A permanent freezing in of wealth is just one of many possible ASI scenarios

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A permanent freezing in of wealth is just one of many possible ASI scenarios

Milan Mecklenburg<br>Aug 09, 2026

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There is much talk in the tech scene of a permanent underclass .<br>The idea is that a general superintelligence can automate all work, and hence drive the value of labour to zero. Because it is not possible to build wealth through labour anymore, whoever is wealthy, in particular in terms of ownership of 1) the AI value chain 2) non-scalable goods such as land, stays wealthy, and everyone else is screwed. Hence a frantic race is developing to make as much money as possible in the next few years while we still can. I do think that this scenario is possible, and that incentives to save money are substantially higher than if the AI revolution were not happening. But the freezing in of wealth scenario rests on several (load-bearing, as Claude would say) assumptions, each of which may turn out false:<br>Productivity and Happiness is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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ASI (artificial superintelligence) arrives and does in fact largely eliminate the value of human labour

Redistribution is limited. This probably requires a non-democratic outcome: Part of the argument for property rights and limited redistribution is that they incentivize value creation through labour, and the combination of labour and investment. If the value of labour, including that of entrepreneurs and investors, drops to zero, a population may turn towards socialism, or at least increased redistribution

The ASI or whoever controls it still really cares about property rights rather than just dispossessing shareholders, landowners, etc.

I do think such an outcome is possible, if someone from the “democracy is incompatible with freedom” camp around e.g. Peter Thiel controls AI, and they stick to their stated belief in property rights. To stick to property rights, the post-ASI elite needs to either be large and interdependent enough to require property rights to coordinate, or believe strongly enough in property rights as a value that they protect it even when it does not serve them anymore. ASI elites would probably be smaller than previous ones because of the limited need for human labour. I also don’t strongly believe in the latter, because parts of the tech richt support threats to annex Greenland, which seems like a violation of property rights to me. Overall I believe the wealth freeze-in scenario is possible, but with a likelihood well below 50%. When planning for the future, both as individuals and as a collective, we should consider it, but we should consider also what happens if we relax one or more of the assumptions underlying it.<br>AI as a a bubble

If we strongly relax the first assumption, we are in the AI as a bubble scenario. I do not believe this is the case beyond a relatively short-term dip (e.g. like the dot-com crash), given how much I and many others already use LLMs every day. But if this scenario were true, we’d probably be best served by not thinking about AI too much, and just getting on with our lives.<br>Ai as a normal technology

A softer relaxation of the first assumption is the AI as a normal technology scenario. In this scenario AI is similar to, say, the industrial revolution: Much work gets automated and there is a lot of disruption, but there are still plenty of opportunities for humans to add value in a way that can be monetized. This almost certainly is what happens in the short term, and some people argue this is also how things will stay long term. In this scenario I see a good (but not at all certain) chance of democratic capitalism being maintained, just as it ultimately was after previous technological revolutions (despite experiments with socialism): Both entrepreneurship and investment judgement (whose importance strengthens capitalism and property rights) and labour more generally (whose importance strengthens democracy, or at least an autocracy caring about its citizens) retain value. The best strategy to deal with the AI as a normal technology scenario is to shift our skills to the ones that are more likely to be complementary with AI. In its implications, it is somewhat similar to the wealth freeze-in scenario in that there is still an incentive to work hard to create wealth: Technological revolutions are great opportunity windows to do so. But there is no reason here for “last chopper out of Saigon” anxiety.<br>Egalitarianism

If we relax the assumption that redistribution is limited, we may end up with some sort of egalitarian outcome. This would come about because now that labor, including investment judgement and entrepreneurship, has little value, the population no longer accepts arguments that wealth disparities are acceptable because they incentivize value creation....