I didn’t always think this way.

There was a time, not that long ago, when I was fully bought into the grind. When I started my business, I saw everything through a numbers-first lens. Growth, profit margins, scalability. I wasn’t cruel, but I didn’t really think of people beyond their roles. I treated humans like moving parts in a system. Useful or not. Productive or not. That was the measure.

I thought it was just being smart. Efficient. Rational.

Looking back now, I feel a little uneasy about how narrow that mindset was.

Things started to shift when I built real friendships. Not networking. Not alliances. Actual friendships. People who let me in on how hard things really were. People working two jobs just to keep a roof over their heads. Talented friends who couldn’t find stable footing, no matter how hard they tried.

Some of them were affected by AI in ways that hit fast and deep. Jobs gone. Opportunities shrinking. Suddenly having to rethink what they were trained for.

I haven’t been hit as hard. I have a wide skill set, and that’s helped me stay above water. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the pressure. Things are shifting.

You can see it in the kinds of work that are drying up. You can feel it in the way people talk about their futures, with more uncertainty than hope.

And this is what really frustrates me about the way people talk about support systems.

Every time someone suggests helping the poor, someone else jumps in with, “But what if some of them are lazy?”

As if that’s a valid reason to let people suffer. As if the risk of helping someone who might not “deserve” it is worse than helping thousands who genuinely need it.

That logic doesn’t make sense to me anymore.
Not after seeing how easy it is to fall behind, even when you’re trying your best.

If the choice is between helping thousands or doing nothing because a few might abuse it, I choose to help. Every time.

I used to think of that as soft. Now I think of it as human.

Our grandparents could buy a house, raise a family on one income, take vacations, and retire. In Indonesia, that wasn’t luxury. That was just life. What happened?

We still talk about the middle class like it’s real. But most of us are just working class now. We rent more than we own. We chase gigs. We hustle nonstop. There’s a small group doing extremely well, and then there’s the rest of us, trying to stay steady in a system that keeps speeding up.

AI is only making that more obvious.

Right now, universal basic income still feels like a distant idea. Politicians don’t take it seriously. Most people don’t even understand what today’s AI can do, let alone what’s coming. But that won’t last. When jobs like cashiers, delivery workers, office assistants, even some creative roles, start disappearing in plain sight, we’ll have no choice but to face it.

I don’t know exactly when that shift will happen. But it’s coming.

And when it does, I hope we’ve let go of this obsession with who’s “deserving.” I hope we choose to build systems that care for people, even if they don’t tick every box. I hope we measure value in more than output.

Because I’ve lived the other way. And it may have looked efficient.
But it felt empty.