Production Beyond Labor, Livelihoods Still Bound to Labor: The Technological Paradox of the AI Era and an Institutional Way Forward

As production becomes less dependent on human labor while most people still rely on selling their labor to make a living, technological progress creates anxiety about livelihoods for workers and anxiety about markets for businesses. Drawing on the contribution–ownership principle, this paper proposes restructuring transaction rules so that ordinary people can sustain their lives, accumulate wealth, and acquire long-term ownership interests without having to keep selling their labor. Its starting point is that genuine consumption both realizes the current value of goods or services and contributes to the formation of a business’s future capital value: the purchase ends, but the effects of the contribution do not. Two-Dimensional Transaction (2DT) addresses both dimensions of value. When consumers pay for and receive goods or services, they also acquire long-term ownership interests corresponding to their contributions under published rules. Through mechanism analysis, historical data from twelve companies, and conditional calculations, the paper examines the scale on which capital wealth can support purchasing power beyond wages and explains the feedback process linking consumption, ownership accumulation, greater purchasing power, business growth, and personal wealth. When long-term interests can sustain livelihoods, purchasing power can become orders, and supply can respond, the gains from automation through greater efficiency and better business performance can enter ordinary people’s wealth accumulation. Technological replacement and personal interests can then reinforce each other, providing an institutional path from fearing replacement to welcoming it, and from working to survive to having the freedom to choose whether to work.