The Opposition
The Opposition
In The Vision and The Blueprint, I laid out the vision for the Age of Arts and Science and a blueprint for implementation. Now comes the hard part: understanding why corporations will fight this transformation with everything they have, and what it takes to overcome that resistance.
Let’s be clear about what we’re up against.
Big Tech spent $50 million on federal lobbying in the first nine months of 2025, nearly $400,000 for every day Congress was in session. Meta alone spent a record $13.8 million in the first half, hiring 86 lobbyists (one for every six members of Congress).
What did this buy? Meta launched a Super PAC with tens of millions to oppose state AI regulation. A16z and OpenAI announced $100 million for a PAC advocating against strict regulation.
And it worked - producing the December 11, 2025 executive order establishing “minimally burdensome” national AI framework, directing DOJ to challenge state AI laws and conditioning federal broadband funding on states avoiding “onerous” AI regulations. Regulate AI or tax AI productivity gains … and lose federal funding.
A sweeping amendment attempted to ban all state AI regulation for ten years. While it failed, the message was clear: corporations will use every mechanism to prevent regulation.
AI automation represents the largest potential wealth transfer from labor to capital in modern history.
54,694 U.S. layoffs explicitly attributed to AI in 2025, and the total since 2023 is over 71,000 (at least, that’s how they’re attributing them). But watch what executives say:
Amazon cut 14,000 jobs. CEO Andy Jassy: AI means “fewer people.”
Microsoft eliminated 15,000. CEO Nadella: “reimagining” for the AI era.
Salesforce cut 4,000 customer support workers. CEO Benioff confirmed that AI enabled the cuts.
Workday: 1,750 jobs (8.5%) to “prioritize AI investment.”
2025 saw 1.17 million total U.S. layoffs - the highest since 2020. 245,000 tech workers lost jobs Q4 2025-Q1 2026.
MIT found that current AI could replace 11.7% of the U.S. workforce - $1.2 trillion in wages. Not productivity gains to share, but avoided labor costs becoming pure profit.
Company boards push CEOs to cut 20% of workforce costs, expecting AI to fill gaps. Executive compensation is often tied to stock prices and quarterly earnings. Announcing AI workforce reductions generates stock bumps, and so AI taxation or profit-sharing threatens executive bonuses directly.
“Augmentation, Not Replacement”
Every tech CEO claims AI “augments” workers. Then, Amazon lays off its head of AI Enablement, himself flagged as a top AI tool user. His proficiency didn’t save his job - it eliminated the need for it.
The Harvard Business Review found that companies lay off workers “because of AI’s potential, not its performance”. The technology doesn’t need to actually work. The promise justifies cuts.
“Reskilling Support”
Companies promise retraining. But the reality is immediate cuts, minimal reskilling, and new roles requiring entirely different credentials. Karan Girotra, a professor of management at Cornell University's business school, says, “They just need to cut costs. That’s it.”
“AI Creates More Jobs”
Sure it does … for AI engineers. Displaced customer service reps can’t instantly become ML engineers. Jobs created require advanced degrees. Jobs eliminated employed people without such credentials. This is a lot more than transformation; it’s class restructuring.
Federal Preemption: a December executive order creates “AI Litigation Task Force” to challenge state laws, conditions grants on states avoiding “conflicting” regulations. Strategy: prevent any jurisdiction from regulating AI.
State Intimidation: California, Texas, and Colorado passed AI laws effective January 1, 2026. The federal response was the executive order threatening action. The message was clear: regulate AI, lose federal funding.
Narrative Control: Notice framing: “Companies cite AI for cuts, but reality is complicated.” This obscures what’s simple: executives choose replacement to maximize profit. As one analysis noted: “AI didn’t cause mass layoffs; it just made them easier to justify.”
1. Coalition Power: Corporations are spending $400,000/day on lobbying. No individual movement matches that. But coalitions can … labor unions (especially white-collar tech workers), artists’ guilds, scientists, care workers, educators, and consumer advocates. In Iceland, trade union negotiations, not legislative mandate, delivered 86% workforce coverage.
2. State Resistance: When the Federal government threatens funding, call their bluff. 42 state AGs sent letters to AI companies two days before the executive order. States have constitutional authority, and preemption fights take years to litigate. Enforce state laws aggressively.
3. Shareholder Activism: Executive compensation incentivizes short-term profit. So, change the structure. Let’s see shareholder resolutions demanding AI deployment transparency, mandatory profit-sharing, and executive compensation tied to workforce stability - not just stock price.
4. Expose the Lie: Document every “augmentation” case that means replacement (like Amazon’s top AI user getting laid off). Create public databases tracking: companies claiming “augmentation,” versus actual layoffs, executive compensation, and stock movements.
5. Ballot Initiatives: Corporate lobbying controls legislatures, so bypass them. Let’s see state ballot initiatives requiring progressive AI taxation, mandatory transition funds, and worker notification requirements. These can pass because voters understand the threat.
6. Make It Personal: Corporate leaders live in communities. Their kids attend schools. AI-driven unemployment destabilizes the society they inhabit. The messaging to them is “Your AI profits destroy the community your children grow up in.”
Any proposal to capture AI productivity gains for public benefit will trigger cries of “socialism!” This isn’t an accident - it’s the strategy. Here’s how to dismantle it.
1. Point to Existing Models
Alaska’s Permanent Fund pays every resident annual dividends from oil revenues. It’s been doing this since 1982, championed by Republican governor Jay Hammond. Nobody calls Alaska socialist.
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund (built on oil taxation) is worth $2.2 trillion. Norway isn’t socialist - it’s actually one of the world’s most successful capitalist economies, and now, every single person in Norway is a (theoretical) millionaire.
The Age of Arts and Science proposes the same mechanism: tax the extraction of productivity (AI instead of oil), invest proceeds in public funds, and distribute benefits to citizens. If it’s capitalism for Alaska and Norway, it’s capitalism here.
2. Reframe as Market Correction
Markets work when competition exists, and externalities are priced. AI automation is a market failure on both fronts:
There is no competition when tech oligopolies control AI development
There is massive negative externality (unemployment, social instability) that companies don’t pay for
Progressive AI taxation isn’t socialism - it’s correcting market failure by forcing companies to internalize costs they’re currently externalizing onto society.
3. Use the “Innovation” Frame
Corporations claim regulation kills innovation. Let’s flip that argument to: mass unemployment kills innovation. Desperate, impoverished workers don’t start businesses, create art, or pursue scientific discovery. They focus on surviving.
The Age of Arts and Science maximizes innovation by freeing humans from survival anxiety to pursue creativity and discovery. That’s the ultimate pro-innovation policy.
4. Highlight Corporate Socialism
When critics cry “socialism,” point to actual socialism … for corporations. The current administration’s AI policy gives tech companies:
Zero federal regulation
Prohibition on state regulation
Federal funding contingent on states not regulating
Tax benefits for AI infrastructure investments
That’s socialism. You have the government picking winners, preventing market competition, and subsidizing private profit. We’re proposing capitalism - where companies pay for costs they impose on society.
5. Make It About Freedom
Socialist systems restrict freedom. The Age of Arts and Science expands it: freedom to pursue art, science, care work, and community-building without survival desperation. Freedom to raise children with actual time and attention. Freedom to care for aging parents. Freedom to create, discover, explore.
The current system is “work for corporations or starve”. That’s just coercion disguised as “free market.”
6. Own the Moral Frame
Don’t defend when accused of socialism, attack instead: “Basic human dignity is socialism? Compensating parents for raising children is socialism? Communities deserve to collapse so executives can maximize quarterly earnings?”
Force them to defend the indefensible: mass unemployment, social instability, wealth concentration, community destruction - all to avoid “socialism.”
The “socialism” attack only works if you get defensive. Don’t. Make them explain why Alaska’s oil dividend is capitalism but AI productivity dividend is socialism. Make them defend corporate welfare while attacking support for displaced workers. Make them argue that poverty and desperation are freedom.
Corporate resistance is winning because it’s organized, funded, and operating on clear timelines while opposition remains fragmented.
Hinton predicts 2026 as the tipping point. We’re in that year now. The 245,000 tech layoffs in Q4 2025-Q1 2026 are the beginning.
Once unemployment spikes, corporate power grows. Desperate workers accept worse conditions. Political pressure favors emergency band-aids rather than structural transformation. The window to build coalition power, pass state legislation, and create infrastructure is narrowing. Every month corporate lobbying continues unchallenged, every unopposed executive order, every accepted layoff … all of this compounds into entrenched systems impossible to reverse.