This Time, We Are the Horses

The Labor Engine Wakes Up

In my earlier writing on RethinkX, I used a simple line: the cow is the next horse.

The meaning was not that cows disappear. Horses did not disappear either. They became culturally meaningful but economically peripheral. The horse moved from infrastructure to hobby, from engine of civilization to lifestyle, sport, beauty, memory.

RethinkX now makes the next move.

This time, we are the horses.

That sentence is uncomfortable because it punctures the usual way we discuss automation. We like to imagine that automation is about tasks we do not want, factories we do not visit, warehouses we do not see, or jobs belonging to other people. A robot may replace “labor,” but somehow not the sacred human center from which we observe the replacement.

RethinkX’s labor work is more radical. It argues that humanoid robots — powered by the convergence of artificial intelligence, sensors, actuators, batteries, compute, software, and manufacturing scale — will disrupt physical labor across every major sector of the global economy within the next 15 to 20 years.

Not one industry.

Not one job category.

The labor engine itself.

That phrase matters. RethinkX does not describe humanoid robots as gadgets. It describes a new labor engine in the same way the internal-combustion engine gave the automobile the power to disrupt the horse. A car was not just a carriage with a motor. It was a new system. Roads changed. Cities changed. Suburbs changed. Oil changed. Trade changed. Work changed. War changed.

When the engine changed, civilization reorganized around it.

Humanoid robotics points to a similar category shift. Not because the first robots will be magical. They will not be. The first robots will be clumsy, limited, expensive, mocked, overhyped, underwhelming, dangerous in some contexts, useful in others, and surrounded by bad demos and worse marketing.

That is how disruption begins.

The first versions are the most expensive and least capable they will ever be.

The mistake of thinking in jobs

The public conversation about robotics usually begins with the wrong question: which jobs will robots take?

It sounds practical, but it is misleading.

Jobs are human administrative bundles. They are contracts, identities, routines, hierarchies, legal categories, payroll structures, and social meanings. Robots do not “have jobs.” They perform tasks.

A nurse has a job. Inside that job are tasks: lifting, cleaning, measuring, documenting, preparing, monitoring, reassuring, moving, fetching, checking, noticing. Some are physical. Some are emotional. Some are judgment-heavy. Some require trust. Some require licensing. Some require hands, eyes, memory, patience, and timing.

A warehouse worker has a job. Inside it are tasks.

A builder has a job. Inside it are tasks.

A parent has no formal job in the household, but the home is full of tasks.

RethinkX’s key metric is therefore not jobs replaced. It is tasks per hour per dollar.

That is the sharper lens. It avoids the sentimental fog around job titles and looks at the actual unit of economic transformation: useful action performed at a cost.

If humanoid robots can perform more tasks, at lower cost, with longer working hours, less downtime, instant software updates, and networked learning across fleets, then the disruption does not wait until robots can replace a complete human being in one elegant swap. It begins as soon as enough tasks become cheaper and scalable.

This is the same reason autonomous vehicles matter before “all driving” is solved. The market does not require philosophical perfection. It requires economically useful thresholds.

The cost curve of action

RethinkX forecasts that humanoid robot labor will enter the market at a cost-capability below $10 per hour, fall below $1 per hour before 2035, and below $0.10 per hour before 2045.

Those numbers sound insane if you compare them to today’s robots.

They sound less insane if you compare them to the history of disruption.

When a technology delivers a 10x cost improvement over the incumbent system, and especially when it continues improving after crossing that threshold, the old system does not negotiate its way out. It collapses into smaller, protected, luxury, regulated, or symbolic niches.

The horse did not lose because people stopped loving horses. It lost because cars could travel farther, faster, cheaper, and more reliably as the system scaled.

Human labor is more complex than horse power. Human beings are not machines. Work is not merely output. Work gives structure, dignity, identity, community, status, rhythm, and meaning. Any serious labor essay must hold that truth.

But economics does not become false because feelings are real.

If a humanoid robot can work thousands of hours per year, perform a growing library of tasks, be updated across a fleet, avoid vacation, sick leave, fatigue, boredom, and HR friction, and fall rapidly in lifetime cost, then physical labor becomes a curve.

And curves do what curves do.

They move quietly, then suddenly.

The near-zero marginal cost of labor

The most important RethinkX claim is not “robots will take jobs.” That is the tabloid version.

The important claim is that the marginal cost of labor approaches zero.

We have seen this movie before, but in a different domain. The internet drove the marginal cost of information and communication toward zero. Once that happened, the world did not merely get cheaper newspapers. It got search engines, social networks, streaming, online education, cloud software, digital advertising, remote work, platform monopolies, memes, surveillance capitalism, and a rewired public sphere.

Near-zero marginal cost does not just make the old thing cheaper.

It creates new behavior.

When information became abundant, people did not only read more encyclopedias. They built Wikipedia, YouTube, Google, TikTok, open-source software, online courses, and conspiracy ecosystems. Abundance multiplies both intelligence and stupidity. It removes friction, then reveals human nature.

Near-zero marginal labor will do the same in the physical world.

Homes, factories, farms, hospitals, hotels, schools, elder care, construction sites, disaster zones, restaurants, warehouses, laboratories, small businesses, and cities all contain more desired action than current labor markets can supply. Much work is not done because it is too expensive, too dangerous, too boring, too remote, too skilled, or too scarce.

If labor becomes abundant, we should not imagine only substitution.

We should imagine expansion.

Every neglected elderly person who needs support. Every building that needs repair. Every small farm that cannot afford help. Every hospital corridor where nurses waste human attention on logistics. Every home where care work disappears into exhaustion. Every workshop, kitchen, studio, garden, factory, lab, and classroom where there is more potential than available hands.

Artificial labor may not merely replace existing labor. It may reveal how much labor civilization has always wanted but could never afford.

And then comes the question we are not ready for: what will we do with our time?

If the struggle for physical work weakens, human beings do not automatically become free. They become exposed. A calendar emptied by artificial labor can become a doorway to love, friendship, children, craft, music, prayer, walking, making, learning, and presence. It can also become an infinite scroll with better lighting. The scarcity of the future may not be labor. It may be connection, attention, inspiration, magic, and the courage to be fully here with another human being.

That is why labor abundance is not only an economic event. It is a spiritual test.

Living like kings, or becoming dependent customers

One of the more provocative RethinkX essays in the labor series is about “living like kings.” The phrase could sound vulgar, but the idea is important.

For most of history, only monarchs and the very wealthy could summon skilled service on demand: cooks, tutors, physicians, builders, cleaners, drivers, guards, craftsmen, musicians, advisors. Luxury was not only objects. It was available human capability.

Artificial labor changes that equation.

A humanoid robot is not just a dishwasher with legs. If connected to a broader AI and robotics fleet, it becomes a general-purpose interface to accumulated skill. The same physical machine may clean, cook, tutor, repair, carry, garden, assist, build, monitor, and learn. It will not be a perfect master craftsman at first. But the direction is obvious: software eats skill, and robotics gives software hands.

This is where the abundance vision becomes beautiful and dangerous.

Beautiful, because billions of people may gain access to forms of support, quality, care, and expertise that were historically reserved for elites.

Dangerous, because the question of ownership becomes central.

Who owns the robots? Who owns the fleet intelligence? Who sets the permissions? Who can switch off the labor? Who controls the spare parts, software updates, insurance rules, safety constraints, identity systems, and data? Does artificial labor create sovereign households and communities, or does it turn everyone into a subscriber of remote-controlled capability?

You are not sovereign because you have access to a machine.

You are sovereign when you own, understand, govern, or can replace the crucial layers.

Otherwise you are a customer with a flag.

Europe should pay close attention.

A region that misses humanoid robotics will not merely miss another consumer market. It may miss the next labor infrastructure. RethinkX goes as far as framing humanoid robotics as a matter of national competitiveness, security, self-sufficiency, and GDP-scale productivity. That sounds extreme until you remember that labor is inside everything.

If labor cost falls, everything touched by labor changes.

Which is to say: everything.

Protect people, not jobs

The hardest part of this transition is not technical. It is moral.

RethinkX’s cleanest policy line is also the most humane: protect people, not jobs, firms, or industries.

That distinction is everything.

Protecting jobs sounds compassionate, but it often becomes a way to trap people inside dying systems. Protecting firms becomes corporate welfare. Protecting industries becomes nostalgia with subsidies. The coal mine is protected, but the miner is not made free. The factory is preserved, but the worker is not prepared. The old system receives oxygen while the human being remains dependent on its decay.

Protecting people means something else.

It means income systems, education, ownership models, transition rights, health access, local resilience, psychological adaptation, new forms of dignity, and the courage to admit that work and worth cannot remain the same category forever.

That is not soft. It is harder than pretending the old jobs will return.

The labor disruption forces a spiritual question disguised as an economic one: if human worth is not secured by being necessary for production, where does it live?

This question will terrify societies built on scarcity.

Scarcity gave us a brutal but simple story: you are valuable because you are needed. Your labor is demanded. Your time is bought. Your body is useful. Your identity is tied to your economic function.

Abundant labor breaks that story.

If machines can do almost everything useful for a tiny fraction of the cost, the human being is not automatically worthless. That conclusion is scarcity thinking in disguise. It assumes the only value is economic necessity.

The better conclusion is more demanding.

Human value must move from necessity to meaning.

From output to agency.

From survival to creation.

From being used to being awake.

The transition will not be polite

None of this means the path will be clean. It will not.

There will be unemployment shocks, political backlash, fake safety narratives, real safety failures, inequality, monopolistic control, union conflict, cultural humiliation, regulatory confusion, and a lot of bad robotics theater. There will be people who dismiss the entire field because a demo fails. There will be people who worship it because a demo succeeds. Both will be wrong.

The right posture is neither panic nor worship.

It is preparation.

RethinkX is valuable here because it refuses the comfort of linear thinking. It does not ask whether today’s robot can replace today’s worker in every dimension. It asks what happens when a converging set of technologies crosses cost-capability thresholds and then keeps improving.

That is the real question.

And if the answer is even partly what RethinkX suggests, then labor is not merely being automated.

Labor is becoming abundant.

This time, we are the horses.

But unlike horses, we can understand the curve.

We can protect people instead of protecting stables.

We can build ownership instead of dependency.

We can use artificial labor to restore time, care, craft, learning, health, beauty, and exploration.

Or we can wait until the future has already happened and then ask why nobody warned us.

The warning is here.

The labor engine is waking up.

Sources: RethinkX Labor hub; RethinkX, “15 Insights into Humanoid Robotics”; RethinkX, “The Disruption of Labor”; Tony Seba, Adam Dorr and Bradd Libby, “This time, we are the horses”; RethinkX, “Living Like Kings”; RethinkX, “How much should we invest in humanoid robotics?”