An Honest Commencement

Across our nation there are college students who have fulfilled an obligation. They have fulfilled the obligation to their field of study that sets out the principles, knowledge, and requirements to be acknowledged as leaders in their fields. They have fulfilled an obligation to their campuses. The access to the field of study that they chose is locked behind campuses that require, for its operation, a level of funding from those interested in pursuing those fields of study. At the time that those students walk across a stage and receive their diplomas the institutions of higher learning have received their payments in full from those students. Payments many of those students will carry with them for their entire lives.

Throughout the academic careers of most of these students they were lied to. They were told that after these obligations are fulfilled, they would be able to enter a class of people that would enjoy their lives. They were sold that they would have a profession that would utilize the capabilities of their brain, and the principles and knowledge that they’ve worked so hard to attain over these past four or more years. They invested in a future that in exchange for the institutional certificate would allow entry into a life of stability. What no one has been honest with them about is that there is another class of people that are planning and implementing a system that from its very foundations is designed to replace them and provide their future employers with a way to cut their personnel expenses from an average of 40%-60% to 10%-20%.

In the first quarter of 2026 venture capital investment totalled over $300 billion dollars. This is a level of investment comparable to the entire GDP of countries like Iran, New Zealand, and Greece. A level of investment this size has never been seen before from venture capital and the staggering thing is over 80% of that investment went into one sector of our economy, Artificial Intelligence.

As we look out into the sea of the graduating class of 2026 we have to ask ourselves, what reason would compel the investment class to pour the capital of the GDP of a country into a single industry: replacement. Not just trade agreement level of replacement, like we saw after NAFTA. We’re talking about a bet on the entire replacement of the sum of human labor.

Human Labor has always been a thorn in the side of the investment and corporate class because humans expect something. We expect that we will be paid a livable wage in exchange for the hours of our lives to produce or manage the end product of production. We expect that we will be provided a work environment that will be safe for us to perform this exchange. We expect that laws that regulate these companies will be honored and abided by the upper levels of the management structure. Throughout history those expectations of labor have been too much for capital to provide to human labor. When the manufacturing of the north, the pillars of this country, started to cost too much they were moved to the south. When the expectations of the south became too much for capital, they were moved further south to Mexico, where even cheaper labor could produce those products. Many consumers enjoyed those benefits without acknowledging what was traded. The products became cheaper, and in a consumer based economy that’s a good thing, but gone were the good-paying manufacturing jobs that provided livable wages replaced with retail jobs or multiple retail jobs, plus a gig job. That’s not the end of capital’s immigration story, because even cheap labor can get cheaper when you can move it to countries with human rights and corporate regulations that are questionable. For our graduating class, it would be hard to find a single item that is produced outside of a country that doesn’t have questionable workers rights.

This sea of our graduates are just the latest of a long line of labor that has been utilized by capital. A short time ago you were set apart, because of your credential, from the capital immigration story. You enjoyed the benefit of the cheap goods, while maintaining the income to be able to provide the life you were promised. You have probably noticed that it is shrinking more and more. The credential doesn’t go as far and the question creeps in does the debt justify the credential any longer? This class of 2026 is coming to terms with what the working-class was forced to almost 50 years ago and the working-class can instruct you in a way that the institutions that you’ve trusted can’t.

Your credential, your experience, your internship will be meaningless in the “New Economy”. You’ll be told you should have expected this. You’ll be told, you chose the wrong credential, had the wrong mentor or counselor. What is coming will be entirely framed as a failure in the individual, in your failure and your choices, not in the structure, trade policy, laws, the corporation. As a consolation prize, they’ll use the same A.I. models that replaced your income to design large scale surveillance architecture that will monitor everything you do. To ensure your safety.

To our graduating class of 2026 your boos and admonishments are heard, but they’ll continue to invest. They’ll continue to prepare. They’ve learned the lessons, from the housing crisis, that they can do it and the people will do nothing. There is a class of people whose purpose is the dispossession of wealth of the credentialed and working-class. To them you’re a line item on their financial statements whose proportion is too large in relation to their profits.

The same investment class that poured 80% of all venture investment into A.I. are preparing. They’ve built their bunkers and have them stocked. They’ve hired their private security forces and have formulated a plan to keep their security pacified when money becomes meaningless. They expect that you won’t resign without a fight. They’ve prepared for it.