Headcount thresholds.... Discuss.

The debate around AI and jobs keeps circling the same two ideas: tax the robots, or hand everyone a UBI cheque. Both feel like retreats.

So here's a different one: what if large companies were legally required to employ a minimum number of people, relative to their revenue?

Not as a punishment, but as the price of operating in society.

Efficiency without obligation hollows something out. A company generating £10bn in revenue with 20 employees is a warning sign not an achievement. Gorging on capability with no duty to the society that made it possible.

A headcount threshold wouldn't just protect jobs. It would force something more interesting: companies having to actually ask why they employ people, and what for. Not to optimise but TO CREATE. Build culture and do things that a very efficient machine, by definition, won't bother doing.

That feels like a better question than "how do we tax the robots." And a better answer than UBI, which essentially pays people to step aside.

Yes, the ratios would be messy. Different sectors, different economics. That's a design problem, not a reason to bin the principle.

Clearly, I don't have the right numbers. But it seems worth the argument.

What's the counter?