The Leisure Class Killers – A Very, Very Short Story – In the Very, Very Near Future
They called it Universal Basic Income, but Deuce called it “getting paid to do nothing,” which was fairly accurate. The government checks started showing up right around the time the robots took over the warehouse jobs, the coding jobs, the paralegal jobs, the graphic design, and the rest of the creative industry gigs. Even the damn customer service jobs went to some AI that sounded more human than half the people Deuce knew. Suddenly, everybody in the hood had money and time… and too much of both.
At first, it seemed like a gift. Deuce’s cousin bought a new PlayStation. His baby mama got her nails done every week. Smurf stopped hustling for a minute, and despite the pay cut, just sat back and enjoyed the checks rolling in. But after only three months, something shifted. Deuce noticed it first during a cookout on Bideker Street. Not just the hustlers, but even the guys who used to work legitimate construction gigs were just… standing around. Drinking. Smoking. Talking shit. Getting restless. The energy changed. You could feel it like the smell of rain before a storm. These weren’t guys built for leisure. They were built for territory, respect, survival. And now they had nothing to thrive upon.
The gang sets started recruiting heavy. If you weren’t working, you were available. If you were available, you were vulnerable. Or useful. The Crips expanded into three new blocks in a month. The Bloods did the same. Deuce’s crew grew from twelve to thirty-two without even trying. Kids as young as fourteen were throwing signs, claiming colors, running product for something to do. It wasn’t even about the money anymore—the checks covered that. It was about meaning. Purpose. A reason to wake up. Gangs gave you that. Structure. Brotherhood. A mission. The government gave you $2,000 a month and a pat on the head. The streets gave you identity.
By month six, the murder rate tripled. Deuce watched it all unfold like he was stuck in some twisted social experiment that even Mr. Beast couldn’t have imagined. Everybody had some money. Nobody had a meaningful gig, and idle hands, with government funding and bruised egos, were writing checks that the coroner couldn’t cash fast enough. He thought about the old days, back when hustling was hard and meant something, when you moved weight because you “had” to, not because you were bored out of your skull. Now? Now they were just killing time and …well, literally killing.
Deuce stood on his porch one evening, watching the streetlights flicker over Bideker. The AI had taken the few jobs the hood once had to offer, and the government had sent the rent. But the gangs? Well, the gangs were doing what they’d always done—filling the void. Turns out you can’t algorithm your way out of human nature, or code purpose from a direct deposit. Deuce lit a cigarette and smirked, not because it was funny, but because it was predictable. We’d built a world where nobody had to work. They just forgot to give people a reason not to play gangsta.