Abstract
AI-driven automation plausibly reduces the marginal cost of many goods and services, pushing broad price levels downward. Yet several categories of “essentials”—notably shelter, utilities, healthcare access, and (in increasingly digital societies) the minimum technology and connectivity required to participate in payment and identity systems—may remain scarce, regulated, or locally capacity-constrained. This paper proposes a simple framework to reason about affordability and power in such an environment by separating (i) market income from labor, (ii) transfer income such as universal basic income (UBI), and (iii) an essential-goods price index. We define two interpretable metrics: essential autonomy (how much of the essential basket can be purchased using market income alone) and transfer dependence (the share of income originating from transfers). We then show how a transfer system can unintentionally create a structural reliance equilibrium when labor income shrinks faster than essential costs, even if many non-essential goods become cheap. A solvable toy model yields a closed-form stability boundary separating regimes where transfers can stably maintain essential affordability from regimes where price “capture” makes transfer requirements grow sharply or become infeasible. Finally, we propose policy guardrails that preserve autonomy and limit dependence without presuming malicious intent, and we discuss how to interpret the model as a design analysis rather than a conspiratorial claim.
Highlights
– Introduces two monitoring metrics for automation/UBI transitions: **essential autonomy** and **transfer dependence** .
– Separates “aggregate deflation” from **essential affordability** using an essential price index (housing, utilities, healthcare access, and—in digital-first systems—minimum technology/connectivity required to participate).
– Provides a solvable toy model with a **capture fragility / stability boundary** indicating when raising transfers becomes increasingly ineffective or infeasible under strong essential-price feedback.
– Discusses design guardrails: track autonomy drift, constrain dependence objectives, reduce essential capture sensitivity, and limit high-leverage “control surface” features in transfer delivery.