What happens when artificial intelligence transforms the economy? The answer depends on two variables—only one of which is technological.
Two trends define our economic moment. Productivity—output per hour of human labor—has grown relentlessly for decades. Meanwhile, the marginal cost of many goods and services trends toward zero. Digital goods already cost almost nothing to replicate. Physical goods may follow as automation advances.
This is the first axis: productive capacity. Technology determines how far we can move along it. AI could accelerate this dramatically—potentially making the cost of producing most goods approach zero.
Productivity gains do not automatically benefit workers. Since the 1970s, American productivity rose roughly 80 percent while median wages rose roughly 10 percent. This is not a law of nature—it is a policy outcome.
"Who owns the robots owns the world."
— Richard Freeman, Harvard economist
This is the second axis: distribution. If AI generates trillions in value, the question becomes: trillions for whom?
Combine these axes—abundance versus scarcity, equality versus hierarchy—and four possible futures emerge. This framework, adapted from sociologist Peter Frase, maps the possibility space.
Current trajectory: Exterminism
Click a quadrant or drag the sliders to explore each future.
Here's what Frase couldn't have known in 2016: the left side of that quadrant is closing. AI capability doubles every few months. Inference costs are collapsing. The technology is not going to stop. Nobody is going to uninvent this.
Scarcity is not a serious future for productive capacity. Abundance is locked in. The only question left is: abundance for whom?
Socialism and Exterminism are off the table—not because they're unimaginable, but because the premise of scarcity that produces them is dissolving.
Two paths remain
The technological axis is settled. The only variable left is political—who owns the means of abundance, and who decides how it's shared. Rentism is what happens if we let current ownership structures absorb AI the way they absorbed every previous technology. The good future requires building the political infrastructure for shared prosperity now, before the window closes.
The political infrastructure for redistribution must be built before abundance arrives—not after. Once wealth concentrates around new technologies, it becomes self-reinforcing. The time to shape the future is while it remains malleable.
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