Markets with a social purpose
Today’s advances in AI and decentralized data are opening the door to new kinds of markets that actively reward people for socially beneficial behaviour. The disappearance of traditional jobs in the face of automation has sparked proposals like Universal Basic Income (UBI), but simply paying everyone a flat income may be an inadequate solution in a post-work world. UBI addresses material needs yet ignores the human need for purpose. Instead, “Markets with a Social Purpose” could offer a more humane alternative: leveraging personal data and AI to create market incentives for virtuous activities—learning, caregiving, community service—that enrich society. In this vision, individuals are rewarded not for economic labour (which machines increasingly handle) but for “Virtue Labor” that contributes to personal and social well-being. Before exploring how such markets might work, we first consider why the era of conventional economic labour is drawing to a close and why a UBI-only approach could lead to a bleak, Hobbesian social landscape.
The End of Economic Labour
AI driven automation will rapidly outperform humans in sector after sector, heralding the end of most traditional “economic labour” in the coming decades. Advances in robotics and AI mean machines can work longer, faster, and cheaper than people for an ever-growing array of tasks. Factories already use robotic arms to palletize goods and run assembly lines around the clock, without coffee breaks or sick days. Self-driving vehicles, AI customer service agents, and algorithmic stock traders are not science fiction but emerging reality. Research backs this inexorable trend: a landmark Oxford study estimated that roughly 30% of jobs could be technically automated by 2030 , and AI expert Kai-Fu Lee has predicted 40% of the world’s jobs may be displaced within 15 years . Crucially, these aren’t just manual or low-skill jobs—AI is encroaching on white-collar work as well. What remains for human workers? Perhaps only roles that demand irreducibly human qualities, like genuine creativity, emotional empathy, or spiritual guidance might endure. A machine might write passable news articles or diagnose illnesses, but being an inspiring religious leader or an avant-garde artist taps into depths of human experience that automation can’t easily replicate (at least for now). Apart from those niches, however, no occupation is truly safe.
The economic logic driving automation is simple: once AI and robots can do a job better and at lower cost, businesses will adopt them. The past promise that technology creates new jobs to replace the old is wearing thin—AI itself can spawn new industries and then run them with minimal human input. Automation, unlike humans, can be copied and distributed globally with little infrastructure cost, accelerating its spread. Just as mechanization once outpaced horse-drawn ploughs, AI-driven machines are poised to outperform human labour across the board, from driving trucks to analysing legal contracts, with superhuman efficiency. This economic endgame—machines doing virtually all production and services—might fully materialize by mid-century or sooner, according to many technologists. It forces us to ask: if income and wealth are generated mostly by machines, how will humans sustain themselves not just materially but psychologically? UBI is one popular answer, but a world that simply pays people to be idle could be fraught with new problems.
The Hobbesian World of UBI
UBI, the idea of providing every citizen a no-strings-attached basic income, has gained traction as a remedy for mass joblessness. On the surface, it’s elegant: as AI and robots produce abundant wealth, that wealth can be taxed and shared to enable everyone’s needs met, even if they have no formal job. Several countries have trialled UBI on a small scale, and proponents argue it could eliminate poverty and give people freedom to pursue their interests. Yet a future where paying people to do nothing is the norm raises profound psychological and social concerns. Human beings are not wired to be content in idle comfort; purposeless affluence can breed discontent. Thomas Hobbes famously described life without social order as “nasty, brutish, and short.” By analogy, a society where millions sit idle on a stipend could become a Hobbesian dystopia of alienation and unrest despite material plenty.
Psychological research shows that work is about far more than a paycheck. Employment provides structure, social connection, and a sense of purpose that are hard to replace. Even when money isn’t an issue, the loss of meaningful activity can erode mental health. Studies find that unemployed individuals suffer not only from lack of income but from the absence of routine, community, and status that work had given them. Being indefinitely on “vacation” sounds utopian until one considers the toll of aimlessness: depression, anxiety, and a loss of identity. In one striking meta-analysis, social psychologists Marie Jahoda and others confirmed that people without employment report significantly lower well-being on measures like self-worth and social engagement. In short, being needed and being useful are psychological needs. A society that meets material needs while neglecting those deeper needs risks fraying the social fabric. We derive self-esteem and social status from contributing to something beyond ourselves; UBI, if not paired with opportunities for contribution, could leave people feeling both dependent and pointless. Additionally, simply handing out income could engender resentment or complacency—some might game the system, while others seethe that they’re working while neighbours seemingly loaf. The danger is a polarized world of listless beneficiaries and disaffected holdouts, hardly the cohesive community one would hope for. This suggests that post-labour policy must address human purpose and dignity, not just cash transfers.
“Economic Labour” vs “Virtue Labour”
If we accept that in the future economic labour (the work done for producing goods and services in exchange for wages) will be largely automated, what remains is the realm of “virtue labour.” This encompasses all those valuable activities that aren’t done for a paycheck, but for personal growth or community benefit: caring for an aging parent, mentoring youth, volunteering at a shelter, studying new skills, creating art, participating in civic life. Historically, markets and GDP measurements have mostly ignored such work. If you quit a salaried job to care for a sick relative, the economy registers a loss of productivity, even though you may be doing something profoundly important. A mother reading to her children or a neighbour tending a community garden doesn’t count in financial ledgers. Market forces reward activities that generate profit, not necessarily those that generate value or virtue.
The fundamental difference between economic and virtue labour lies in their incentives and visibility. Economic labour is guided by prices, contracts, and competition; it has clear outputs that can be bought and sold. Virtue labour, by contrast, is intrinsically motivated or socially motivated, and its “output” is often intangible or long-term (a well-raised child, a cohesive neighbourhood, a wiser populace). Because traditional markets struggle to value what they can’t price, virtue labour has been systematically undervalued. Consider caregiving: the International Labour Organization estimated that unpaid care and domestic work would equal roughly 9% of global GDP (about $11 trillion) if it were paid. That staggering contribution is largely invisible to markets. Similarly, educating oneself or maintaining one’s health produces benefits (higher knowledge, lower healthcare costs) that accrue to society over time, but there’s no immediate market driven paycheck for hitting the gym or reading a book. The result is a kind of market failure: we incentivize people to flip burgers for pay rather than cook healthy meals for their family, or to work overtime at a company while neglecting community ties, because only the former activities yield monetary reward. Our economies thus routinely under-provision things like caregiving, community building, and lifelong learning—the virtues that make a good society. To redesign a post-work economy, we must find ways to measure and reward virtue labour without stripping it of its intrinsic meaning. That is where digital technology and new market mechanisms promise something revolutionary.
Evolution of Our Digital Technology
Transformative change in how we value virtue labour is becoming possible thanks to the explosion of personal data and AI capabilities in recent years. We live in an age where nearly everyone carries a smartphone or wearable device, continuously generating data about their activities, health, learning, and social interactions. This ubiquity of personal digital devices means that much of what was once invisible (like how far you walk each day, or how you spend your free time) can now be recorded. Initially, much of this data flowed into centralized tech platforms—big companies amassed profiles on our behaviour to sell ads or improve services. But the tide is turning. New privacy and digital competition laws such as Europe’s GDPR, DMA, DSA, and Data Governance Act give individuals the ability to access and control their personal data generated by tech companies and their connected devices, such as phones, wearables, and home smart devices. This allows individuals to aggregate their data in private data spaces, known as “personal data stores,” which only they can access and through which they can manage the sharing of their data with third parties. In this model, a person might have a personal data vault containing health records, education history, volunteering hours, etc., choosing which data to share or have analysed. Concurrently, AI is evolving to become decentralized and privacy-focused, driven by the need to gain users' trust and obtain permission for AI models to access personal data necessary to understand user context and deliver the best services. For example, Apple emphasizes "on-device" AI for its personal intelligence strategy, enabling iPhones to offer smart features without uploading all data to the cloud. This technological trend points toward the future of personal AIs acting as digital assistants that work with your data, understand your context, and provide assistance while maintaining data privacy and security.
In this not-so-distant scenario, individuals will have a personal AI that knows their goals (say, to learn French, or to stay fit, or to care for your grandmother better) and that monitors relevant data streams in your personal vault (your practice time, your biometrics, your calendar of caregiving tasks). This AI would act like a 24/7 personal mentor, nudging you toward beneficial habits and verifying your efforts and achievements. Because data can be kept locally even very sensitive activities (mental health journaling, for instance) could be leveraged by AI without that data ever being exposed to a tech giant or advertiser. As personal data becomes decentralized and under the user’s control, and as AI becomes more context-aware and privacy-preserving, the stage is set for entirely new kinds of services—and notably, new markets. Where traditional markets trade in goods and services, these new markets could trade in verified outcomes and social good, all enabled by trustworthy personal data and AI verification.
Markets with a Social Purpose
Imagine a marketplace where the “product” being bought and sold is a positive social outcome—education, health, environmental stewardship—verified by data and AI. Traditional consumer markets pass only minimal information between participants: when you buy a loaf of bread, you mostly just exchange money for the bread, with price and brand as the main signal of value. Little else is communicated about how that bread was made or the broader impact of the transaction. In contrast, Markets With A Social Purpose would leverage rich data to ensure that each transaction rewards a virtuous achievement by someone. We already see glimmers of such markets. Take carbon credits: here, the goal is to reduce greenhouse emissions, and the “product” is one tonne of CO₂ not emitted or removed. To trade a carbon credit, you need reliable data proving that reduction happened (through sensors, audits, satellite imagery of forests, etc.). This market has sprung into existence precisely because society decided emissions reduction is valuable and measurable—we put a price on a ton of saved carbon and created a tradeable unit. The global carbon offset market, driven by data and verification, grew to an estimated $1.9 billion in value in 2022. Each credit encapsulates information about projects (planting trees, installing clean energy) that go well beyond a simple buy/sell of fuel; it is a data-rich transaction in service of a social good (a safer climate).
Now extend that idea to individual actions. With personal AI and data tracking, it becomes feasible to measure a person’s contributions or achievements in various virtuous domains, without sharing the underlying data upon which the measurement is based. For example, consider an education market: students could earn certified tokens or credits for mastering new skills or completing courses, which could then be redeemed for income or opportunities. These tokens would be backed by verified data—perhaps your personal AI proctor confirms you truly learned the material and passed the exams. Similarly, a health market might reward people for healthy behaviour (steps walked, medical adherence), converting those verified habits into something of economic value. There are already apps hinting at this future: fitness apps that give you points or crypto tokens for daily steps, or platforms that reward users for sharing health data for research. The difference in a fully realized virtue market is the scale and reliability of the data gives orders of magnitude greater flexibility and reach. Almost any behaviour can be measured and rewarded with almost no administration cost to operate the new market. If everyone has a personal data vault and AI, cheating becomes difficult—your AI can cryptographically prove you did spend 100 hours caring for an elderly neighbour (via location data, check-ins, and the positive impact seen in the elderly persons data store etc.), so you earn a caregiving credit that might translate into monetary stipend or other benefits. Crypto economics could play a key role here: blockchain technology allows the creation of tokens and smart contracts that automatically distribute rewards when conditions are met. One could imagine decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that distribute machine-generated wealth (from robotic factories or AI-driven financial markets) and then channel those profits to reward people who engage in socially valuable activities. In essence, the profits of the AI-run economy would fund a new social contract: instead of wages for economic labor, dividends for virtue labor. These markets with a social purpose would still be markets—driven by voluntary action, competition, and innovation—but the “currency” they trade is social impact, and the payout is tied to personal achievement of democratically chosen goals.
What’s the Good Life?
All these possibilities beg the question: who decides what counts as virtuous behaviour worthy of reward? The “good life” is a concept philosophers have debated for millennia, and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. In a diverse society, we must democratically define the virtues and outcomes that such markets reward. This could be achieved through new forms of hyper-democracy and expert input, within frameworks that protect our pluralism—much like how the United Nations agreed on Sustainable Development Goals as a broad set of societal aims. Different communities might prioritize different virtue markets; one region could reward environmental cleanup efforts; another might focus on arts and cultural creation. The key is that it cannot be a top-down imposition of values. To maintain the liberal pillars of choice and freedom, people must have a say in setting the targets and must retain the freedom to pursue their own vision of the good life (within the broad rules that society sets). Free markets, for all their flaws, have been engines of innovation and personal freedom in our open democracies. In replacing or augmenting them with social-purpose markets, we should be careful not to lose those benefits. These new markets should harness market dynamics to support individuals to choose virtuous pursuits that suit them, by society incentivising a wide range of activities aligned to the common good.
We are contemplating a future where traditional economic jobs, largely, fade into history. This also has profound implications for the idea of capital ownership of the enterprises which form the backbone of economic production. In the future AI will also dominate innovation and investment choices – as it will simply become better at those tasks than humans. Gone will be the days when investors rightly earned the reward of their risk taking – as they won’t have made the decision and won’t understand why the investment decision was made. Their dividend returns will become unearned. No society is likely to permit a tiny fraction of its members receiving vast incomes by accident of their ancestors’ actions when the individuals now perform no economically useful role. If AI and machines generate most wealth, the old idea that shareholders (individual people) privately own all production may give way to new models of shared ownership. This isn’t a political perspective, but rather just the logical consequence of the evaporation of jobs and economic labour driven by the new technologies we are currently birthing.
What might life look like in this post-economic-labour future?
Markets with a social purpose would make it normal to earn one’s livelihood by improving oneself and one’s community. The teacher and the volunteer could be as valued as the banker once was. Of course, this future raises as many questions as it answers. It challenges us to rethink education, welfare, and even the meaning of profit. It also carries risks: if not implemented carefully, such systems could be gamed or could slip into dystopian social engineering. But done right, they promise a synthesis of freedom and fraternity—using free-market style incentives to nurture, rather than erode, our social bonds and individual purpose.
The end of economic labour need not mean a collapse into aimlessness relieved only by a stipend. Instead, it can herald the beginning of a new incentive structure for humanity. As we stand on the brink of this transformation, we briefly have the opportunity to shape our future. We have a chance to design new types of market that leverage democracy, psychology, culture and our new digital technologies as a means to achieve whatever we collectively believe to be “the good life” and drive our societies toward that goal. The challenge now is to seize that opportunity, before the old systems fade, and ensure that the next stage of capitalism becomes not a Hobbesian nightmare but a renaissance of human thriving. For we are at the integrum. The old order has died but is not yet dead. The new order is born, but not yet alive. We stand between two eras, with the future in our hands.