The term abundance is being slung around a lot these days. First came the discussion that was kicked off by the recent eponymous book, which fell comically short of its title. Now we are deep into a debate on AI. On one side are proponents of massive AI expenditure arguing that if we get to artificial super intelligence then we will live in abundance. And so of course we should aim to get there as fast as possible. On the other side are those who see this simply as a cynical ploy to drive up the market caps of a few companies and mint more billionaires.
Before diving in, it is helpful to first examine what “abundance” might mean. Much as with the term “scarcity,” modern economics has done more to obscure than to clarify. There is a profound confounding between hypothetical technological capabilities and actually observed outcomes. In The World After Capital I argue for a definition of “scarcity” based on human needs (as opposed to based on prices). I also introduce a third term, which I call sufficiency. This stage is reached when we have enough of something so that we can satisfy human needs (even though we may not yet have figured out how to do it). A simple definition of abundance then would be “meeting human needs and wants” which is obviously a much bigger and potentially unlimited set. As such, achieving abundance is significantly harder.
One of the best descriptions of what an abundant world might look like can be found in the Culture Series by Ian M. Banks. And it was not a coincidence that Dario Amodei appealed to this in his essay Machines of Loving Grace. My critique of the AI abundance narrative is that it invokes AI as a Deus ex Machina for the world’s problem. In doing so it entirely eschews questions of power, including the power held by the “minds” themselves (basically taking the alignment problem as solved).
So what is my stance? I do believe that abundance is achievable in the long run. Humanity can become post economic and this is a beautiful goal. An enticing vision in this direction was also put forth in Star Trek. We would do well to
It should be clear by now that uncritically reciting the “Lump of Labor Fallacy” doesn’t amount to analysis. We are headed into a world where growth will increasingly benefit the owners of capital. But capital ownership is already highly concentrated and becoming more so because of power laws and network effects. This is why we need to actively consider policies, such as economic freedom via Universal Basic Income, that spread the gains from automation broadly. We need to empower end users by giving each of us the right to be represented by an agent that is loyal to us (and not to say a corporation or the government).
My book The World After Capital is all about how to facilitate the transition out of the industrial age so that we set ourselves on a path to abundance. And that cannot and will not be accomplished by incremental changes to existing policies or by praying to the machine gods.
Gigi and I have been putting our money where our mouths are on this issue. We have funded a Basic Income pilot, we are setting up an affordable housing project, we are providing capital to a variety of steward ownership initiatives, we have built a Community Learning Center and we are funding research on values and AI. We will share more about these projects next year. All of them are designed to pull the future forward and point it in the direction of abundance.
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Albert Wenger
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For your weekend reading pleasure: blog post on Abundance https://continuations.com/abundance
not what i would expect to read from a vc... excited to hear more about your projects and progress 👏
Book review: Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson https://continuations.com/abundance-book-review