Economic Pie Research as a Cause Area

This writing is intended as a conversation starter for anyone who wants to contribute research for how to inclusively grow and share the economic pie.

Growing and Sharing the Economic Pie

Overall it probably makes sense for there to be a “Bipartisan Manhattan Project” for figuring out how to increase the size of the pie and distribute it well (similar to Dalio stating what he would do as president).

Background: perspectives on how the world may be shifting

This may be humanity’s Most Important Century.

Here’s a brief summary of the relevant economic and historical trends:

The current distribution of power may act similar to a “World Order of the Future”.
- Whatever power structures, or “division” of the pie is established in the next few years, may materially influence the division of humanity’s resources into the long-term future (i.e. what the experience of consciousness is).
The socioeconomic backdrop matters.^[1]
- Countries, governments, companies, and people groups who increasingly recognize the stakes may be more prone to radical actions (e.g. Russia) to grab more of the perceived pie while they can.^[2]
Throughout cycles of conflict and peace in history, the cycles of conflict determine who holds power during the next cycle.^[3]
- This often occurs across countries, within governments, across racial and socioeconomic groups during similar time windows.
Against this socioeconomic backdrop, humanity is also building exponential technologies, whose capabilities seem likely to exceed our wisdom and coordination to use them well.^[4]

How Global Financial Freedom Impacts Existential Risk

Existential risk increases as more groups become tribal and more willing to try drastic things, because they may feel the game is unfair, systematically broken, or controlled by a small few.
- The more people who feel like the game is rigged or unfair, the more likely some may try to flip the playing board to end the game (e.g. Russia, populism, Trump elections).

The Inequality challenge seems likely to get worse with tech advancement

Exponential technology will likely accrue value to the corporations that retain future value of Intellectual Property.
- Wealth concentrates into corporations and shareholders of those companies.
- Power concentrates into the people or entities who govern exponential technologies.
If this trend continues, then inequality will probably continue to increase, along with populist resentment and conflict.^[5]
As broader access to exponential technologies increases, the likelihood of small-group resentment turning into large-scale negative impact increases.^[6]

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See WaitButWhy “A Game of Giants”
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“Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere [AI] will become the ruler of the world.” -V. Putin. “China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo.” -E. Musk Tweet
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Ray Dalio’s report on Populism: The Phenomenon, the book Principles for Dealing with a Changing World Order, and the video Dealing with a Changing World Order.
Dalio’s Principled Perspectives on Linkedin.
US-China Relations and Wars.
Six Stages of Internal Cycle.
Determinants of the Perpetual Motion Machine.
Determinants: Class Struggles.
Determinants: Political Left/Right Cycle.
Determinants: The Big Multigenerational Psychological Cycle.
Determinants: Human Inventiveness.
Determinants: Inflation and Wealth.
The Changing World Order: The New Paradigm.
The Rising Risk of Civil War: Following in the Footsteps of History.
Where We Are in the Big Cycle of Money, Credit, Debt, and Economic Activity and the Changing Value of Money.
The Changing World Order: Focusing on External Conflict and the Russia-Ukraine-NATO Situation.
The Past Is Prologue: The Changing World Order; How the Sides Are Lining Up.
How Can We Tell How the First Battle in the Long War for Control of the World Order Is Going?
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Nick Bostrom’s writing on the rate of change in humanity’s capability vs. wisdom and coordination.
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In the All In Podcast section “How the US can fix its current economic issues” David Friedberg provides a good summary of context and potential solutioning:
(1) Grow the pie
(2) Split the pie well
(3) Efficiently create and distribute the value
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“The ability to bioengineer pathogenic organisms is becoming ubiquitous. The toolkit for doing gain-of-function research… is a very simple toolkit. The ability to engineer organisms that can cause catastrophic harm to the human species is becoming available on the internet and with tools that any of us can buy and use in our garage. So what I’m more questioning and what I’m more concerned about and what I care more about is what is our global biodefense strategy, how are we getting ahead of the next wave of this happening.” -David Friedberg. Deep Fakes.