It is the question everyone asks when they are honest. If robots take over more and more work — what happens to the people whose jobs disappear? What happens to the warehouse worker in Hamburg, the cleaner in Zurich, the cashier in Milan, the logistics worker in Warsaw? Most answers to this question are unsatisfying. Optimists point out that every industrial revolution has ultimately created more jobs than it destroyed. Pessimists warn that this time will be different. Politicians promise retraining. Tech billionaires propose universal basic income. No one knows for sure what will work.
This article makes no attempt to know the truth. It tries something else: to honestly list what we know, what we do not know, and which answers are on the table today — including one that is rarely spoken.
One number is often quoted: an Oxford study from 2013 estimated that 47 percent of all US jobs were at risk of automation. That was a shock number at the time. Today it shows: reality unfolded differently from the study’s projection. Many of the at-risk jobs still exist. Some have been reshaped, others supplemented by new activities.
But this does not mean nothing has happened. McKinsey estimated in 2023 that by 2030 worldwide 400 to 800 million people will need to change profession to remain employable in the automated economy. Those are not small numbers. That is a movement that will directly affect many families.
What we also know: the most strongly affected professions today are those with the lowest educational requirements. Warehouse logistics, cleaning, cash register, machine operation and service activities. These are the professions giving many people a livelihood today, often people without higher education, often with families, often in regions where alternative employers are scarce. When these jobs disappear, not only an income disappears — a way of life disappears.
What we do not know
We do not know how fast the wave will come. Some industries are automating quickly today. Others are lagging behind expectations. We do not know how many new professions will emerge — history says many, but they will be different from the previous ones. We do not know whether the retraining infrastructure will work. We do not know how political systems will react when whole industries move at once.
What we particularly do not know: how income distribution will change. In recent decades, the share of national income going to labour (rather than capital) has fallen in all developed economies. If robots take over more work, this trend is likely to intensify. More value creation will be visible on the balance sheets of fewer companies — less as wages distributed broadly.
That is the worry that drives many people, often without their being able to articulate it. It is not about robots taking the job. It is about the proceeds of robot work not reaching those whose jobs they replaced.
Three classical answers — and their limits
Three answers have been discussed for years. Each has a true core. None is sufficient alone.
The first answer is retraining. Anyone losing their job should be retrained — into professions the machines do not replace. That is right and important, but has two weaknesses. First: not every person is equally retrainable in every phase of life. A fifty-year-old warehouse worker cannot easily be retrained into a data analyst — not because of lack of intelligence, but because of life circumstances, family responsibilities, educational connection. Second: the new professions are not safe from automation either. Anyone retraining today as a web developer does not know what AI will have taken over in five years.
The second answer is unconditional basic income. If not everyone is needed anymore, everyone should be entitled to a minimum income. This is a serious idea now being tested globally. The weakness: it solves the material problem but not the dignity problem. People live not only on money but also on meaning. Anyone permanently outside the value-creation machine loses more than income.
The third answer is redistribution through taxes. If companies make more profit because they pay less wages, they should pay more taxes — and the state redistributes. This is the standard social-democratic answer to all economic shifts. It works, but has two weaknesses. First: it comes after. Losses arise first, redistribution second, years of suffering in between. Second: it is politically fragile. Taxes can fall, programmes can be cut — the redistribution machine must be re-fought in every generation.
A fourth answer rarely named
There is a fourth answer rarely raised in political debate: participation from the start.
The logic is simple. If the proceeds of robot work will grow long-term, then we must ensure that as many people as possible are already today participating in this value creation. Not through later redistribution, but through ownership from the start. Anyone with a share in the robots that will take over their work does not lose everything when they come. They even gain when those robots become more productive.
This idea is not new. Economic historians describe under the term “people’s share” attempts to involve broad sections of the population in industrial value creation. Cooperatives have served similar functions in Swiss history — anyone who is a Migros cooperative member is co-owner of a company turning over billions. Employee share programmes are widespread in many countries. What these models have in common: they give ordinary people a share in value creation beyond their wage.
The new question is how this can work in the age of robotics. How can a warehouse worker in Hamburg participate in the robots that will transform her industry? How can a cleaner in Zurich benefit from the cleaning robots restructuring his industry? How can a young family in a mid-sized town enter early enough to benefit from the coming change — instead of being excluded?
What tokenisation changes here
Here a technical development comes into play that at first seems to have nothing to do with the social question: the tokenisation of assets on the blockchain.
Direct participations in robot fleets have so far been reserved for institutional investors. The hurdles were high: high minimum amounts, complex contracts, one’s own structures. Asset tokens under Swiss financial market law dramatically lower these hurdles. They make it possible to participate in a robot fleet — diversified, professionally operated, in small monthly units, without each participant having to buy, maintain or manage robots themselves.
That is the foundation of beep. We are building a Robo-Pool in which people participate through a monthly subscription. Anyone joining today at the entry price of 500 Swiss francs per month builds, over the years, a share that grows with the pool, with the robotics economy, with the proceeds of the four economic pillars on which our model rests.
This is not the solution for all social consequences of automation. But it is a concrete building block for the fourth answer — participation from the start. It is an answer available today to every person who takes the question seriously: how do I ensure I am on the winning side of this development?
Stay honest
We do not want to sell an illusion. Anyone joining beep today will not build wealth that protects them from all the risks of the robotics revolution. The wave will in any case have losers — people whose jobs disappear, regions that become structurally weak, families that struggle with the change. Tokenisation alone will not solve this. Retraining, basic income, redistribution — these answers will continue to be needed. And they must be politically fought for.
But beep is an answer that does not wait for political decisions. It is here, it works, it is accessible to every person who can subscribe monthly. Anyone joining early builds, over the years, a share that grows with the robotics economy. Anyone not joining early watches others collect the proceeds.
This is not the whole answer to the question what happens to people. It is an answer individual people can give themselves — today, in this generation, without waiting for political majorities. The question remains open. But it is no longer unanswerable.
