This year, corporate America will replace more than 200,000 workers with artificial intelligence. This is not progress. It is a moral catastrophe unfolding before our eyes.
From the moment John Adams and his fellow Founders signed the Declaration, they understood that America could only thrive as a religious, moral society rooted in Judeo-Christian values. They forged a free-market republic intended to serve the common good, not hollow the nation of its humanity. Today’s tech titans have forgotten that sacred bargain.
Amazon plans to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs—and dozens more companies are lining up to follow suit. They celebrate an age of “innovation” while celebrating the extinction of the very citizens whose labor built this country. Replacing human beings with robots is not efficiency. It is a confession of corporate cowardice.
Short-term profit is already devouring long-term stability. When a dishwasher is replaced by an automated arm, that family’s paycheck vanishes. They buy less toothpaste. Toothpaste factories shut down. Drone-deliveries of whitening gel become a ghost of an economy. More layoffs follow. The corporate boardrooms toast each margin point gained with shrugs, as if humanity were collateral damage.
Conservatives believe in competition. We champion innovation. But we insist that commerce exists to uplift people, not to discard them. A market that sacrifices human dignity for a fractional uptick in earnings is a market that has lost its moral compass.
Make no mistake: squeezing every cent from your workforce and celebrating layoffs as “efficiency gains” is inhuman. It is time to call these profiteers what they are—industrial carpetbaggers. They pillage our towns, empty our factories, then vanish, pockets bulging with taxpayer-subsidized gains.
The solution is straightforward. Corporate boards must adopt a new charter of social responsibility. Every public company should pledge that any structural change—involving automation or reorganization—will only proceed after a rigorous accounting of community impact. Companies that honor this pledge earn tax credits and public recognition. Companies that refuse face higher levies and reputational consequences.
We must redefine success. IPO windfalls and short-term stock spikes earned by gutting the workforce will be labeled what they are: exploitative. Executives who profit by erasing livelihoods must be held to account—just as we once held Reconstruction carpetbaggers to account for preying on the vulnerable.
Churches, community leaders, and civic organizations must rally behind this cause. We cannot leave moral leadership to Hollywood or coastal elites who cheer every new piece of “tech wizardry” regardless of its human toll. The future of our towns and the dignity of our citizens demand that we reinstate moral sanity in our boardrooms.
Free markets flourish when rooted in moral purpose. Commerce divorced from ethical constraints breeds nothing but social decay. The same conviction that led our Founders to enshrine religious freedom and property rights should now compel us to defend the dignity of every worker.
We stand at a crossroads: succumbing to a dystopian vision of workless prosperity or reclaiming a humane capitalism that prizes both profit and purpose. The American people will not tolerate a soulless economy. It is up to us to remind corporate America of its sacred duty—to innovate, yes, but never at the expense of the very hands and hearts that built this nation.
