Will You Be Able to Afford It?
Corporations talk about valuation, earnings, and the return they owe their stockholders. The conversation always lands on profit, not revenue. Not amount times price, but what sits below the line and gets shared with shareholders. If you know what I am talking about, you know what I am talking about. What matters in the end is what a company holds in its hands once everything is paid for.
Human capital has always been a cost heavy expense. It was the thing you needed to operate a company. That held true until recently, when workflow automation and AI technology started taking the seat that humans used to occupy.
How Business Hubs Build Communities Around Them
Look at a metropole. Here in the Netherlands we have the Randstad, and within Amsterdam there are at least four areas that function as business hubs. There is Amsterdam Southeast. There is Amsterdam South, with the WTC. There is Amsterdam North, around Het IJ, which is industrial. And there is Westpoort on the west side, also industrial and more business to business than business to consumer.
Focus on Southeast, North, and South. Communities built themselves around these hubs, which makes sense. A community needs to survive and sustain itself, so there has to be an economy. I told you that two or three videos ago. You cannot have a community without something substantial holding it together. There needs to be trade.
The beautiful thing about these hubs is the demand for different skills and different educational levels. That demand pulls in people with higher education, raises the cost of living, and creates a need for transportation, infrastructure, leisure spaces, and smaller businesses that feed off the presence of big companies. Real estate investors gain the most, because the income flowing through these areas is substantial.
Why Remote Work Became a Threat to the Construct
That income explains the push against working from home. These businesses sign contracts and pay rent on commercial and office space. An empty office still costs money. Why pay rent on a space where nobody sits. An empty floor endangers the whole construct. So the message becomes clear, get back to the office and make that money. Few businesses want to keep remote arrangements alive, because the buildings and the surrounding economy depend on bodies showing up. Research on this shift confirms how central office occupancy has become to the financial logic of cities.[1]
What Happens When Technology Takes the Seat
Now go back to the story I sketched. Technology takes over the seat where humans used to sit, because it costs less. It remains an expense, yet measured against human capital it reads differently on the books. Even when the initial outlay is large, the expectation is that the cost depreciates over time.
So what happens to the people who used to sit there. They hear that the company does not need them anymore. The software handles it. The agent handles it. This is not only blue collar. It moves into white collar, then managerial, and it keeps climbing.[2]
The effect runs deeper than headcount. The demand for higher education stops getting a push. What companies want now is a broader set of skills, people who work with agentic AI technology, or a combination of both. They do not always need developers, yet anyone present has to operate these programs. The vacancy starts to read differently. The question shifts toward what sits in your portfolio rather than which degree you hold.
A bachelor still means something. Your master still means something. The hiring demand, though, leans toward whether you work with these tools and whether you have a portfolio that proves it. Human capital is not changing along at the same speed. People trained and brought in to make corporations turn over now face redundancy as those same corporations chase a cheaper and more efficient turnover.
The Ecosystem Effect Nobody Talks About
Here is what I have not heard people discuss. The effect on the ecosystem. Think about it. What happens to infrastructure when fewer people commute. The investment into moving people into these areas shrinks. What happens to real estate. What happens to the smaller businesses that depend on a steady stream of higher paying income flowing through the area. What happens to the kids going to school and the parents who take care of them while working in these hubs.
Let me give you an example of how this plays out. In Amsterdam there was a plan to stop a metro line running into a part of Amsterdam Southeast. That line was necessary because the area is known for people who do not own a car. The plan cut off that line and rerouted everything, forcing people into a longer and more expensive trip. That part of Amsterdam is full of businesses, and people depend heavily on that transportation to reach them. Cutting one line carries a real effect on a specific demographic.[3]
I am saying a lot without saying a lot. When income disappears from an ecosystem, the transport, the real estate, the schools, and the small businesses feel it in sequence. The same logic that removes a worker removes the reason to fund the line that worker rides.
So the question stands. As workflow automation reshapes who sits in these hubs, will you be able to afford it. Think about that.
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Footnotes
[1] Nicholas Bloom, Jose Maria Barrero, Steven J. Davis, and others, Working From Home Around the World, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2023. brookings.edu. This research documents how office occupancy and commercial real estate values are tied to in person attendance, supporting the point that rent obligations drive the corporate push against remote work.
[2] McKinsey Global Institute, Generative AI and the Future of Work in America, July 2023. mckinsey.com. The report projects that automation reaches beyond manual roles into knowledge and managerial work, supporting the claim that displacement climbs through white collar and managerial layers.
[3] World Economic Forum, The Future of Jobs Report 2023, May 2023. weforum.org. The report shows employers prioritizing demonstrated skills and AI literacy over traditional credentials, supporting the shift from degrees toward a portfolio that proves you work with these tools.
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