The K Is Not the Problem
We keep asking whether society is becoming K-shaped. That is too blunt. Some inequality can be lived with. Some divergence is normal. The sharper question is: which parts of life are becoming revocable?
The true upper K is not simply the rich. It is the class whose life is hard to revoke. They own title, custody, exits, time, trusted rooms, legal appeal, institutional standing, and the ability to move between games. The lower K may have abundance, but much of it is permissioned: platform access, AI tools, gig work, school sorting, subscriptions, algorithmic reputation, and bureaucratic eligibility. It lives inside abundance by permission.
So the danger is not inequality alone. The danger is revocable abundance.
AI makes many things cheap: content, tutoring, coding, advice, translation, design, strategy, even intelligence display. This is deflation. But if we only use it to do the old things more efficiently, we get glut. More reports, more dashboards, more content, more slop, more pseudo-learning. Output gets cheaper. Formation does not.
Abundance is therefore not automatically liberation. It can destroy sequence, attention, apprenticeship, taste, and judgment. The rich will not simply buy more AI. They will buy protection from raw abundance: quiet schools, human teachers, serious peers, trusted doctors, analogue childhoods, cultivated homes, good rooms, real editors, and time.
Nor will we escape status games. We are human. Meaning becomes status. Health becomes status. Taste becomes status. Serenity becomes status. Even subtraction becomes status. The task is not to abolish status. It is to civilise it.
Bad status games consume people. Good status games form people.
This is where finite and infinite games matter. Exams, careers, money, publishing, romance, craft, politics — these are finite games. We need them. They give shape. The problem begins when one game becomes total. One exam. One platform. One credential. One property market. One employer. One wealth ladder. One metric of merit.
An infinite society is not a society without competition. It is a society where losing one game does not end your life. You can recover. You can switch games. You can still matter.
So the real question is not: how steep is the K?
It is: how many finite games can a person lose and still have a life?
That is the measure of a decent society. Deflation makes output cheap. Abundance makes attention fragile. Status games return. The upper K buys exits and shields. The lower K gets revocable abundance. The task is not equality alone. The task is to keep life playable.
This little post of yours could not be more insightful.
In India where I live, I believe this situation has already become reality. The rich and the rest of the population are playing different games. Even though there are claims that more people have been lifted out of poverty, the reality on the ground does not match up.
The poor (or the burgeoning middle class for that matter) may have a few more rupees in their pockets but access to quality education, infrastructure, health care, housing, a clean environment, and basic quality of life has only worsened over the past few years.
India has become unlivable while the rich and political classes line their pockets while continuing to destroy everything around them at an alarming rate. Surveillance has increased and access to any kind of service means giving up your identity and privacy to the government. Elected politicians think they are doing you a favor for any little largesse that they dole out.
India has so far missed the AI boat (both in terms of IP or deployment). But when it gets deployed by the state (and it will), the divide will be cataclysmic.