The full framework behind Railroads, Electricity, the Internet Each Built a Middle Class. AI Might Not. The essay is the readable version; this is the machine — how technology reshuffles wealth, broken into a first principle, a wealth-capture formula, six transmission mechanisms, AI's four layers, a nine-question research method, and a few falsifiable hypotheses — so you can run it on the next technology yourself.

I listened to an episode on AI and wealth redistribution — the finance podcast 十分吸引 crossed with 听懂涨声 — and the best part was the history: how railroads, electricity, and the internet each reshuffled wealth. I dug a layer under their account and made it harder: the reshuffle runs one logic every time — technology rewires the economic network, the old bottleneck fails, a new one gets priced, and wealth follows the bargaining power. Railroads rewired the goods network, electricity the energy network, the internet the information network, AI the task network. The first three eventually grew a new middle class, because those production modes needed armies of ordinary people. AI is heavy-asset and dispersive, so it may run only the concentration half and skip broaden-the-middle.