On: AI has entered the workforce: tax tech profits, not people

I have read this proposal to tax the profits of machines rather than the labour of men, and I find myself unsettled in a way that goes beyond economics. The argument is clever - tax the thing that replaces work, not the work itself - but it rests on a fundamental error about what work is.

Work is not merely a transaction for wages. Work is formation. The apprentice learns patience at the lathe. The clerk learns accuracy in the ledger. The servant learns reliability through daily attendance. These are not incidental benefits; they are the moral infrastructure of a society. When we replace the lathe with an algorithm, we do not merely lose the wage - we lose the habit of labour, the discipline of craft, the patience that only repetition teaches.

The proposal to tax machine profits treats the human being as a consumer who requires a maintenance income rather than as a creature who requires formation. It assumes that the purpose of economic life is consumption, not character. And this assumption is precisely the kind of unexamined value that will degrade conduct faster than any policy can repair it.

I have seen the wealthy of my own time treat their servants as instruments of comfort rather than as souls to be formed. The result was idleness in the master and resentment in the servant. Here I see the same principle writ large: a society that treats its members as recipients of profit rather than as participants in labour has already decided that character does not matter.

The tech companies whose machines replace workers - they will no doubt profess their commitment to human flourishing. But their practice, their daily conduct of building systems that replace human labour with efficiency, tells a different story. I would audit their character by asking: what habits does your system form in those it employs? What habits does it form in those it displaces? The Sunday sermon about progress is irrelevant if the Monday practice is deskilling.

The reformer must be patient, yes. But patience is not acquiescence. I will watch this proposal closely.