Dystopian Horizon: The Great Schism

The 2020 crisis, fueled by monetary stimulus, has transformed capitalism. Efficiency and Artificial Intelligence have become Wall Street’s sole imperatives, carving out a historic gap between the euphoric markets and the labor force. This divide between the Stock Market and the Street is more than just economic—it is a civilizational warning.

The Wealth of Extraction

A tiny minority is drunk on records while the streets suffocate. This victory is illusory: it relies not on creation, but on the capturing of value; it is based no longer on work, but on the extraction of margins.

Faced with an aggravated unemployment rate, big capital was initially seized by panic. But it very quickly embraced this underlying dichotomy starting in 2020, recovering thanks to monetary stimuli that flooded the system with liquidity. No one complained; we were all grateful for the determined and historic interventions by states and central banks. However, some took advantage of the situation to force the paradigm shift—admittedly inevitable—which could still have been channeled to prevent this huge and immoral gap. Because while the hundreds of billions poured out, the zero interest rates, and the asset purchases favored a massive return to liquidity, they failed to lead to a decent recovery of the job market.

Wall Street’s Disinterest

Wall Street today shows an unprecedented, total disregard for unemployment, solely focused on efficiency. Companies have heavily invested in Tech and automation, giving up on returning to pre-pandemic hiring levels. Workers have been replaced by digital tools and AI. The result: productivity and, of course, profit margins have considerably improved.

A handful of giants now leads the charge, enabling stock markets to break historical highs every week. The euphoria reigning over the markets is entirely indebted to Big Tech, which dominates as an absolute master, mechanically raising the capitalizations of traditional companies with it. Our current macroeconomic context is at a stage never before experienced: we officially and openly depend on a few companies that—along with their satellites—condition the entire spectrum, propelling stock markets to stratospheric levels.

The Profitability of Exclusion

Markets are no longer sensitive to fundamentals. In fact, they rejoice in worsening unemployment rates, as these are synonymous with increased productivity, and therefore higher profits. Capital flows now matter far more than employment, inducing a worrying and historic disconnection: companies are called upon to produce more, to do more, but with less. Stock market surges follow one another, records are shattered week after week, while only scraps affect the labor market, light years away from the routine of the stock market giants indulging in share buybacks and managing their abundant cash reserves.

Wall Street and Main Street live in parallel universes. How much longer can this accumulation of profit and capital remain isolated from traditional production? By its magnitude, this fracture is a major warning. We are at a turning point, and this imbalance is, in the very short term, unsustainable. When profitability feeds on exclusion, it’s no longer possible to speak of an economy: it is a civilizational schism. The “Inevitable Revolution” is about to collide head-on with imminent unsustainability.