My own guess here is that access to capital will become more important than it is today by an order of magnitude.
In the forager era capital barely mattered because almost value was created via labor. With no way to reliable accumulate capital, there was little opportunity to exploit it.
In the farmer era, capital became much more important, mainly in the form of useful land, but labor remained of paramount importance for generating value. If anything, capital made labor more valuable and thus demanded more of it.
In the in industrial era, capital became more important again, and now we saw the relationship to labor change. Individuals could have their labor multiplied by application of capital, and in some cases labor could be replaced by capital, with the remaining labor commanding how that capital was used.
With AI we’ll see another shift. AI is very capital intensive and even more than heavy industry magnifies labor productivity. It seems plausible that in the not distant future most or all labor will be automated away, and all that will matter for economic production is owning capital or having ideas of how to effectively deploy it, since the rest will be fully automated. During the transition labor will matter, but capital will matter more.
So now, as always, it’s a good idea to have a lot of money, and having enough money to invest in capital improvements that can generate returns will matter even more in the near future with labor further marginalized.
My actionable advice would be find ways to possess as much money as you can and be less willing to trade off money for other things in the short term since you’ll soon have the opportunity to deploy it for outsized gains.
My own guess here is that access to capital will become more important than it is today by an order of magnitude.
In the forager era capital barely mattered because almost value was created via labor. With no way to reliable accumulate capital, there was little opportunity to exploit it.
In the farmer era, capital became much more important, mainly in the form of useful land, but labor remained of paramount importance for generating value. If anything, capital made labor more valuable and thus demanded more of it.
In the in industrial era, capital became more important again, and now we saw the relationship to labor change. Individuals could have their labor multiplied by application of capital, and in some cases labor could be replaced by capital, with the remaining labor commanding how that capital was used.
With AI we’ll see another shift. AI is very capital intensive and even more than heavy industry magnifies labor productivity. It seems plausible that in the not distant future most or all labor will be automated away, and all that will matter for economic production is owning capital or having ideas of how to effectively deploy it, since the rest will be fully automated. During the transition labor will matter, but capital will matter more.
So now, as always, it’s a good idea to have a lot of money, and having enough money to invest in capital improvements that can generate returns will matter even more in the near future with labor further marginalized.
My actionable advice would be find ways to possess as much money as you can and be less willing to trade off money for other things in the short term since you’ll soon have the opportunity to deploy it for outsized gains.