> At some point, not automating capital will amount to leaving money on the table at best, and giving serious ground to the competition at worst. AI will exceed human skill in areas utilised in capital management. The capitalist who would prefer to manage their own money will face competitive pressures against it.
Replace AI with the technical intelligentsia, and this has largely already happened. There has not been much if any redistribution or disempowerment of capitalists as a result.
Individual capitalists doing their own investing still exist, of course, and there are even a handful of Warren Buffets, but the bulk of capital allocation is carried out by salaried employees - with very, very high salaries mind you, but still nothing remotely close to the incomes of their employers.
You missed one final point. You don't need a new government seizure for the starting premises to result in a state AI run capitalist economy instead of capitalist AI run capitalist economy. The existence of pre-existing taxes is enough. If AI was better at capital allocation decisions (investing) than "investors", and a 30% top income tax rate (or even 10%), it would have a long the long run advantage over all private investors.
In this world, a government running a sovereign wealth fund that doesn't pay taxes would inexorably grow it's share of the economy. No massive "seizure" needed, just plain old taxes.
I argue in this comment mainly that some of the above measures might be a bit unworkable, but I worry that in much more "business as usual", mundane ways the capitalist might just win.
*If* the USG is competent enough to see it coming, they might just out-AI everyone else, including it's own "inside threats" (thanks for people raising the issue of coups and secret loyalties), rendering at least F) unworkable, but hopefully C) as well:
(Suppose some lax jurisdiction, like, Cayman Islands starts fooming and dectupling GDP -- surely this is a national security risk? They may not build militaries today, but if they start having the most advanced nanotech on the planet, that seems like an issue for USG, if they are behind.)
---
I am quite interested in what could be "soft business coup" scenarios:
- Say the USG doesn't invest in it's own AI enough, but does try its best genuine effort to "tax the rich".
Barring an actual hard-power, drone style coup, how much can a resourceful AI megacompany (aided by the AI lawyers) manoeuvre around the law?
Can it maybe just send back so complicated galaxy-brained tax-return proposals that the USG is just unable to get it to pay up?
Maybe there is pollution as well, and the USG tries its best to combat it; how difficult is it to at the end of the day "shut down a datacenter", if the AI megacompany is allowed to do everything, except outright violence?
- Maybe the AI is also pretty persuasive. How difficult is it to convince enough of the voters that they actually want to vote for the candidate that is in cahoots with the capitalists, with compelling conspiracy theories? (definitely never happened before)
- How much does it take for the pro-AI coalition to _literally bribe everyone in congress_?
- Heck, you can just bribe everyone!
Say people are dissatisfied, and vote for a populist promising UBI. But how much UBI? maybe the median voter is happy with a flat 100k yearly, but in actuality the capitalists get to retain 8x (instead of 10x) yoy growth.
Eventually, the capitalists will live forever, colonise planets and populating them with their breed of genetically-engineered unicorns, upload themselves to simulations more satisfying than we can imagine, harvest suns and upgrade themselves to God just for it to be slew by an other one, who made a more faustian deal...
...but noone will complain because cancer is cured, we live 200 years, and get GTA VI finally.
Well, I might be pessimistic here, but I don’t believe AI will change anything about this issue. Ask the poorest 90% of the world’s population whether they think the top 10% deserve their position or have any real socio-economic justification. I’d bet the answer would be unsurprising and a resounding no : the richest 10% are simply parasites.
It’s painfully obvious that no skill, talent, or contribution could morally justify income gaps spanning orders of magnitude. Even if someone were a superhuman worth ten average people, Aristotle’s principle of geometric equality would only justify them earning ten times the average income, nothing more. Any wealth that far exceeds what merit could plausibly justify is bound to be seen by the majority as pure injustice.
AI won’t make this reality any clearer than it already is. Maybe it’s less obvious to Substack readers because we’re with few exceptions not part of the world’s poorest 90% and can illusion ourselves with theoretic considerations. As wrote Yudkowsky, everybody is the hero of its own story.
It's not about the quality of their work, it's (supposed to be) about the value delivered to society. The success of a product reflects the utility that people get from it. The founders of google are rich because google is incredible useful and they provided it, not because they're millions of times smarter than their workers.
This allows for aribitrarily large gaps in compensation, because real world impact is not neatly bounded within a single order of magnitude.
Google is not the work of just its few founders. It is the result of legions of people working over years, just like Tesla, SpaceX, Amazon, and virtually every company in the world. We love to tell ourselves stories about how one person changed the world. It’s convenient to mythologize a single Leonidas rather than 300 anonymous warriors. But for every hero, there are countless invisible hands. The heroes, alone, would have achieved nothing. The magnification lies in our blinded eyes.
The justification of 'individual global impact' is also convenient, but if it were true, Einstein and every great scientist of their time should have earned far more than any CEO. Yet it never happens. The CEO of a bank, simply maintaining business as usual, often earns far more than any scientist or philanthropist like the founder of Wikipedia.
In fact, most of the wealthier have no success story to tell and just inherited a large part of their assets. The self made man story is the tree hiding the forest. Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan of Brunei, fits better the reality, alas.
Amazon wants to replace 300k workers with robots, corporate landscape as we know it is dead. Those who adapt will succeed in the new landscape of entertainment, where the AI is now the boss, and we're the new employees, welcome to the industry, my advice if you chose it, don't follow anyone's advice.
It is interesting (and terrifying) to see whether the nature of Capitalism will make it impossible for business leaders to collude at the scale of a global power seizure. Then again, most of the necessary ingredients, including compute and military power, are concentrated in the US which now has a very powerful tech oligarchy with a very friendly president.
I think Musk, Andreessen, Ellison et al. have to make a big move before the 2028 election. It will also be interesting to see which way the Jews (Zuckerberg, Altman, Soros, Brin) and other non-trump billionaires (Gates) end up leaning.
Congratulations on the ACX shout-out.
> At some point, not automating capital will amount to leaving money on the table at best, and giving serious ground to the competition at worst. AI will exceed human skill in areas utilised in capital management. The capitalist who would prefer to manage their own money will face competitive pressures against it.
Replace AI with the technical intelligentsia, and this has largely already happened. There has not been much if any redistribution or disempowerment of capitalists as a result.
Individual capitalists doing their own investing still exist, of course, and there are even a handful of Warren Buffets, but the bulk of capital allocation is carried out by salaried employees - with very, very high salaries mind you, but still nothing remotely close to the incomes of their employers.
Have you read Capital As Power?
You missed one final point. You don't need a new government seizure for the starting premises to result in a state AI run capitalist economy instead of capitalist AI run capitalist economy. The existence of pre-existing taxes is enough. If AI was better at capital allocation decisions (investing) than "investors", and a 30% top income tax rate (or even 10%), it would have a long the long run advantage over all private investors.
In this world, a government running a sovereign wealth fund that doesn't pay taxes would inexorably grow it's share of the economy. No massive "seizure" needed, just plain old taxes.
Led here by ACX post.
Nice to see an alternative view, even if unlikely
I argue in this comment mainly that some of the above measures might be a bit unworkable, but I worry that in much more "business as usual", mundane ways the capitalist might just win.
*If* the USG is competent enough to see it coming, they might just out-AI everyone else, including it's own "inside threats" (thanks for people raising the issue of coups and secret loyalties), rendering at least F) unworkable, but hopefully C) as well:
(Suppose some lax jurisdiction, like, Cayman Islands starts fooming and dectupling GDP -- surely this is a national security risk? They may not build militaries today, but if they start having the most advanced nanotech on the planet, that seems like an issue for USG, if they are behind.)
---
I am quite interested in what could be "soft business coup" scenarios:
- Say the USG doesn't invest in it's own AI enough, but does try its best genuine effort to "tax the rich".
Barring an actual hard-power, drone style coup, how much can a resourceful AI megacompany (aided by the AI lawyers) manoeuvre around the law?
Can it maybe just send back so complicated galaxy-brained tax-return proposals that the USG is just unable to get it to pay up?
Maybe there is pollution as well, and the USG tries its best to combat it; how difficult is it to at the end of the day "shut down a datacenter", if the AI megacompany is allowed to do everything, except outright violence?
- Maybe the AI is also pretty persuasive. How difficult is it to convince enough of the voters that they actually want to vote for the candidate that is in cahoots with the capitalists, with compelling conspiracy theories? (definitely never happened before)
- How much does it take for the pro-AI coalition to _literally bribe everyone in congress_?
- Heck, you can just bribe everyone!
Say people are dissatisfied, and vote for a populist promising UBI. But how much UBI? maybe the median voter is happy with a flat 100k yearly, but in actuality the capitalists get to retain 8x (instead of 10x) yoy growth.
Eventually, the capitalists will live forever, colonise planets and populating them with their breed of genetically-engineered unicorns, upload themselves to simulations more satisfying than we can imagine, harvest suns and upgrade themselves to God just for it to be slew by an other one, who made a more faustian deal...
...but noone will complain because cancer is cured, we live 200 years, and get GTA VI finally.
What you’re describing isn’t really the irrelevance of capitalists but rather of the PMC.
Well, I might be pessimistic here, but I don’t believe AI will change anything about this issue. Ask the poorest 90% of the world’s population whether they think the top 10% deserve their position or have any real socio-economic justification. I’d bet the answer would be unsurprising and a resounding no : the richest 10% are simply parasites.
It’s painfully obvious that no skill, talent, or contribution could morally justify income gaps spanning orders of magnitude. Even if someone were a superhuman worth ten average people, Aristotle’s principle of geometric equality would only justify them earning ten times the average income, nothing more. Any wealth that far exceeds what merit could plausibly justify is bound to be seen by the majority as pure injustice.
AI won’t make this reality any clearer than it already is. Maybe it’s less obvious to Substack readers because we’re with few exceptions not part of the world’s poorest 90% and can illusion ourselves with theoretic considerations. As wrote Yudkowsky, everybody is the hero of its own story.
It's not about the quality of their work, it's (supposed to be) about the value delivered to society. The success of a product reflects the utility that people get from it. The founders of google are rich because google is incredible useful and they provided it, not because they're millions of times smarter than their workers.
This allows for aribitrarily large gaps in compensation, because real world impact is not neatly bounded within a single order of magnitude.
Google is not the work of just its few founders. It is the result of legions of people working over years, just like Tesla, SpaceX, Amazon, and virtually every company in the world. We love to tell ourselves stories about how one person changed the world. It’s convenient to mythologize a single Leonidas rather than 300 anonymous warriors. But for every hero, there are countless invisible hands. The heroes, alone, would have achieved nothing. The magnification lies in our blinded eyes.
The justification of 'individual global impact' is also convenient, but if it were true, Einstein and every great scientist of their time should have earned far more than any CEO. Yet it never happens. The CEO of a bank, simply maintaining business as usual, often earns far more than any scientist or philanthropist like the founder of Wikipedia.
In fact, most of the wealthier have no success story to tell and just inherited a large part of their assets. The self made man story is the tree hiding the forest. Hassanal Bolkiah, Sultan of Brunei, fits better the reality, alas.
Amazon wants to replace 300k workers with robots, corporate landscape as we know it is dead. Those who adapt will succeed in the new landscape of entertainment, where the AI is now the boss, and we're the new employees, welcome to the industry, my advice if you chose it, don't follow anyone's advice.
It is interesting (and terrifying) to see whether the nature of Capitalism will make it impossible for business leaders to collude at the scale of a global power seizure. Then again, most of the necessary ingredients, including compute and military power, are concentrated in the US which now has a very powerful tech oligarchy with a very friendly president.
I think Musk, Andreessen, Ellison et al. have to make a big move before the 2028 election. It will also be interesting to see which way the Jews (Zuckerberg, Altman, Soros, Brin) and other non-trump billionaires (Gates) end up leaning.