “China’s AI-Powered Humanoid Robots Aim to Transform Manufacturing.” May 13 2025.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-ai-powered-humanoid-robots-aim-transform-manufacturing-2025-05-13McKinsey Global Institute. A Future That Works: Automation, Employment, and Productivity. January 2017.
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/employment-and-growth/automation-jobs-and-the-future-of-workFortune. “70 % of Jobs Can Be Automated, McKinsey’s AI Thought Leader Says.” November 27 2023.
https://fortune.com/2023/11/27/how-many-jobs-ai-replace-mckinsey-alexander-sukharevsky-fortune-global-forum-abu-dhabi/Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2024.
https://hai.stanford.edu/assets/files/hai_ai-index-report-2024-smaller2.pdfGoldman Sachs Research. “Generative AI Could Raise Global GDP by 7 Percent.” April 2023.
https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/generative-ai-could-raise-global-gdp-by-7-percentOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). OECD Employment Outlook 2023: Artificial Intelligence and the Labour Market. OECD Publishing, 2023.
https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2023/07/oecd-employment-outlook-2023_904bcef3/08785bba-en.pdf
