Imported Capitalism. And That Is How Today's Long, Bitter Stretch Began

The gap between rich and poor did not simply get higher.
It only became thicker.

What changed is that
areas that once felt impossible even to dream about
now seem almost within reach.

The problem is a side effect that comes from capitalism and democracy not having emerged out of a society's own voluntary critical consciousness, but having been imported.

In both absolute and relative terms, things have clearly improved.
But compared with Young-su and Young-cheol next door,
or James and Tim made visible through the internet and globalization,
people feel relative deprivation because their salary, school background, looks, car, and house seem inferior to those people they know.

The aftershock of imported capitalism deepens across generations. One example is the idea that age is just a number and the better worker is the real senior. Beneath that is not just performance-centered thinking, but the uncomfortable truth of reducing people to products, metrics, and quantities. Another example is the idea that if you have enough money, nothing else matters. It is the imported-capitalism version of the old joke that fame can win applause for anything, now made real and ordinary.

The more troubling issue is not our generation but the next one. What used to appear as collective forms of relative deprivation has become more fragmented and personal among younger generations. Peer culture itself has become commodified. The targets are now peers themselves. New terms mocking where and how someone lives reveal how quantitative comparison has entered even friendship.

Why bring up such familiar complaints? Because the beginning of this story lies somewhere else entirely. Generative AI will neutralize the value of ordinary content. It will not only affect ordinary labor, but also the supposedly superior realm of intellectual labor through which people try to secure relative advantage.

AI will certainly create better conditions for humanity in many ways. But just as economic and social conditions, and improved access to information, made relative deprivation more detailed, fragmented, and normalized, the arrival of AI may accelerate the same reality in a more transparent, efficient, and comfortable way.

Think of it from a distance.
1. When roads become wider, do cars become safer and more comfortable? In the end, no. More cars simply flowed in.
2. When the internet becomes faster, do people get off work sooner? No. Faster internet just makes people do more work and spend more time online.
3. Did smartphones and messengers make it easier to focus on real life? No. They extended other people's words and demands into every corner of life.
4. Will generative AI replace human work? Perhaps partly, but the reality will likely be much more complicated than the optimistic slogans suggest.

In the past, class society, status hierarchy, and hereditary systems created an age in which domination and dehumanization felt normal. Today things may look different, but in many ways people are still being evaluated and related to according to use value, not humanity.

If this speed increases even more, it is hard to imagine what comes next.

So where did this begin? Again: imported capitalism, everyday competition accepted without thought, the accumulation of success from earlier and more expensive preparation, recognition through relative prestige, and a society that keeps rewarding people for advantages earned long ago.

Relative superiority and relative deprivation turn into opportunism. And then someone asks, so what is the answer?

The answer?
It has been a long time since exam season ended. Stop demanding the answer first.
Read the problem properly first.
Please.