Every industrial revolution has created winners and losers, but this time the scale of displacement — and the indifference of those in power — feels different.This time, the number of people the next one might sweep aside could be vast, and no one in power seems prepared for it.
Amazon’s plan to automate hundreds of thousands of warehouse roles isn’t just a corporate efficiency play; it’s a preview of what happens when the middle of the labour market disappears. The jobs that once formed the backbone of stable, suburban lives — skilled enough to pay a mortgage, routine enough to be widely available — are being eaten up. AI and robotics take care of the predictable tasks, while what remains drifts towards either high-skill technical work or low-wage service labour.
The erosion of the centre
That hollowing-out is already shaping politics. The old centrist coalition — white-collar managers, skilled trades, clerical workers — is dissolving. In its place, we see two groups pulling further apart: the hyper-connected, globally mobile professionals who build and profit from automation, and the increasingly precarious majority who feel automation happening to them.
When both sides vote, they do so for very different futures — but the cruel irony is that the “different future” many in the precarious majority are voting for often serves the interests of the hyper-rich. The rage against elites is quietly redirected by those very elites, repackaged into culture wars and nationalist fantasies that leave wealth and power untouched. While ordinary voters demand someone to burn the system down, figures like Musk and his peers are busy redesigning it in their own image.
The populist movements of the last decade weren’t an aberration; they were the early symptoms of this transformation. The Brexit vote, Trump’s rise, France’s gilets jaunes — all drew energy from the sense that effort no longer leads to reward, that institutions have broken their side of the deal. If Amazon can replace half a million jobs with robots while politicians call it “innovation”, why trust anyone promising that work still pays?
A future up for grabs
In theory, automation could free people from drudgery and rebalance economies. In practice, under capitalism, it won’t. The benefits of technology flow to capital, not labour — and robots, algorithms and data centres are capital. The system is doing exactly what it’s built to do: concentrate ownership, reduce labour costs (and labour agency), and expand returns for those who already hold power.
Western politics keeps pretending there’s a technical fix for what is, at heart, a structural problem. You can’t regulate your way out of a system designed to extract value from workers and hand it to shareholders. Apprenticeship schemes and AI ethics panels won’t rebuild the social contract, because capitalism no longer needs one.
Without an alternative — not a reform, but a replacement — the missing middle will keep voting for anyone who promises to tear it all down.
And one day, they’ll get their wish.