5 April 2021

FUTURE ECONOMICS
Three technological changes
 1. Agriculture makes more food, turning
hunter-gatherers into villagers.
 2. Industry enables mass production,
with its creations connecting the world.
 3. Information technology enables AI,
which does jobs better than humans.
 Each change reshapes society around
new resources. I want the new shapes
that provide greatest total happiness.
When AI outworks humans
 AI does human jobs better than humans.
 Under good political structures, AI does
jobs and humans have post-scarcity fun.
 Under bad political structures, most
humans can’t get resources. Technology
is underused and we live badly.
 Marx recognized that capitalist use of
technology would lead to abundance
and this distributional problem.
Practical student questions
 Current technology doesn’t make global
solar feasible, let alone asteroid mining.
He’s just saying that massive resources
exist for future technology to get.
 Today, resources are controlled by a
few, who don’t want to share the wealth.
But whether things stay that way is a
political question. Bastani wants to use
democracy and vote in better systems.
Student questions: Marx
 Q. Is Bastani getting Marx right?
 A.He’s closer than Mao and Stalin were.
Maybe the Marxist thing to do in 1917
Russia is set up capitalism? Deng
seems more Marxist than Mao.
 Q. How is work in Marx’s communism?
 A. You play games and create art while
robots work. Isn’t that we’d like to do?