Black Collar Crime
Black Collar Crime is a labor-economics framework coined by Cullen Conway on April 9, 2026 in response to Evan Bbbender's observation that AI had eliminated all white-collar jobs and therefore all white-collar crime.
Black Collar Crime
Black Collar Crime is a single-line economic doctrine produced by Cullen Conway on April 9, 2026 as the punchline to a brief exchange about the macroeconomic effects of artificial intelligence on the supply of white-collar criminality.
Originating exchange
The full exchange, in three turns:
"Everyone knows that crime pays and everybody does it." — Matt, April 9, 2026, 14:14 UTC
"It's because AI has eliminated all white collar jobs so there's no white collar crime to commit actually." — Evan Bbbender, 14:15 UTC
"Time for black collar crime." — Cullen Conway, 14:16 UTC
The thesis was not elaborated. No specific crimes were enumerated. Cullen has not, in subsequent weeks, returned to the topic, leaving the term to operate as a finished koan.
Reception and later use
The phrase has not been repeated verbatim in the corpus, but its underlying argument — that artificial intelligence has hollowed out the labor market sufficiently to require new criminal categories — recurs in compressed form. The clearest later restatement comes on May 13, 2026:
"We should do some crime." — Matt
"I don't know if this admin would prioritize pardoning us." — Evan Bbbender
"Our bribes would not be large enough." — Evan Bbbender
"Crypto scams are auto pardon I think." — Brian Ambuel
This thread is generally understood to be a follow-on application of the Black Collar Crime framework, with Brian Ambuel proposing the operational form (crypto scams) that the chat's bribe budget can apparently afford.