The Useless Class

In Homo Deus, Harari forecast the twenty-first century's creation of 'a massive new unworking class'—populations rendered economically superfluous by AI and automation. Not displaced temporarily (unemployed) but structurally (unemployable). The useless class would lack not merely jobs but function: the economy does not need their labor, the military does not need their bodies, algorithmic governance may not need their votes. They are casualties of efficiency, not victims of injustice. The phrase 'useless' was chosen to offend—to name the psychological devastation of irrelevance in societies where productive labor defines identity, social standing, political voice.