If we have ≫100% economic growth in this hypothetical economy, then it is possible for both Principle (A) [human labor price stays high] and Principle (B) [human labor price falls very low] to be satisfied simultaneously. This is possible because “high” and “low” are not absolutes. They are measured relative to the price of other goods. I am interpreting “AGI not taking over” to imply that the owners of capital remain human.
Given the continued rule of current law, human beings will continue to have value to other human beings through status games (entourages, buying poor-quality artisanal products, paying muscular dudes to sing you Happy Birthday), capital-owning rich perverts (prostitution, OnlyFans) and legal requirements (jury duty, notaries), if nothing else. This is because “being a human” has conceptual value the way Comedian is more valuable than any other banana taped to the wall. If the owners of capital care about Coherent Extrapolated Volition, then they can hire humans to use as ground truth for that too. The criterion “rule of law” does a lot of work here. If humans cannot be turned into slaves, then that puts a regulatory constraint on how little the human owners of capital can pay to keep other people around as retainers and entertainers. In this way, humans could provide value the way horses do today. Not because horses provide cheap physical labor, but because riding a horse is a fun status symbol, and because horses are lovable pets. Human corpses could even be used as a store of value to diversity against the volatility of other assets, since the production of human corpses would be limited by rule of law in a way that the transmutation of gold is not. Surely many rich people want a throne room built out of real human skulls, and not fake ones. In addition, many laws make it valuable to be a human being to e.g. file paperwork at a consulate in California. In today’s 2025 world, chess tournaments are dominated by human players, despite computers being unbeatable at chess.
Meanwhile, the production of manufacturable assets like artificial sushi becomes extremely cheap.
The equilibrium is a situation where the price of human labor (measured in something like FLOPs, chocolate cake or procedurally-generated MrBeast video knockoffs) plummets, but the price of manufactured goods relative to that same reference point decreases even faster, due to lower regulatory barriers. Humans on Earth live lives that are luxurious by today’s standards (exclusing industries like housing, the price of which is driven by government regulation), but insignificantly poor compared to the owners of capital, who are limited only by how close they can get to building Von Neumann probes.
The final solution to this tension between law and economics is to invent something like a Blade Runner replicant that looks and functions like a human slave, but is legally non-human property.
I think that, if we assume that there’s a world in which (1) at least some humans own some capital in the post-AGI economy (hence rapidly exponentially growing wealth), (2) nobody is worried about expropriation or violence, and (3) humans have the knowledge and power to pass and enforce effective laws holding up human interests in regards to externalities (e.g. AGIs creating new exotic forms of lethal pollution while following the letter of the existing law, or building a Dyson swarm that blocks out the sun)…
…then that’s already pretty great! That would be far better than my baseline expectation.
I think that, if we assume (1-3), then the non-capital-owning humans have a great chance of doing OK too, via (A) charity from the fabulously-wealthy capital-owning humans, or through (B) political imposition of UBI (assuming democracy), or, like you said, (C) getting employed by the fabulously-wealthy capital-owning humans who specifically want to employ other humans (or selling ownerships rights to their posthumous skulls, ofc :) ).
If we have ≫100% economic growth in this hypothetical economy, then it is possible for both Principle (A) [human labor price stays high] and Principle (B) [human labor price falls very low] to be satisfied simultaneously. This is possible because “high” and “low” are not absolutes. They are measured relative to the price of other goods. I am interpreting “AGI not taking over” to imply that the owners of capital remain human.
Given the continued rule of current law, human beings will continue to have value to other human beings through status games (entourages, buying poor-quality artisanal products, paying muscular dudes to sing you Happy Birthday), capital-owning rich perverts (prostitution, OnlyFans) and legal requirements (jury duty, notaries), if nothing else. This is because “being a human” has conceptual value the way Comedian is more valuable than any other banana taped to the wall. If the owners of capital care about Coherent Extrapolated Volition, then they can hire humans to use as ground truth for that too. The criterion “rule of law” does a lot of work here. If humans cannot be turned into slaves, then that puts a regulatory constraint on how little the human owners of capital can pay to keep other people around as retainers and entertainers. In this way, humans could provide value the way horses do today. Not because horses provide cheap physical labor, but because riding a horse is a fun status symbol, and because horses are lovable pets. Human corpses could even be used as a store of value to diversity against the volatility of other assets, since the production of human corpses would be limited by rule of law in a way that the transmutation of gold is not. Surely many rich people want a throne room built out of real human skulls, and not fake ones. In addition, many laws make it valuable to be a human being to e.g. file paperwork at a consulate in California. In today’s 2025 world, chess tournaments are dominated by human players, despite computers being unbeatable at chess.
Meanwhile, the production of manufacturable assets like artificial sushi becomes extremely cheap.
The equilibrium is a situation where the price of human labor (measured in something like FLOPs, chocolate cake or procedurally-generated MrBeast video knockoffs) plummets, but the price of manufactured goods relative to that same reference point decreases even faster, due to lower regulatory barriers. Humans on Earth live lives that are luxurious by today’s standards (exclusing industries like housing, the price of which is driven by government regulation), but insignificantly poor compared to the owners of capital, who are limited only by how close they can get to building Von Neumann probes.
The final solution to this tension between law and economics is to invent something like a Blade Runner replicant that looks and functions like a human slave, but is legally non-human property.
This all seems really clearly true.
Thanks! I basically agree.
I think that, if we assume that there’s a world in which (1) at least some humans own some capital in the post-AGI economy (hence rapidly exponentially growing wealth), (2) nobody is worried about expropriation or violence, and (3) humans have the knowledge and power to pass and enforce effective laws holding up human interests in regards to externalities (e.g. AGIs creating new exotic forms of lethal pollution while following the letter of the existing law, or building a Dyson swarm that blocks out the sun)…
…then that’s already pretty great! That would be far better than my baseline expectation.
I think that, if we assume (1-3), then the non-capital-owning humans have a great chance of doing OK too, via (A) charity from the fabulously-wealthy capital-owning humans, or through (B) political imposition of UBI (assuming democracy), or, like you said, (C) getting employed by the fabulously-wealthy capital-owning humans who specifically want to employ other humans (or selling ownerships rights to their posthumous skulls, ofc :) ).