Marcus Hutter is now weighing into the AGI political economy fray with his first book in 25 years:
PS: I have never discussed macrosocial issues with Marcus and I only mentioned macrosocial dynamics model selection to him once in an email nearly a decade ago. I understand his position in Alphabet Corp. does not permit him great latitude and is of great strategic importance given his relative sanity.
From Amazon:
"The book develops this case [Post-Labor Prosperity] along thirteen theses spanning six domains:
Why this book is different: Nearly every individual idea here has appeared before. What is new is the systematic architecture: the first single-volume treatment integrating economics, welfare design, democratic stability, the question of meaning, and international coordination into one mutually reinforcing argument. The book includes a micro-level fiscal-feasibility proof, a Wittgensteinian property-cluster definition of"job," a three-phase UBI transition roadmap with pre-legislated automation triggers, and a new tax category: the bullshit tax."
I admit I am intrigued by the idea of a “bullshit tax”, but I won’t be reading this book. It seems to be based on the academic idea that everyone will behave rationally, and use their now 100% free time to develop their understanding of topics like Lesbian Dance. This ignores the destructive results today of well-intended welfare in many places around the globe.
Also, it ignores the obvious issue of what people have to do to qualify for Universal Basic Income – obey the law? not go on murderous rampages? And what to do with people who do NOT qualify for UBI. Slavery?
Hutter is definitely correct that AI will eventually be able to do anything better than a human. At the same time, others have noted that so far AI is doing a better job of replacing mathematicians than truck drivers. It is going to be messy, and the consequences will probably surprise us all.
I have yet to see a cogent response to Charles Murray’s “In Our Hand: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State” with regard to precisely this issue. The Sioux aren’t even an approximation, let alone the various “UBI experiments” that have been conducted.
Nor has anyone responded to the replacement of “The Vote” (aka “unconditional citizen suffrage”) with (unconditional citizens dividend) money.
I understand the temptation to ignore ideas that aren’t breathing down our necks, but there’s something else that’s now breathing down our necks and it ain’t just another “idea”.
From my perspective, Marcus has saved me the effort of writing a book in the sense that I can now treat his book as a foil:
I can write something that is more than a review but a lot less than a book.
The value he brings is influencing the Influencers by simply mentioning, in the same book, both LVT and citizen’s dividend. This is something not even modern day “Georgists” seem capable of accomplishing. No one else is doing anything remotely like this.
When he brings up “Harberger taxes” he makes the same mistake I made in 1992 when I failed to exclude “self assessment” as a reasonably market-based approach. I’m not sure when I concluded that it had to be the market that placed cash bids so that it was at the owner’s discretion to liquidate at the tax assessment rate, but it was something I hadn’t emphasized as an option in 1992.
The first time I managed to correct that misconception in public was when some rather exceptionally intelligent “Occupy Wall Street” types ran across my 1992 paper and decided it might be the way to go and deigned to engage a “far right” character such as myself. Of course, that movement was nuked by “identity politics” forthwith.
It was only in 2020* that I finally set forth the virtue of liquidation value assessment as the basis for a monetary system in Property Money because, duh money IS liquidity.
* Although I had mentioned such a monetary system several years earlier in private communications to a colleague and childhood friend who had at one time been considered a Republican candidate for Governor of Iowa. But the context of that communication was purely local currency.
And who wouldn’t? Of course, when one turns nature, such as land, into a commodity, one demands “the old model” prior to permitting “the flourishing model”.
The apparent “paradox” has been at the foundation of my heterodox views:
A boy is not born into a world where he is permitted to “find a place to make your stand and take it easy”. He has to become a consumer – of land occupation – and he is denied by GANGS called “governments” or other forms of property rights regimes, his natural right going back 600 million years to the dawn of masculinity. Pretending to have compensated him for the forceful abrogation of this natural right – truly “natural” in a non-ideological sense of the word and most particularly not in the Hobbesian nor Rousseauian sense, but in the natural duel sense – will get you nowhere but “the old model”.
At this time code, talk turns to UBI and Cost of Living (and then its relationship to fiat money).
My comment:
1:38:36 COL aka Cost Of Living is de facto exterminationist because it is not CORR aka Cost Of Replacement Reproduction which is dominated by the fact that a young man must outbid the economy for the fertile years of a young woman.
I think I understand the subconscious resistance to facing this fact – resulting in all manner of rationalizations that essentially equate a social contract compensating a young man for giving up masculinity’s individual sovereign force, and therefore being able to so-outbid the economy with “welfare”:
Any culture (noun) has embedded within it what it cultures (verb aka cultivates) as embodying a “fair contest” even if only in the sense of “all’s fair…”. People who have been parasitized by income tax all their lives and yet somehow made it passed that evolutionary selection criterion feel that those who didn’t make it are “fairly” excluded from the evolutionary stream.
This ignores the construction of culture by those that want the protection of property rights paid for by taxing income:
Capital Socialism
I can’t emphasize enough how poisonous this situation is.
PS: As for “lesbian dance” – there is also the notion that unconditional basic income that replaces the welfare state does “empower” fertile age females to avoid dependence not only on young men but, to some degree, avoid dependence even on the managerial class in both the public and private sectors. But such a situation is less pathological than the present and I suspect would end up with a lot less “lesbian dance”.
Interestingly enough, Esther Dyson has been writing into this general direction as well:
Esther Dyson has the right general idea but she hasn’t read Charles Murray’s “In Our Hands: A Plan to REPLACE THE WELFARE STATE”.
Sorry for shouting but you really have to get rid of the welfare state* and, while her suggestion to reform the welfare state is a good one, it doesn’t actually deal with the problem of the very existence of the managerial class’s “beneficence”.
* What I call “market democracy” would get rid of the vote and privatize the government – but I understand that folks aren’t going to take that leap without some demonstration that it works – and governments aren’t going to permit mutually consenting adults to form such an experiment.
You can post comments on her substack.
OK:
Esther Dyson has the right general idea but she apparently hasn’t read Charles Murray’s “In Our Hands: A Plan to REPLACE THE WELFARE STATE”.
Sorry for shouting but we really have to get rid of the welfare state. While her suggestion to reform the welfare state is a good one, it doesn’t actually deal with the problem of the very existence of the managerial class’s “beneficent” conflict of interest in treating adults like children. Unconditional Income of some kind bypasses the welfare state’s “beneficent” conflicts of interest to put decision-making “in our hands” that is to say, “in adults’ hands”.
“Market democracy” would get rid of the vote and privatize the government with a citizen’s dividend – but I understand that folks aren’t going to take that leap without some demonstration that it works – and existing governments have too much to lose by permitting mutually consenting adults to form such an experiment. I also understand that Esther Dyson means well, as I’m sure does the managerial class in both the public and private sector whose individual interests conflict with those of the individual adults they claim as their “charges”.
PS: I say this as the husband of a woman who died slowly and agonizingly of Huntington’s Disease as of a few years ago. I know what I needed in order to provide care for her and I know what I would have preferred to the welfare state’s beneficence.
I’ve been warning the Capital Socialists* (otherwise known as neolibertarians) for decades a “DEEPER CULTURE” was going to eat their lunch. Here it comes:
* Taxing economic activity to pay for the protection of property rights.
This amounts to a property tax funded citizen’s dividend of $1000/year for the vast majority of citizens.
| Tax Class | Rate (per $100 of Assessed Value) | Typical Properties |
|---|---|---|
| Class 1 | 19.843% | 1-, 2-, and 3-family homes; small condo buildings (3 stories or fewer); certain mixed-use and vacant residential-zoned land |
| Class 2 | 12.439% | Larger residential buildings (4+ units); co-ops and condos (4+ stories); certain mixed-use |
| Class 3 | 11.108% | Utility company equipment/property |
| Class 4 | 10.848% | Commercial and industrial (offices, retail, hotels, factories, etc.); non-residential vacant land |
Yet Republicans STILL refuse to disintermediate their public sector competition with a citizen’s dividend while unleashing entrepreneurs by replacing the 16th Amendment with a flat tax on liquidation value of net assets at the 30 year treasury rate.
Every one of these “local governments” would be wiped clean and replaced by private corporations, while at the same time permitting entrepreneurs to lead technological civilization to surf the supersonic tsunami of AI to the stars.
It takes a modicum of thinking about how to buy out those victimized by the 16th Amendment all their lives like the Boomers and Musk – but the numbers would be very attractive liquidity events and overcome the understandable terror of people, like myself, that would find themselves thrown to the mercy of a society where the social capital has been destroyed and those, unlike myself, who have invested everything they have in treasuries and real estate hoping to hang on until they die.
The reaction by Freeberg is one of the more intelligent from among the Capital Socialists – in that he at least sees the tip of the iceberg.
And note the residence ID requirement. This is exactly one of the consequences of citizens dividend: People see immigration as stock dilution.
For some of us gardening is not optional if we want to have healthy food that is affordable. And yes I know Elon’s talking about in the future. It’s always about the future. In the future immigration won’t change demographics. In the future we’re going to enforce immigration laws. In the future “good for the economy” will mean good for you.
And in the meantime Manhattan Burns.
