Part of me hopes that AGI breaks capitalism, but I'll begrudgingly admit that it there is a greater chance that it also creates a hellscape beyond the limits of human understanding - a collapsing shareholder economy.
The cost of labor is under-girded by the cost of social reproduction eg: the costs of keeping labor alive and the cost of creating people capable of laboring. The current economic condition has a singular telos: sustain labor enough to draw off the most value. It's the lemma to the corollary core tenet you mentioned.
AGI represents a fundamental resystematization of the value creation process. It eliminates entire economic loops from existence. How many jobs exist merely to support labor's creation of value? With the elimination of human labor from the equation, the requirement of human support vanishes as well. But to what end? Is there a minimal viable anthrocentric economy? If not, what's the end game?
It's here that there are more questions than answers, but what will the agi-ization of the economic engine entail? The constraint of value creation by way of housing, clothing, food, and transportation constraints cease to exist. Instead they are rebased on foundry, mineral, and electricity constraints which are all scalable in completely different ways.
Let's close the loop and examine the laborer as also a consumer. The laborer will have much less employment to purchase much cheaper things, but there is a requirements for much fewer laborers to exist at all. In the extreme example, the most powerful corporations will be headed by a single human. But producing what? Presumably turning vast reserves of computation into added value. For whom? Without the need for laborers, the reserve of human capital no longer needs to exist as a consumer base either. Why have a human head a corporation at all? Well, that relegates all humans to shareholding as a means of income.
What would a shareholder economy look like? For one, absent any form of wage labor individuals would have no other ways for initial capital accumulation outside of inheritance or gifts. In many ways that's a much more precarious situation to be in. Instead of being able to fall back to wages, what is a destitute shareholder to do? Moreover, AGI will be commanding the trading floor out-competing humans. There is the real possibility of consolidation along the lines of who commandeers the best trading algorithm. Which winner will take it all? Or in other words, who will be the last capitalist?
The cost of labor is under-girded by the cost of social reproduction eg: the costs of keeping labor alive and the cost of creating people capable of laboring. The current economic condition has a singular telos: sustain labor enough to draw off the most value. It's the lemma to the corollary core tenet you mentioned.
AGI represents a fundamental resystematization of the value creation process. It eliminates entire economic loops from existence. How many jobs exist merely to support labor's creation of value? With the elimination of human labor from the equation, the requirement of human support vanishes as well. But to what end? Is there a minimal viable anthrocentric economy? If not, what's the end game?
It's here that there are more questions than answers, but what will the agi-ization of the economic engine entail? The constraint of value creation by way of housing, clothing, food, and transportation constraints cease to exist. Instead they are rebased on foundry, mineral, and electricity constraints which are all scalable in completely different ways.
Let's close the loop and examine the laborer as also a consumer. The laborer will have much less employment to purchase much cheaper things, but there is a requirements for much fewer laborers to exist at all. In the extreme example, the most powerful corporations will be headed by a single human. But producing what? Presumably turning vast reserves of computation into added value. For whom? Without the need for laborers, the reserve of human capital no longer needs to exist as a consumer base either. Why have a human head a corporation at all? Well, that relegates all humans to shareholding as a means of income.
What would a shareholder economy look like? For one, absent any form of wage labor individuals would have no other ways for initial capital accumulation outside of inheritance or gifts. In many ways that's a much more precarious situation to be in. Instead of being able to fall back to wages, what is a destitute shareholder to do? Moreover, AGI will be commanding the trading floor out-competing humans. There is the real possibility of consolidation along the lines of who commandeers the best trading algorithm. Which winner will take it all? Or in other words, who will be the last capitalist?