The Post-Scarcity Illusion
Abundance in bits, scarcity in atoms, oligopoly in models.
Software wants to be free, energy still has a price, and the models that run everything are owned by a handful of companies. This is not post-scarcity — it is a new kind of scarcity, hidden behind interfaces that feel like magic.
Where the margins go
As AI eats knowledge work, value migrates to whoever owns the compute, the data, and the distribution. That is a very short list. Antitrust as we know it is not equipped to handle it.
New kinds of work
Prompt engineers, model trainers, alignment researchers, agent operators. The list of jobs that didn't exist five years ago is longer than the list of jobs that vanished. But the transition is brutal for the people caught in between.
The taxation question
Countries will experiment with taxing compute, data, or agent output the way they once taxed land or labour. The design of those systems decides who benefits from the next century.
Questions worth arguing about
- ◆Should compute be regulated like a utility?
- ◆What does 'a good job' mean in 2035?
- ◆How do we prevent a permanent underclass of the automated-away?