In a very low-wage world, more people will opt out of work. That will inevitably strain the social-safety net; societies will be ever more clearly divided into those who work and pay for social programmes and those who live off them. Societies will face a reckoning: either they will decide that this dynamic is unavoidable and should be made to work as effectively as possible, or the haves will reduce aid to the have-nots, leading to intense political conflict between those two groups.

That conflict will be shaped and determined by which groups most effectively wield power.