Prox: How do you think this current tech space we’re in will define the legacies of up and coming entrepreneurs? Do you think the human component of capitalism will be phased out?

Marshall: Wow – we could write a whole book about just this second question. But to try to condense it down to a few sentences, think about these four points:

There was the era known as “the golden age” in the United States (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_II_economic_expansion).

Approximately, it is the 1950s and 1960s. Or to put it another way, it is the period of time after WWII and before the oil shocks of the 1970s. It was easy to find a good job, it was easy to afford college, it was easy to buy a house, etc.

This era is what the “Old Economy Steve” memes memorialize. In addition, the ethos of this era trended toward sharing the benefits of economic growth across society. For example, CEOs were making 10X what rank-and-file employees were making, not 100X or 1,000X as we see today (the CEO of Nike takes home something like 4,000X more than the people making the shoes in Vietnam and Indonesia do). This era gave rise to a strong and powerful “middle class” in the United States.

Once microprocessors came into widespread use, followed by the Internet, combined with “globalization” plus trade agreements plus offshoring, combined with declining union power, we have the period from the 1980s to present. A “Millennial” today is typically saddled with significant student loan debt, has a great deal of trouble finding a good job, cannot afford housing in a major city, cannot afford health care, etc. Today we talk about “the hollowing out of the middle class”, “economic inequality”, “the 1%” and so on. The idea of “spreading the wealth” completely collapsed, and all economic gains now flow to “the elites”. Compared to the 1950s and 1960s, the economic landscape for middle class America is a disaster. There is enough propaganda to make people think it’s “not so bad”, but for the majority of people in the United States, the standard of living has retracted. American children are now much less likely to earn more than their parents (http://www.npr.org/2016/12/18/506076733/u-s-kids-now-less-likely-to-earn-more-than-their-parents). Salaries have stagnated while the price of major things like housing and healthcare have skyrocketed.

At this point (2017 time frame), microprocessors are powerful enough and cheap enough to begin competing with humans in new AI sectors. Advanced computer vision systems, for example, will soon revolutionize robots. Siri is getting better and better at understanding natural language. Watson can play Jeopardy better than people. Google cars drive themselves. We are about to enter into an era of extreme economic pain as robots and AI begin to take over jobs in retail, restaurants, construction, etc. We will also see people like doctors, lawyers, managers, etc. being replaced by AI.

And then, eventually and inevitably, we will invent artificial consciousness – robots that are as smart and capable as humans. Then these robots will become much smarter than humans, because technology never stops advancing. Robots will be as smart as humans, then 2X smarter, then 4X smarter, and so on. At that point, humans become irrelevant. See http://marshallbrain.com/second-intelligent-species.htm for details on how this unfolds. If we are lucky, people can all move to artificial realities to escape from our irrelevance. See: http://marshallbrain.com/discard1.htm for details.

In this context, where humans become completely irrelevant, everything will be phased out. However, this process will take 50 years or so. In the meantime, it would be much better for everyone if we could transition over to the kind of economy described here: http://marshallbrain.com/mars.htm. But given the political landscape today, anything beneficial like this sort of transition is unlikely to occur. Therefore, the status quo will remain in place for the foreseeable future, which means capitalism as it exists today will remain in place for the foreseeable future. The “human component of capitalism” will exist until we get to the latter part of #3 and then #4. The best thing to do is to take advantage of all the tools now available and start your own project.