A picture of Rome in its decadence and decline. Slow fragmentation, failed reform that couldn’t keep pace with structural problems, fraudulent leaders, gradual loss of central control, systemic stress, and an unravelling of dominance.
Thomas Couture’s The Romans in their Decadence
Are we witnessing the slow unravelling of the dominance of American capitalism?
After Rome the next leading government model of the west was feudalism. Feudalism was a slow reformation of an empire into city states, lords, and serfs. Then the shift from feudalism to capitalism happened slowly over 500 years.
What most of us picture as “capitalism” emerged in Britain in mid to late 18th century around the Industrial Revolution. This is wage labor, factory production and capital investment as the dominant economic organizing principles.
300 years later here we are. Is the current iteration of capitalism pushing us forward or holding us back?
Current American capitalism is plagued by fraudulent leaders, reform that isn’t keeping pace with structural problems, and systemic stress.
The system is ill equipped for the large scale industrial changes that are mounting. AI is a larges scale industrial change that directly affects wage labor and production. The twitterverse amplified Citrini Research’s essay on the 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. It paints a not so far away future scenario in which AI leads to large scale displacement of white collar workers.
Essentially as more money pours into AI, there’s large scale displacement of white collar workers (who drive most consumer spending), and with these white collar workers not earning, they are not spending so less money is poured into the economy.
AI might help make businesses money, but this directly takes away household earning power if more folks face long term unemployment. Large scale unemployment in white collar workers destabilizes the economy. The government can’t collect income tax on large swaths of people.
While the executive branch seems focused on geopolitical tensions, it seems there is a sever lack of initiative to address structural problems that are brewing among American households.
soo maybe western capitalism is due for an upgrade?
From Ancient Rome, to Feudalism, to Industrial Capitalism to now things are getting better across the macro perspective, so let’s iterate.
Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire, Destruction
What ideas could bring better daily quality of life? How can we design systems that help the ongoing prosperity and longevity of the human race. here are some of my ideas :))))
Separation of short term and long term governance
Separating short-term and long-term governance prevents electoral cycles from cannibalizing future-focused policy.
Public education is the clearest example, where short-term budget cuts to teachers, infrastructure, and curriculum take decades to materialize as workforce shortages and eroded civic participation, costs that fall on administrations far removed from the original decision.
Universal Basic Income with Tiered “Ambitious Performance Incentives”
Think everyone has a right to shelter and food and survival. But still leaving room for desire and ambition to fuel those that want to achieve professionally. Essentially “give your kids enough to live, but not too much that they have no reason to.”
Citirini’s paper paints out how AI could fund and pave the way for this. After large scale displacement of white collar workers and ongoing social unrest, "The most radical proposal on the table goes further [to] establish a public claim on the returns of the intelligence infrastructure itself, something between a sovereign wealth fund and a royalty on AI-generated output, with dividends funding household transfers”
Space Expansion
Dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid. Let’s learn from the most successful reigning earthly species (165 million years strong) and get to other planets before this one gets nuked
Gamification of Altruistic Things
What if civic participation had its own engagement loop? Credit system or gamification of participating in things like childcare, city clean ups, etc.
High Pay for High Value Professions
Incentivize jobs like middle school teachers, nurses, doctors and mothers.
Continue to incentivize entrepreneurs and tech workers to create great opportunity and innovation!
Democratization and U-Haul of Public Education with AI
First Principles thinking education
Bring Back Home Econ in Schools (cooking, cleaning, how to hang up a tv without a task rabbit). Social media literacy. AI Literacy. Personal Finance. Basic Coding
Sunset Clauses
Sunset clauses force legislators to actively reauthorize laws rather than letting outdated or ineffective policy accumulate unchecked, building accountability into the system by default.
e.x. The 1996 Communications Decency Act's Section 230. which shields platforms from liability for user content was written for a pre-social media internet and has never been meaningfully reauthorized.
A sunset clause would have forced Congress to revisit it as platforms like Facebook and YouTube fundamentally changed what "user content" means
How can we design systems for the competing priorities of all the stages of a life? From childhood to adulthood to parenthood to senior-hood?
Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire, Desolation
see you at the next side quest (!)