Who pays when convenience wins?
Self-checkout replaces the cashier. AI replaces the copywriter. The economic equation shifts. But where do the benefits land? Should they all flow to shareholders, or should some of those saved labour costs be reinvested into the people and places left behind?
As automation and AI continue replacing traditional roles across sectors, we're facing a bigger question than just technological progress. We're confronting the social cost of convenience. And asking who's left to pick up the tab.
The robot tax debate
One proposed solution is the "robot tax": a levy on companies that replace human workers with automation, with revenue redirected to public welfare systems like Universal Credit.
Bill Gates raised this in 2017: "If a human worker does £50,000 of work in a factory, that income is taxed. If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think we'd tax the robot at a similar level."
Supporters argue that if businesses save through automation, some savings should return to society. But this conversation can't stop at robots and algorithms. We've been here before.
This is bigger than AI
Superstores on the edge of town replaced local grocers and butchers decades ago. Pulled traffic, money and vibrancy away from the high street. Amazon repeated this pattern, offering unprecedented convenience whilst gutting independent bookshops, retailers, and local warehouses.
Uber Eats and Deliveroo helped many restaurants survive lockdown. Long-term? They've contributed to profit erosion for small businesses and created a precarious, gig-based model for delivery workers. What was once a lifeline became a stranglehold. The pattern is clear: centralised tech platforms win, local businesses and workers lose, convenience trumps community. Often, these companies aren't paying their fair share in tax either. Profits get routed offshore rather than reinvested in the towns and cities where value was extracted.
What we're really talking about
This is a structural question about modern capitalism: who benefits when efficiency improves? The move from humans to automation, from shops to platforms, from community to convenience. These all have real consequences. And those consequences are rarely felt equally. The jobs lost are local. The tax avoided is national. The profit made is global. If we want a future that still includes thriving towns, creative jobs, and human-centred businesses, we need to rethink how we tax, regulate, and redistribute the benefits of progress.
Where do we go from here?
Some countries are experimenting. South Korea has moved to reduce tax incentives for automation, slowing the rollout of job-displacing machines. The EU is pushing tech giants on tax transparency. In the UK, though, there's still reluctance to challenge the dominant logic of convenience.
But perhaps the conversation is changing.
As Kyle FitzPatrick put it: "It should be required that companies start paying a 'robot tax' that is included in the usage of AI products. Isn't the utopian point of technology to make it so humans are doing less work, in general?"
If that's actually happening, with real jobs and real people getting cut, then universal basic income becomes necessary to ensure survival of real people whilst adjusting profits of companies who'll undoubtedly be raking in billions for the work of not-people that imitate real people.
The questions that matter
Has automation or AI impacted your industry yet? Should companies pay more into the social systems that support displaced workers? How do we build a future that's efficient and equitable? Because this isn't just about technology. It's about the kind of society we're building whilst we're not paying attention.