The Shape of Things to Come: An Introduction
There are four places this ends. Only one of them is survivable on the current trajectory. Here is how to tell them apart. Part 1 of 5.
Topic
economics
A collection of 9 issues
The Other Two Futures
One is the largest capital misallocation in history. The other is the outcome everyone wants but nobody is building for. Part 4 of 5.
Disruption Without Redemption
In this future, AI works. That's the problem. The gains are real, they accrue to the owners of the compounding asset, and almost no one else. Part 3 of 5.
Laissez-Faire
Do nothing. Let it run. The hands-off position is the only one whose strongest advocate has already publicly abandoned it. Post 8 of 9.
Regulation, Ex Post
Let the market run and sue the survivors. Tort is the most honest instrument on the table about its own limits — and it needs a defendant. Post 7 of 9.
Nationalization
If the capability is too dangerous for a market, seize it. The proposal is serious, it has a historical template, and the template is the reason it fails. Post 5 of 9.
The Third Scenario No One Is Pricing In
The AI-and-jobs debate has collapsed into a binary, and the binary is wrong. Both sides miss the scenario the data is beginning to describe: disruption without dividend. Dispatch 002.
There Is Nothing Free About Free-Market Capitalism
The titans of American industry preach the free market while practicing a naked form of government welfare. Nobody creates value anymore — they extract it, and defer the bill. Close the ledger honestly and no large corporation clears the bar.
Storm the Castle: AI and the Death of the Gatekeepers
The castle held not because the knowledge was hard. It held because the moat was expensive. The moat is gone.
For Five Hundred Years, Power Worked the Same Way
Institutional power in modern civilization has run on a single mechanism: information asymmetry. Professionals — lawyers, doctors, accountants, bureaucrats — held specialized knowledge