Recently, an internal concept has been circulating in Silicon Valley called the Permanent Underclass—an eternal lower class.

A large portion of people will forever lose the ability to create wealth and to cross social classes. This is one of the changes AI brings to human society.
What exactly is the relationship between AI and humans?
The relationship of intelligent replacement—intelligence as a means of production, which was originally and can only be provided by humans, but now it’s different; intelligence can be mass-produced through electricity, chips, and models.
What profound impacts will this bring?
The truly concerning issue in 2026 is: Will AI trigger a comprehensive revaluation of humans as a means of production?
What does revaluation mean? Let me give you an example:
Bride price.
The thing called "li" (礼), most people discuss it as a cultural custom—feudal remnants, regional differences, mother-in-law’s greed. But if you look at it from an economic perspective, what is the essence of bride price?
It is a social pricing of a scarce resource.
A woman’s physiological structure determines that she can provide men with two of their most essential needs: sexual resources and reproductive resources. Men cannot produce these themselves; they can only obtain them from women. And bride price is society’s pricing mechanism for this scarce resource.
You might think it’s a custom, but in fact, it’s a market behavior.
It follows supply and demand, bargaining logic, and the principle of equivalent exchange.
The more developed the economy, and the more unbalanced the gender ratio, the higher the bride price—this is not a coincidence; it’s a market law.
Why start with bride price?