Post-Labor Economics in 60 minutes
In a Nutshell
Post-labor economics describes a future where AI and automation eliminate human labor as a binding constraint on output, causing massive deflation, demonetization, and a declining labor share of income (from 66% to 56% over decades), threatening household income (70-80% of GDP) and government revenue. Solutions focus on shifting to transfers (e.g., UBI-like programs) and capital ownership (e.g., sovereign wealth funds like Alaska's, ESOPs, EOTs, DAOs), enabling $140k median household income (equivalent to $300k post-deflation) without wages. Humans will still be hired irrationally for embodied experiences, accountability, and social value, while trends compound over 4-5 decades amid an automation imperative.
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Post-labor economics started in the Human AI Empowerment Lab about 2 years ago. Carlos invited the speaker to speak to his students at Clemson. At the time, the speaker focused on AI safety, AI risk, and AI alignment. Students asked about AI's impact on their future prospects, what to study to maximize time at Clemson, and gave generic answers like learning how to learn or foundational knowledge.
After the talk, the speaker made a video called 'Post AGI Economics,' the most successful video with over half a million views, indicating strong interest. Spent the last 2 years studying, talking with professors and business leaders. This presentation is the current state of post-labor economics theory.
Simplest definition: an economic regime where human labor input is no longer a binding constraint on economic output. Speculative, based on models, data, trends. For all human history, labor has been a binding constraint for building Rome, bridges, getting to the moon, nuclear reactors—dependent on human mind, body, hands.
Economic baseline definition of labor: compensated human activity to produce valuable transformation. Transformation: take information, person, or matter and make it more valuable. Example: tree from forest, cut down, mill into timber, lumber, build house. University: take uneducated person, make more intelligent, educated, informed.
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