Dead Economy Theory

Cory Doctorow points out that Elon Musk's personal wealth has soared to astronomical heights while everything he's actually done since 2020 has been pretty much a failure. Why? Because of memes and vibes, basically.

This is not great for the future of our species. Not great at all.

[T]he real "dead economy" risk isn't that all the productive labor will be done by chatbots owned by a habitual liar and eminently guillotineable billionaire like Sam Altman. The actual dead economy risk is that our institutions and markets will continue to move capital from productive activity into memestocks, vibes, and bubbles.

We could do "AI cancer research" by producing tools that automate gnarly multivariant analysis problems for cancer researchers. But what we're actually doing is defunding cancer research (especially any research into "systemic" cancer because studying systemic things is "woke") to free up fiscal space so we can build data-centers and make Musk into a trillionaire.

That's not just a dead economy – it's one that'll kill everyone you love and everything that matters.

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Source: Original article · Are.na block · Finds channel