The Society of the Disposable: When Systems Work Without Everyone

Veni, vidi… and did we really understand?

There will be no announcement. No one will say it out loud. And yet, it is already happening.

The system is beginning to function without all of us. Not abruptly, not as a visible rupture, but quite the opposite: with greater efficiency, more precision, fewer errors. Everything seems to improve. Everything seems to move forward.

And within that same movement—quietly, almost imperceptibly—it begins to leave people behind.

That is the unsettling part.

For a long time, we believed the problem was a lack of jobs. That the solution was to create more employment, to stimulate growth, to invest in skills. But slowly, another possibility emerges—one that is far more difficult to accept: the problem may no longer be the absence of work, but the fact that work itself is no longer necessary for everyone.

First, tasks disappeared. Then entire processes. Now, entire functions are beginning to fade. The combination of automation and Artificial Intelligence does not merely replace human effort; it begins to replace the human role within the system.

And when what disappears is not just a job but a role, the question ceases to be economic.

It becomes something deeper.

For decades—perhaps centuries—our societies have been organized around a simple idea: if you do things right, you will find your place. Study, adapt, work hard… all of it carried meaning because there was an implicit promise behind it: to be needed.

That promise is beginning to fracture.

Not dramatically. Not through a visible crisis. But in a quieter, more elusive way. People who do everything expected of them… and still find themselves excluded. Not because they failed, not because they lacked effort, but because the system no longer requires what they offer.

This is what unsettles us, because it breaks a fundamental intuition about how the world is supposed to work.

The response, predictably, follows familiar paths: more education, more training, more investment. But something no longer fully aligns. Training for what, if what is learned can also be automated? Creating jobs for what, if those jobs are, by their very nature, temporary?

The question begins to turn in on itself.

Meanwhile, politics struggles to maintain a narrative that is starting to show cracks. It promises to restore what was lost, to reintegrate those who were displaced, to ensure that everyone regains their place. But it avoids naming what is increasingly evident: that the problem may not be how to bring everyone back in, but that the system is no longer structured to need everyone in the first place.

And that cannot be said openly.

Because saying it would mean admitting that the relationship between the individual and society is fundamentally changing. That belonging is no longer guaranteed by effort, nor even by capability. That people may do everything “right”… and still have no clear place.

This is where the real problem emerges. And it is not economic.

A society can live with inequality, with crises, even with prolonged injustice. What it struggles to endure is irrelevance—the feeling that one is not needed, that one’s absence would change nothing.

This does not produce an immediate rupture. It does not explode. It erodes.

A slow, quiet erosion. A growing distance between individuals and the system to which they are supposed to belong.

And at some point, that distance stops being individual. It becomes collective. It becomes political.

Because when enough people begin to perceive themselves as disposable, the problem is no longer about employment or income. It becomes a question of legitimacy. What sustains a system that can no longer offer a clear place to everyone? What holds a society together when belonging is no longer universal?

There is no clear answer yet.

Perhaps new forms of integration will emerge. Perhaps we will redefine what it means to contribute, to find value beyond work, to construct new forms of belonging. Or perhaps the system will simply continue advancing, accumulating tensions we do not yet fully understand.

But something has already begun, and it is difficult to ignore.

This is not about machines replacing us.

It is something more unsettling.

It is that the system is gradually becoming accustomed to not needing all of us.

And when that shifts from exception to norm, the question is no longer how many are left out.

The question becomes something far more uncomfortable:

who decides who is no longer needed.