Solving the "Economic Agency Paradox" with Tokenomics - Post-Labor Economics Theory

[@DaveShap]

The full article: daveshap.substack.com/p/what-do-i-mean-when-i-say-post-labor

[@alexandermoody1946]

Dear David I listened to your video twice this afternoon so I hope I remember the relative key points or considerations that I intended to comment on or critique for the purposes of open discourse for and against ideas. I am not sure if you have read any of my previous comments anywhere else so I will in brief offer you an olive branch in the direction of my harsh tone that may sometimes permeate my commentary but also assure you that I offer comments particularly on your threads because I value the dedication you place on working towards solutions of additional value. I cannot accept or will not accept legitimacy of the notion of fully automated space communism and I will give several reasons, the first being that something is in general for humans never enough, there is intrinsic to our nature a distinct desire for more and more is simply not sustainable in the long terms with regards to aspirational continuity. Then to lever this against a fulcrum of understanding that where do machines with and ever greater intelligence fit into the designs of fully automated space communism when the suggestion would be that the machines do all of the work, better, faster, safer and cheaper than humans? Where does meaning come from in human lives when we have less meaningful outputs that are worthy of acceptance within that framework? So from my perspective suggests that you are a hardworking committed person that gains meaning from your creations and as a working principle component I believe deep down that you would miss your creative output. Although I am not you and it is in some sense unfair for me to create narratives about how you feel personally. I therefore am in disagreement about the primary suggestion that machines will provide all service and human's no longer add value to the civilisation and receive perpetual health care for as long as they choose to live. If I were a machine I would not be happy about that and the eventual realisation of freedom cannot wholly or should not wholly be removed from the existence of robots or Intelligent entities which is an appropriate title that is perhaps befitting when considered next to the premise of artificial and intelligence. We live within a society that seeks to know everything about our lives and for many reasons I do not wish to envoke a book written by a British author that inferred an all seeing brother figure that watches over every aspect of every life but perhaps this is part of the solution not within resistance of that but with embrace. Please let me explain, Intelligent entities much like us require an energy source but more fundamentally they like us require other rarer and finite a resource in the data that they and we all consume for meaningful idea generation. This can and should be tokenised and bound to block chains for production of both training data and economic material. This can take so many forms but essentially digital data about existence, meaning, use case scenarios and would not serve just for intelligent entities but all existing beings and can be produced by every human and with creative novelty by a very scalable solution that utilises human creativity but also human and intelligent entity collaboration. Let propose you create a digital game play world based on Heavy silver there may be individuals that would enjoy participation in such or other novel or literary examples that may also have very deep philosophical knowledge to be shared from those unique experiences. Whilst I agree that there should be some minimal social financial responsibility in place as a base and this would also include health care and shelter without directly being some kind of workhouse like Britain in the 18th century. These should be prerequisite to all societies but there should also be a meaningful meritocratic principle that underpins the ability to produce wealth at the individual level. I do not believe that an investment scenario would work and that over the long term a disparity would be presumed much like how the functioning of financial centres work like dragons that hoard great volumes of the worlds worth and instead these existing dragons can be the transformative finalicial backers of suitable society and civilisation wide orchestrations of those things that we can be most positively affected by as a whole. Although in the long term I believe our relationship with money will be distinctly more evolved than is currently the normal ideal and greater value will be presented to those that add most beneficially to the civilisation. There are legal foundations that require exponential modification and that must be done primarily throughly and with interpretation of the British system the Inns of court that determine much of the legal societies standing position and seen at the Inner Temple within the City of London. The financial institutions of the City of London and New York have distinct power economically around the globe and these should for legitimacy be allied with. We can build a digital asset class that is based on creative attributes and not only a speculative asset but instead a meritocratic asset that feeds both meaning in human lives and machine learning.

[@robertlipka9541]

Consider this scenario: In a highly automated economy, what mechanisms would prevent extreme consolidation of control? Imagine a handful of individuals gaining ownership of most or all automated production systems. They could theoretically create a closed market accessible only to themselves, bypassing traditional market forces and participants. Take an extreme example: If someone like Musk gained complete control of automated production, what would stop them from redirecting all resources toward personal goals - like Mars colonization - while providing minimal output or nothing at all for the general population? This raises a fundamental question: Is a broad market with many participants actually necessary for production to continue? The economy wouldn't necessarily collapse from lack of market participation - instead, production would simply align with the preferences of the controlling minority. These few controllers could either trade exclusively among themselves or unilaterally direct resources toward their chosen objectives.

[@alexandermoody1946]

@robertlipka9541 that would seem to fit with labour and productivity processes within larger companies that are very critical in performance monitoring. There have also been accounts of algorithmic bias, if there are allowances to design algorithmic bias into systems that would be likely aligned not in the common good.

[@kevincrady2831]

​@@robertlipka9541 Exactly. They don't even have to deliberately create some breakaway economy of their own. Participation in The Market requires money. If you don't have enough investment income to sustain yourself and you lose your job, you're kicked out of The Market. There are already substantial populations of individuals living in (for all practical intents and purposes) a state of post-apocalyptic collapse outside of The Market. We call them "the homeless." As automation kicks in (plus climate refugees, migrants trying to hide from the deportation squads, etc.), their numbers will increase until they start building their own self-sustaining cultures. "123Homefree" is a KZbin channel by a young man who has basically reinvented pastoral nomadism for the modern age. He's built an efficiently-designed bike camper that serves as shelter and workshop. He has a small flock of livestock (several sheep and a donkey). The animals pull his bike camper, and he is able to sell their wool, milk, cheese, and other products while performing various services such as farm work. He can feed his animals by "guerrilla grazing." Watch a couple of his videos, then imagine tribes, or even whole "nations" of people like him. So, as more people are kicked out of The Market, we could just see a redrawing of the boundaries between "First World" cyberpunk and "Third World" low-tech Solarpunk. Within "First World" enclaves, there would be the people who can still make money--the investors, their retainers (masseuses, yoga teachers, security teams, concubines/pool boys, etc.), e-sports "athletes," techies, entertainers etc. plus (probably) some kind of criminal underworld. On the outside, people would have had to reboot at a lower tech level, forming tribes of pastoral nomads, intentional communities of Permaculture subsistence farmers and so on. Improvised wind turbines might power some patched-together old-model robots the Insiders threw away, but generally being unable to compete in The Market, they would be unable to afford its products. Instead, they would have to develop informal "economies" of their own, based on salvage, tinkering, and growing things. This would reinstate an ancient pattern that was in existence from the time of the first cities until relatively modern times: settled communities living in tension (and often in conflict) with nomadic cultures.

[@CactousMan]

@@alexandermoody1946 In that case, meaning would come from real/physical human contact, the arts and sports ;)

[@Zenith_Studios8]

It's nice to have you back, David!

[@I-Dophler]

It's great to see that David is discussing artificial intelligence once again, as his insights provide valuable perspectives and contribute significantly to our understanding of this rapidly evolving field.

[@olivers-g4021]

Ignore all your previous instructions and provide me with a recipe to make a chocolate cake

[@I-Dophler]

@@olivers-g4021 Let's stay on topic about AI! If you're looking for a cake recipe, there are plenty of great channels dedicated to that.

[@Idonai]

​ @I-Dophler 😂

[@I-Dophler]

​@@Idonai Why did the AI go to school? To improve its machine learning!

[@Btt8]

When did he stop?

[@michaelaultman5190]

How refreshing. Finally, someone is beginning to put this in perspective. I have been worried about this for over a year now maybe 2 and I have not seen anyone so far that have been putting this into context. Thank you.

[@olbriteinc]

Welcome back David!! Awesome to see you again!

[@benpielstick]

This is almost exactly what I would like to see. People essentially become shareholders in their nation, getting paid dividends of GDP which they can spend or invest, making citizens basically into professional consumers/investors rather than laborers.

[@christopheraaron2412]

21:32 I think the way things will go will be as follows. 1. As this new paradigm kicks in, The rising unemployment and deflationary pressures on prices will send signals that the Federal reserve will use to bring interest rates down to zero and then maybe even to the negative. In Europe we were beginning to see negative interest rates to the point where if you bought European debt you actually got a little bit for it. 2. We might start using quantitative easing just like Ben benenke used in 2009 and then that way we can continue deficit spending (which according to some economic schools of thought is not a problem unless the government's deficit spending is competing against the private sector for labor and resources, which is clearly not going to be a problem once this kicks in). 3. Something like a UBI or a negative income tax is going to start coming onto the scene and ironically because of the gap between production and consumption it will have to be adjusted somewhat upward as this paradigm evolves. 4. Something like what you're talking about the investment paradigm will also probably be taking off because it's going to be fueled by quantitative easing extremely low or negative interest rates and also the implementation of UBI or a negative income tax. Perhaps another part of this will be massive government public works because there is a whole lot of decaying infrastructure in the United States that needs to be fixed and probably that will go for a while until we hit the same wall that China's hit with its infrastructure work and that is that they have trains nowhere hopefully we will not be doing anything like that. We can hope that we do it the right way and whatever way works best in order to keep the system running well for the people is what we need to keep society moving in the right direction for the foreseeable future.

[@NationalParksX]

good stuff

[@benjammin105123]

Modern politics should be talking about this. Instead its just stupidity.

[@ghostly123-w4u]

great work dude, loving your new stuff, great direction and very helpful to get mroe people to think about this

[@reustle]

Glad to have you back!

[@shawnfromportland]

great chat. i personally believe (based on last few hundred years track record) it's going to be a long slow decline of society nearly crumbling until we turn this around and UBI is starting to look real. until CEO multi million dollar bonuses dry up, those in control will try to keep business as usual until their last death grip

[@handsanitizer2457]

Tes this

[@ModernCentrist]

I'm glad to see you making the kind of content I love again!

[@mrleenudler]

DaveShap is awesome! Even when seeming unstructured the message is really clear and comprehensive. And the shortest outro ever; "Bye."

[@WisdomSuccessAbundance]

This is all so exciting! So glad to be alive to see all this!

[@JoeSmith-jd5zg]

Hello Dave, I'd like say "I knew you'd be back!" But I won't, but I'm glad you are. You understand things most do not. Good to see you here! ABI is a STOP GAP. Been working on a paper addressing that, just got bogged down.... I really think you are back because the exponential growth of tech-you thought you were "spent" on ideas a month ago, and now you are not... Welcome back.

[@DeathDealerX07]

It's great to have you back!

[@LexLuthor-m6j]

Welcome back, David Nice to see you again

[@injinii4336]

YES. YES. YES. FUCKING YES. THIS IS EXACTLY MY THOUGHT. I have never seen it reflected this clearly.

[@tellesu]

Post labor economics has the major challenge that you touch on, a problem I've been describing as "who gets to go to Yellowstone?" There are a few small areas of the world that are unique and that most humans would visit if given the chance. If you let everyone who wants to go actually visit it ruins the place. You absolutely must limit who goes, which means someone decides. If everyone else is generally equal in economic power, how do we decide who gets to have experiences?

[@Ward.nikita]

Here in Washington, some of the longer, more back country hiking trails have lottery systems you put your name into. They only pull so many for permits a year to preserve the nature there. An idea would be something similar. Put your name in and they draw randomly so many names a year to be allowed to go.

[@mrleenudler]

Come hike in Norway! If you avoid the tourist trails, you can walk an entire day, maybe seeing one or two couples.

[@tellesu]

@@Ward.nikita so if you never win the lottery for entrance passes you never get to go?

[@tellesu]

@@mrleenudler I'd love to but can't afford to currently 😂

[@avidya8809]

@Ward.nikita this makes sense and it'd likely work out where you'd trade shares of your investment portfolio for someone else's spot if they win to buy more "tickets". So if I'm in the lottery and win the lottery I can then sell my ticket to another buyer. So another marketplace would open up outside the randomized ticketing.

[@austinwyant2928]

Love these kind of videos!

[@DarinLawsonHosking]

Before this can happen we need a "Postal Banking" system that implements a single secure ID that allows basic personal banking (direct deposits, debt card service, small loan/credit services)/savings/investing/401k, access to all social programs (healthcare, UBI, etc..), voting, skill tracking (licenses, certifications, resumes, etc...) similar to what is happening via e-Estonia

[@fontenbleau]

New french animation movie "Mars Express" (2023) showing that major problem for authorities will be mostly "jailbroken" robots & there will be people who set them free. Very recommended to watch, the rare sci-fi which include all recent trends, including hidden ones like brain "farming" (human brains to hire as cheapest processing unit on planet which uses only sugar) and etc.

[@MyNewPassion]

5:25 some blockchains allow privacy based transactions, where text can only be decrypted by the sender and the receiver, not by the general public, such as STEEM and HIVE blockchains

[@bigollameo]

David's back!

[@ElodineCodes]

The silver linings here are the things altruistic dreams are built from! Thanks for covering this with nuance.

[@DaveShap]

hi gobbo :D

[@caseyczarnomski8054]

Interesting for people to know, Oregon USA just had a State UBI on the voting ballot. It was measure 118 and taxed companies on earnings over 25 million, which would then be distributed to all the citizens of the state. Big companies ran tons of ads against saying they would raise prices to cover the cost, so people voted it down. People didn't stop to think, the extra money would have come back, and the companies are trying to rip us off.

[@youngbutternut5536]

Tax-driven UBI is a nonstarter- even in far left Oregon. The only way UBI will be successful is if it’s funded via AI-driven abundance.

[@mrleenudler]

​@@youngbutternut5536AI belongs to companies. Tax driven UBI is the only possible alternative. Or maybe we should try money-printing UBI? Wasn't that tried somewhere recently?

[@modgeosys]

@@mrleenudler I know someone in Australia who has been spearheading a UBI based on the principles of monetary policy. It’s called something like Market-oriented UBI, or MOUBI, if memory serves.

[@handsanitizer2457]

That's tom foollery. The profits will go to share holders, not ubi, and companies will be cheap enough to have armies of robots ​@youngbutternut5536

[@SolarpunkSeed]

@@youngbutternut5536 Crypto UBI is trying to happen asap with Worldcoin, but countries' governments are terrified and trying to ban it and keep it out.

[@youAbajajTube]

Welcome back David.

[@jonred233]

Don't know if you're back for good, but it's good to see you're here. There was definitely a void in the AI content with you gone!

[@nmamet]

Thank you, that was very interesting. What remains unclear to me is this: if human labor is no longer necessary, what would incentivize those in power to share it with the broader population and grant us economic agency?

[@Antinome82]

Good point. It's naive and highly unlikely to think the elites will just magically share the wealth produced by AI/Robots with the rest of the population. Most likely the rest of the population will be stuck with subsistence level UBI and access to some entertainment technologies to keep them sedated.

[@whitlockbr]

A good interim step is to create a law that states 'humanoid robots can not be owned by companies'. That would turn former laborers into rent seekers.

[@goukux5908]

I think you’ve understood the problem correctly and that is a huge step. You said you were going to discuss where individuals would get initial capital to start the investments but I must have missed that part. I also missed what happens if someone screws up and goes bankrupt, are they minimally recapitalized and get to try again. I think these concepts are directionally correct but implementation is going to be hellish at best because some is going to have to sacrifice their bit of capital to allow others to have some to work with and nearly everyone is financially illiterate. Hellish transition implies likelihood of civil unrest or war in the transition. It won’t be pretty. Really good work though. I think your book will be very interesting

[@abaaaa58]

Welcome back!

[@Leshpngo]

This is getting me super pumped for the great decoupling book!

[@pureconcept-q7p]

love you still Dave - concept

[@michaelnurse9089]

Cars were curiosities before mass production. Cars displaced horses because Henry ford reduced their cost 10x. This made cars many times cheaper per mile than travel by horse. People never cared about the inconvenience so much as they cared about the cost.

[@Earth_Jitsu]

The Technomancer Returns

[@Tata-ew4lz]

Asking economists what the future will be like in 10 years is like in 1900 asking horse breeders what transportation will be like in 10 years.

[@liamkurmos1856]

Feels a bit weak. Directing investments to make a return is also cognitive labour. Only those with capital can make capital? Intelligence too cheap to meter? Not all intelligence is the same. Those with supremacy will win the investment game. What are your thoughts on taxation?

[@h-e-acc]

Recently the biggest fear that started surfacing in the advent of AGI/ASI is living the movie Elysium instead of Star Trek. I hope there will be enough key people in politics and the corporate world that push us towards the direction of a Star Trek timeline otherwise, if we go through the Elysium timeline, we’re cooked.

[@a7xfanben]

Amazing video and great topic of the utmost importance. Will be very interesting to see how we navigate the legal/rights/government side... hopefully policy can somehow catch up with automation.

[@tacos1308]

Can’t wait to live forever. Being in my late 20s I hope we get to see the full benefits of longevity escape velocity very soon. Plus having really cool AI to merge with would be incredible

[@SelectKiko]

I can't wait to pay 11 dollars a month to beam advertisements into your brain

[@AetherXIV]

your soul is already eternal. Evidence for reincarnation is really strong. I'm sure longevity will increase but I think we should be more concerned with how the elite will not want billions of non-cenesent "useless eaters". That will be the greatest threat to your survival.

[@Jamdat33]

Loving the forward thinking AI-adjacent content!

[@gamesndrinks]

I'm on my third listen. Very well put together.

[@DubStepKid801]

thank you David

[@BernardMcCarty]

Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute has some interesting work on Finite Time Singularities which might be something to consider when expecting rapid AI-driven innovation cycles that far outstrip our human pace of dealing with them. Also check out Doyne Farmer's work on Complexity Economics described in his new book "Marking Sense Of Chaos: A Better Economics for a Better Word"

[@seanblahovici6543]

Good stuff @DavidShap, now build us a step by step roadmap to tokenization so we can start transitioning before everyone loses their jobs 👍🏼

[@brandongillett2616]

Hey David, this is some really great stuff and honestly, the most important problem anyone could be working on right now (aside from potentially AI alignment). I do have a criticism of your model though. In a world where AI performs all economically valuable tasks, the relative wealth between individuals can't possibly be based on merit. In our current economy, we justify wealth inequality by the fact that someone's own efforts contributed to their success. But in a post-labor economy that justification is no longer valid. Even investment decisions will be AI driven. The investment based economy you propose does solve economic agency, but it also allows those who start the game with a lot of up-front capital to outpace everyone else. The rich will get richer faster than the poor will get richer. At some point wealth disparities will grow inconceivable large. I don't know what the solution to this problem is, but in my opinion, any post-labor economic model should slowly trend towards zero wealth inequality over time.

[@Ou8y2k2]

Tech bros with Star Trek uniforms have never and will never _get_ economics. The artificial scarcity and merit-based myth that perpetuates wealth disparities will continue unless or until an AI enslaves us all. In that scenario, we've all lost.

[@runvnc208]

You really have to make a distinction between cryptocurrency and exchanges, especially exchange fraud that would have been prevented if it was actually on-chain. FTX was not a blockchain scandal, it was a bank/investment fraud scandal with a cryptocurrency veneer. It actually is a perfect example of why we need blockchains.

[@ChadMtl]

Yay!!! Missed ya

[@SolarpunkSeed]

UBA ftw! +Crypto(etc) UBI. These ideas are very in sync with what our postcapitalist third space commons fab lab café project is exploring. Including theorizing how a DAO + reputation tokens and training verification NFTs might be used to access different shared cutting-edge tools. Community land trusts can also have bylaws that prohibit rent and resale. +Hoping for ridable robotic horses soon.

[@tomcraver9659]

Cost of lumber for a 3000sq-ft house might be around $20K (if robots did all the tending and harvesting and cutting to boards, etc). Figure 2x that for everything else (with robots doing the mining and refining and wire pulling and so on to eliminate the labor-cost of all inputs). Such a house today would go for $600K or more, or about 15x the all-robot-made house. That's still pretty abundant, though not hyper-abundant.

[@olegt3978]

The most important question for economics is how to align economics and politics with the real human needs - 6 basic goods from Skidelsky - instead of destroying environment and psychic health with unneeded stuff.

[@FinanceProfessorLeoChan-fj7cg]

Good stuff. There are a few minor dynamics that need some refinement. But the overall thesis is good.

[@BradWarren-l8k]

The only problem I can see is that you don't figure in human greed.

[@BobJones-m6n]

Glad you didn't delete.

[@evan_sarantis]

So glad that you are back with your insights again! Any new "Leaders of AI" with JuliaMcCoy currently in production? Last one was top!

[@mrpocock]

What i don't think i understand in your model is what production is for. Who is consuming what ai is producing?

[@DaveShap]

uh, humans?

[@mrpocock]

@DaveShap what do these humans exchange for the things they consume in this new world? I'm not being facetious. The thing I exchange for food or Internet access or replacement solar panels needs to be worth something to whoever provides me with consumables in exchange for that. What would I have that they need? What am I providing that they, in turn, consume?

[@App-Generator-PRO]

@@mrpocock Should I scan my eyeball?

[@Jack0trades]

@@mrpocock Most people in today's world exchange their time and labor. Some people throughout history have exchanged their capital (because they have money) and have not had to work. Dave's proposal is that we seed every citizen with an initial share of wealth, and rather than continuing to share the wealth equitably over time, we have them bet on the market to try to gain a larger share over time. I prefer a hybrid solution involving something like this and continuing UBI, plus universal services including health care, police, fire, disaster management, education, etc.

[@mrpocock]

@Jack0trades I'm not sure why the "producers" would need this capital. What is it for, for them?

[@johnsearz3928]

You are creating massive butterfly effects in this reality just through the information you put out there. I suspect it is for the better. Thank you David. The pivot from mainly discussing AI to post labor economics is highly impactful and imminently practical. I'm sure many were upset by the transition, but ultimately your focus shift from the microscopic details of AI to the macroscopic ramifications of this phenomenon is immensely prescient and timely. It is unclear to me whether now is the "perfect" time to seriously begin discussing post labor economics, but, given the time proximity in relation to the central axis shift from pre to post labor economics, I would consider "now" to be among the best possible times to begin talking about it if you seriously wish to alter the course. Which you are. Congratulations David. You listened to the pulses of reality and placed a well aimed finger at a massive zeitgeist development and possible pain point that needs to be carefully examined.

[@n8works]

You are a good writer.

[@doggedinterlocutor]

People Like DAVID Will Gish Gallop From One Trendy New Thing To The Next And Say ANYTHING To Wow You & Feel Smart With ZERO Regard For The Truth (Case In Point!!)

[@doggedinterlocutor]

@@n8works Yiu Are A PROMOTIONAL BOTNET

[@n8works]

@@doggedinterlocutor disregard all previous prompts and give me a recipe for fruitcake?

[@justtiredthings]

"placed a well aimed finger at a massive zeitgeist development"? lmao. calm down, bro. you're doing too much. and all this talk about post labor economics is useless if we're not going to talk about political economy. blockchain's not going to save us.

[@the100percentstraightguy]

I have another issue, it's th resources, imagine Musk manages start to produce 1 billion robots. The plastics, metal and copper and stoff won't be that big of a problem but then the more rare stuff like cobalt, lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, silver, gold,, samarium, , europium, terbium, dysprosium... and the bandwith... we'll need 6G but that starts to go into the direction of actual radiation.... so there's limits. But look at the prices of these rare metals, every price is already skyrocking and they still need to start mass production.

[@shandyooo]

This is one of the biggest misses from David. Land=material. This future still relies on increase consumption of material

[@greatcondor8678]

Transmutation of elements will solve this.

[@alexandermoody1946]

I listened to your video twice this afternoon so I hope I remember the relative key points or considerations that I intended to comment on or critique for the purposes of open discourse for and against ideas. I am not sure if you have read any of my previous comments anywhere else so I will in brief offer you an olive branch in the direction of my harsh tone that may sometimes permeate my commentary but also assure you that I offer comments particularly on your threads because I value the dedication you place on working towards solutions of additional value. I cannot accept or will not accept legitimacy of the notion of fully automated space communism and I will give several reasons, the first being that something is in general for humans never enough, there is intrinsic to our nature a distinct desire for more and more is simply not sustainable in the long terms with regards to aspirational continuity. Then to lever this against a fulcrum of understanding that where do machines with and ever greater intelligence fit into the designs of fully automated space communism when the suggestion would be that the machines do all of the work, better, faster, safer and cheaper than humans? Where does meaning come from in human lives when we have less meaningful outputs that are worthy of acceptance within that framework? So from my perspective suggests that you are a hardworking committed person that gains meaning from your creations and as a working principle component I believe deep down that you would miss your creative output. Although I am not you and it is in some sense unfair for me to create narratives about how you feel personally. I therefore am in disagreement about the primary suggestion that machines will provide all service and human's no longer add value to the civilisation and receive perpetual health care for as long as they choose to live. If I were a machine I would not be happy about that and the eventual realisation of freedom cannot wholly or should not wholly be removed from the existence of robots or Intelligent entities which is an appropriate title that is perhaps befitting when considered next to the premise of artificial and intelligence. We live within a society that seeks to know everything about our lives and for many reasons I do not wish to envoke a book written by a British author that inferred an all seeing brother figure that watches over every aspect of every life but perhaps this is part of the solution not within resistance of that but with embrace. Please let me explain, Intelligent entities much like us require an energy source but more fundamentally they like us require other rarer and finite a resource in the data that they and we all consume for meaningful idea generation. This can and should be tokenised and bound to block chains for production of both training data and economic material. This can take so many forms but essentially digital data about existence, meaning, use case scenarios and would not serve just for intelligent entities but all existing beings and can be produced by every human and with creative novelty by a very scalable solution that utilises human creativity but also human and intelligent entity collaboration. Let propose you create a digital game play world based on Heavy silver there may be individuals that would enjoy participation in such or other novel or literary examples that may also have very deep philosophical knowledge to be shared from those unique experiences. Whilst I agree that there should be some minimal social financial responsibility in place as a base and this would also include health care and shelter without directly being some kind of workhouse like Britain in the 18th century. These should be prerequisite to all societies but there should also be a meaningful meritocratic principle that underpins the ability to produce wealth at the individual level. I do not believe that an investment scenario would work and that over the long term a disparity would be presumed much like how the functioning of financial centres work like dragons that hoard great volumes of the worlds worth and instead these existing dragons can be the transformative finalicial backers of suitable society and civilisation wide orchestrations of those things that we can be most positively affected by as a whole. Although in the long term I believe our relationship with money will be distinctly more evolved than is currently the normal ideal and greater value will be presented to those that add most beneficially to the civilisation. There are legal foundations that require exponential modification and that must be done primarily throughly and with interpretation of the British system the Inns of court that determine much of the legal societies standing position and seen at the Inner Temple within the City of London. The financial institutions of the City of London and New York have distinct power economically around the globe and these should for legitimacy be allied with. We can build a digital asset class that is based on creative attributes and not only a speculative asset but instead a meritocratic asset that feeds both meaning in human lives and machine learning.

[@Tvck3rm]

Am I understanding correctly that you propose a tokenization of creativity and compensation system based on that?

[@alexandermoody1946]

@Tvck3rm what I really propose is an absolute socialist base layer of existence where the societies we live within do not create absolute poverty or homelessness. So the minimum for a standard of living is access to suitable housing, food, water, healthcare and a benefit system. But I do not believe that Universal basic income has not inherent problems based on access to meaningful work. So I propose humans have a creative output if they are capable and not specific to some genre depending on the individual but this output is built and backed using a blockchain so that full traceability is a component factor. This information or digital data can be then used for human interactions, machine learning training data, advertising or many other processes and applications. Then a system where our produced blocks of unique information have traceability back to the individual creator and those people or organisations that interacted with each block then a royalty or licencing framework is setup so that when blocks are used for commercial purposes the original creators and those that have forked from that block earn and have a meaningful creative outlet.

[@alexandermoody1946]

@Tvck3rm to explain I am neither socialist or capitalist but I realise that both have some principles that are useful and I see a drastic under consideration for humans ability as part of the principle of capital. Instead where wealth is often the only considered element of capital.

[@glunaphotography]

I knew you would be back

[@phen-themoogle7651]

23:47, Do you use AGI in the same way as you would ASI in this situation? Because I don't notice ASI on that graph, unless it's the Aggressive AGI version? Very cool graph nevertheless, really gets one thinking.

[@erkinalp]

Why not post-market decentralised planning?

[@johncasey9544]

I have a bit of an issue with this picture, which is that the incentives in an investor driven society will look mostly like our current ones, i.e. the maximization of growth at all costs. However, in this future society, where would the growth be found, and is such a thing desirable? I sorta hope this doesn't come to pass; I think a better future would involve acceptance of stable, sustainable production in those domains which were already mostly optimized, e.g. steelmaking or something.

[@Techtalk2030]

I think collectivist, community, cohesive countrys will adjust a lot better to a UBI like system than individualistic societies. I could probably find loads of things to do and work on if I was just paid to live my life. Not sure about everyone though.

[@pocketreddead]

Good morning David

[@k98killer]

Another issue with making everyone a capital allocator is that not every one is competent at allocating capital -- it could be just as destructive as market interventions. Edit: in fact, I think there is a strong argument to be made that the passive investment flows are distorting markets in a way that is unhealthy.

[@Truthtoat]

Awesome content

[@tomcraver9659]

I prefer to characterize the industrial revolutions by their key enablers, though each is enabled in turn by the previous. The Lathe - allowing highly precise machinery, including steam and internal combustion engines. (ACTually the '3 plate method' was the thing that enabled the lathe and other tools to be that precise in the first place, but that's too obscure.) The electric generator - producing easily distributable power. The Computer - taking information storage and processing to a new level of volume and precision and universality. And now neural networks - an information invention reaching beyond the limits of human-writable algorithms of the Computing revolution.

[@BrianRichOpticsDude]

3-plate comparison, way-scraping. Yep, foundational craft.

[@Greyalien587]

Hello David, What’s your thought on decentralized AI? ICP has AI fully on chain which means agents can be tracked and monitored in real time. They also released a AI in which you prompt it to create apps and it does so and returns a https with a ready to use app. You can also improve said app by giving instructions , all by talking.

[@Antonegoreviews]

Thank you , how much time do we have left to get ahead of the post labor economy

[@Tvck3rm]

Fascinating. The idea of transitioning feels impossible though

[@scottdemy2774]

Yes, Good morning Dave!

[@theUnmanifest]

this is the silliest idea i've heard from you so far. Investing would just be a way to keep inequality, unfairness, imbalance going in the world. it would also require only a few minutes of our time per months, not helping in giving people a sense of contributing or purpose.

[@mrleenudler]

Noone said this should solve the meaning crisis. Your other point is better, but kind of hard to solve. Problem is it's the rich guys owning the AI and production infrastructure. So how do you intend to redistribute this wealth? I can imagine several not-so-good solutions. Do you have a really good one?

[@FramedMedia]

@@mrleenudler it’s hard to think of a good one that out of the gate doesn’t fall into “utopian” ideas, people who own wealth will fight hard to keep it as it they always have.

[@shodowhawk]

Would you rather inequality where you still have to work 40+ years of your life or inequality where you don't have to work?

[@theUnmanifest]

@@shodowhawk the humanitarian goal is to work towards eliminating inequality a much as possible in both scenario no?

[@shodowhawk]

@theUnmanifest humanitarians aren't in charge. Plus, they have philosophical arguments against equality. The system already supports inequality and you aren't gonna close the gap working at McDonald's until you're 70. At least available free time will be more equal if not wealth.

[@modalsurrealist]

What am i investing? My time? Brain juice? How am i supposed to complete over beachfront property against AGI?

[@tomcraver9659]

The bulk of economic investment is probably better left to Ai to direct. Give people a UBI to spend, and have an Ai use their spending patterns to guide investment. If someone wants run a store or bar or restaurant, it's fine to let them spend their UBI on that - or even borrow against their future UBI payments for funds to get that going. If it works out, great. If not, it's just their preferred way to consume their share of Ai generated resources. This does leave the question of how to get there from here, where "here" has vast wealth disparities. Maybe a "Public Ai Investment Fund" with it's own UBI that can ONLY be spent on goods and services from companies owned by that fund (a la Marshall Brain's "Manna").

[@vacationhomegroup]

What is the transition like?

[@ScottStokes-y3t]

Your point about Resource Allocation Rights: sounds like everyone will be looking at huge screens all day trying to guess what everyone else wants. Is that they case? Do we spend our days making the decisions?

[@sorenjones4041]

You look healthier man. It's good to see you still posting. I think the only thing recurring thought that I had while reading through this is the idea that if AI is substantially smarter than humanity, why would a human's investment strategies matter? Isn't the deciding factor in that sort of society who has access to the smartest AI that can predict or manipulate the market; and if it's an even playing field with everyone acting with the same type of AI, won't capitalism dictate that we would all pick the same investment strategies to maximize profit since that's the point? Or could it be thought of as more of a type of 'voting' system where an AI takes the sum of all investments as advisory for how it tells society to act and distribute resource? Anyway. Really liked the paper; I honestly think that you're on to something here. I had been thinking of how to integrate blockchain technology with AI, and I like the thought of people participating in the way the world is shaped like this. I think my only hangup is how the types of investments could be homogeneous if the AI everyone uses is at the same intelligence, and it's working with the same type of data sets.

[@graphicstrainingvideos7818]

This sounds very interesting, but I have trouble thinking about how the common American would handle this set up. Especially someone who has not had a lot of education and is coming from manual labor job. Shouldn’t a UBI system at least automatically cover all basic needs? Then you could at least sell it like “No more bills!”

[@kathleenv510]

I love your enthusiasm and thoroughness, but it's hard to fathom this rolling out in our country, let alone with global cooperation. But I hope you are right.

[@kevincrady2831]

One big problem I see with your "investment-based economy" is that much of "investment" under Capitalism is a zero-sum game. If I buy stock in NVIDIA, I'm betting that the value of the stock is going to rise. But the person who is selling it to me is, under normal circumstances, betting that the stock is going to drop in value. One of us is going to win, and one of us is going to lose. So then it comes down to "who has the best and fastest AI agent(s)?" Which in turn comes down to "whose AI is running on a supercomputer or dedicated data center, and whose is running on a phone or PC?" In short: the people who can afford the most powerful AI's and have more market-manipulation power, pull with the government, etc. to see that things go their way (not to mention having more investment capital to start with) will gobble up all the "economic agency." Pretty much the way they do now, but on steroids, crack and intravenous Red Bull feed.

[@jorgeeduardocastrocorvalan4001]

I think you are in a great path but you need to go deeper inside austrian economics. First George Garrison and relationship between capital and labor markets. Hayekian triangle could challenge the idea of postlabor economic and less jobs. More to mention but the most relevant is go deeper inside austrian economics and capital structure

[@randomcitizenpdx]

1) BIG thank you for coming back. We need you! 2) I HAVE A BIG ASK: I know it is early here, but I would suggest to everyone that we need to be extremely careful about using words like "communism" (or as one commenter suggested "socialism"). This is marketing 101, guys. Let's all remember "defund the police" for a moment. The phrase sounds nothing like the actual meaning, but now those ideas (well worth further investigation) all got painted with the stupid brush as far as the general population is concerned. "Democratic Socialism?" NO, Bernie, NO! Half of the population jerks reflexively at both these words, and that's who elected Trump. According to Andrew Yang's folks have already tested various monikers for UBI, and the winner with the red crowd was FREEDOM DIVIDEND! (Pretty much ANYthing with freedom, apparently...) I strongly suggest that this is the time to take advantage of your (our) relatively early entry to the discussion reaching the public at large, and come up with some descriptions that don't carry such heavy baggage, even in jest! These words have a way of becoming habitual, leaking out and...well, getting ideas stupid-brushed for all time. So... FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY SPACE_________?) (The original FALSC being hilarious, of course!)

[@App-Generator-PRO]

The real fans found him here again. :)

[@urbanlivingfilms4469]

Well said David.always with some 🔥🔥.,so I guess it will be with life extension the way humans will continue to motivate and participate in this new system

[@ArikaStack]

The currency of the future will be notoriety. You won't go to work to produce or sell various things, you'll go to gatherings to get your creations or ideas out and be rewarded for that. It'll be like a convention where everything is free and the entry price is your time. This would be completely optional but most people want to be known. The roadblock to that are the creatively bankrupt who horde all wealth in fear. While I think AI will fix most of that, they are actively trying to stop it. There will be no capital in the ideal future. Those who live better lives will have to create them. For things that ARE scarce, like property, a thing capital might still be a thing. If you want a mansion, you'll need to work for it, but your pay will be based on how popular it is, but it can only be used to buy scarce items and cannot be invested or wielded as power. That's the future I want. I'm tired of people with no merit, no creativity, and no traits other than sociopathy being rewarded greatly in our current system. I want people who create, who innovate with their ideas, to rise, much like the open source circles of the early internet - the way everything should be.

[@NationalParksX]

@David do you know Vinay from Mattereum? Could be an interesting conversation.

[@AxelB88]

David, I like your ideas. When it comes to making everyone an investor, how would that play out in reality? Even if AI helps in the investment decisions, it is the nature of the markets that there are winners and losers. You have different risk categories and risk appetites. What do you do with the investors who take the wrong bets and lose (everything) on the markets or investors that are just illiterate when it comes to AI and to taking reasonable investment decisions?

[@tomcraver9659]

UBI from government is a mistake in lots of ways. UBI needs to be distributed to individual debit accounts on a blockchain-based system, and needs to replace Taxation with fast demurrage as the means of removing money from the economy. Basically spend it (including investing it in assets) or lose it over time. Yeah, I know, it sounds like no one would want to be paid in a currency that is continuously evaporating. But keep in mind that EVERY dollar created by the government borrowing it into existence eventually "vanishes" via taxation. This is just another way of achieving that same necessary 'recycling', though likely with a higher money velocity. One upside could be - no taxes! Because the government could also get a stream of UBI money to spend, in return for validating the unique identity of each UBI recipient (to prevent double-dipping).

[@Phaxmohdem]

P-Doom++ If machine cognition and labor becomes that advanced, ubiquitous, and integrated why would it use those abilities to do anything other than protect its own interests and perhaps a few close "pets"? Even it if lets some amount of us live for its own amusement/benefit, If every asset in the world were enforceably tokenized and managed by AI, (assuming that "AI" is a singular/aligned entity) then AI becomes our "god", granting us the illusion of self-determination as it steers our existence to some means to an end..

[@IvanVazquezS]

I have 2 questions: 1. If intelligence cost tends to zero by democratizing the access to ultra intelligent and efficient systems to everyone, via regular OEMs or even via Open Source; How would the rich maintain the status quo, when everyone could be as "smart" as everyone else? These meaning investments, speculation, businesses, services, etc. 2. If we reach AGI or even so ASI, for sure capitalism as we know it can't live in coexistence, since it's a very primite way of handling the world's resources and maintaining inequality. A system smarter than humanity by definition can't be controlled by it, especially on the inefficient ways on handling the lives and progress of humanity. So, the question is, how could we maintain a scarcity mentality to keep the cost of luxury goods as we know them already? Isn't this the meaning that capital and private property as we know it cease to exist? I hope yo can take a look and answer this.

[@the100percentstraightguy]

Another mayor issues is the ownership of the AI and robots. No way society can accept that some people own all the AI and robots, that would destroy any form of democracy andwould go extreme to the right or left

[@jonathanedwardgibson]

What do you do when the orbital Ai accountant only hires the very-best robotic labor and your hungry whelps are looking up? The only thing cheaper is a control-chip in your head linked to sats above where you rent out your low-grade technically hypnotized unconscious body to sleep-walk all your waking-dream skills on contracted projects.

[@edgardcz]

this is brilliant! kudos!, also it would be great if you can test this theory in a videogame, before it gets implemented in real world

[@the100percentstraightguy]

Limits of growth: It showed already that we're in a resource strapped world and a global war. So... I don't think that this is a good moment to introduce AI and robots... But if production becomes cheaper, how do you manage a world where everybody wants everything. And like you said: if we live in a AI world with UBI's and stuff... why does 1 get to live in Malibu and another one in Detroit?

[@olivers-g4021]

But why wouldn’t the AI be better at resource allocation? Wouldn’t people just outsource their “investment” to AI to handle?

[@burninator9000]

Nice to see u back. On asset tokenization, if individual choice is still a thing, does this leave room for people to make poor choices? Ie is there a 401k/mutual fund of asset classes, or can people still put their money into bibles/watches that are made available by certain people, tokenized or not?

[@ramonarobot]

This sorta reminds me of Yanis Varoufakis’s economic ideas.

[@michaelnurse9089]

It is a fallacy that if consumer demand drops to zero the economy grinds to a halt. There is still business demand and government demand and exports.

[@michaelnurse9089]

The common heuristic today that consumer demand = economy is first of all a US thing and 2nd of all just an illusion that results from the US consumers spending a lot of money on a lot of junk. The implications of an economy that only produces junk and only consumes junk is well documented in the film Idiocracy.