When machines stop needing workers, the mutual need that forced owners to keep workers alive breaks, and an income paid so that people can keep consuming turns them into an underclass whose service is consumption, not production: being kept acquires an institution. Ansary, ch. 30: Marx said owners and workers "needed each other", so owners were "obliged to pay the working classes at least enough to keep them alive", but "As robots take over from human workers, however, that equation may be changing"; universal basic income may mean everyone "gets just enough money to survive so that they can keep on consuming the free products of the information economy", institutionalising Bard and Soderqvist's Consumetariat, "An underclass living in reduced conditions whose service to the economy will be their contributions to consumption, not production." That this is the institutional form of the enfeeblement trap (C-HGZ7TES052) and that the guard is a productive contribution the system still needs (C-7W7RGD6BT1, C-H7S4ZAWM6G) is Leo's step.

Evidence 6 passages

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Marx said the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the owners of machines and the industrial wage slaves, needed each other.
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The machinery-owning classes were therefore obliged to pay the working classes at least enough to keep them alive.
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As robots take over from human workers, however, that equation may be changing.
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How can an economy of any size continue to operate if it doesn't need workers, and its products are free.
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Everyone in a given society gets just enough money to survive so that they can keep on consuming the free products of the information economy.
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An underclass living in reduced conditions whose service to the economy will be their contributions to consumption, not production.

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