I've heard many people say something like "money won't matter post-AGI". This has always struck me as odd, and as most likely completely incorrect.

First: labour means human mental and physical effort that produces something of value. Capital goods are things like factories, data centres, and software—things humans have built that are used in the production of goods and services. I'll use "capital" to refer to both the stock of capital goods and to the money that can pay for them. I'll say "money" when I want to exclude capital goods.

The key economic effect of AI is that it makes capital a more and more general substitute for labour. There's less need to pay humans for their time to perform work, because you can replace that with capital (e.g. data centres running software replaces a human doing mental labour).

I will walk through consequences of this, and end [...]

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Outline:

(03:10) The default solution

(04:18) Money currently struggles to buy talent

(09:15) Most peoples power/leverage derives from their labour

(09:41) Why are states ever nice?

(14:32) No more outlier outcomes?

(20:27) Enforced equality is unlikely

(22:34) The default outcome?

(26:04) Whats the takeaway?

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First published:
December 28th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KFFaKu27FNugCHFmh/by-default-capital-will-matter-more-than-ever-after-agi

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.