The pyramids were not built by slaves, and while we can waffle around about "all labor is exploitative to some extent", it doesn't take exploitation-maxxing to drive great achievements. Most great modern achievements are driven by a desire for self-actualization or recognition, not survival.
It’s not there yet but we’re clearly heading towards a world where the answer is “no, you have no choice”. AI is weaved into business processes. If Ai leaves a comment on your pr, you must resolve it before merging, you’re expected to “get things done” at a particular pace consistent with using ai, regardless of whether what you did is any good.
Other comments have already mentioned that true labor force participation is higher in all of those countries than the US. But also, they all have better lives than the US. They live longer, access better education, healthcare.
Nobody has mentioned AGI in this thread until this comment. And either way, there's no evidence that AGI as you're defining it is going to be solved anytime soon. Sam Altman and Dario may claim it will to pump their incoming IPOs, but outside of la la land, OpenAI and Anthropic aren't making any big robotics plays, which leaves a huge chunk of the "G" in AGI completely unattended to.
If there's a simple piece of software that can be installed, it's not meaningfully increasing the barrier. Also, there are negative consequences to introducing "rules that you're expected to break" like this. It makes the law unserious.
AI is not cutting my hair anytime soon. AI is not making my meals anytime soon. It's not organizing events, or doing anything in the real world. It's not doing my open heart surgery. Robots are still doing this in 2026
We might have to get off the computer, and we might have to rethink how we organize the world economically, but there is still work to be done everywhere.
At this point I think it's similar to reporting a particularly effective social engineering practice. It's not particularly surprising that it works or that it exists, but it's still noteworthy.
> which is that labor that falls “beneath the fold” of this class line is not able to negotiate aggressively due to the inelastic costs of food, shelter, and basic necessities.
Not to mention the U.S. encourages organization of the capitalist class while breaking up (often by force) organization of the working class, so any attempt at the working class gaining leverage in this negotiation is artificially limited.