David Shapiro · Tech & AI
TIER 4 Thu, 15 Jan 2026 12:41:33 +0000
We must evolve and ascend the tree of organizational complexity ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ | | ---|---|--- | | | Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more --- # Technofeudalism is the Default Trajectory ### We must evolve and ascend the tree of organizational complexity | | David Shapiro --- | Jan 15 --- | --- --- | | | --- | | --- | | --- | | --- | | READ IN APP --- "You will own nothing and be happy." Yes, I am _pathologically optimistic_ about the future, and I have no reservations admitting that. I'm a problem solver at heart, and I believe that all problems are solvable. Especially when they are human problems. The problem, in a word, is that the combination of neoliberalism, capitalism, democracy, and automation technology means that, without any intervention, we're on a collision course with a cyberpunk dystopia. High tech, low life. We're already living in it. The median age of first-time homebuyer is now 40. The American dream is dead. Go to school, get job, settle down, and start a family. All of that is predicated on the one basic promise of "you will be able to afford a decent home." The social contract is null and void. ## **I. Neoliberalism** Neoliberalism became the default economic policy of the globe with the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. But what does Neoliberalism actually do? * _**Pro-Corporation:**_ Strengthen corporations by foregrounding their interests. * _**Undermine Labor:**_ Labor unions are derailing, so systematically undermine labor power. * _**Privatize Everything:**_ Treat government like a business, it should turn a profit or cease to exist. This creates direct philosophical justification for the revolving door between government and industry. It explicitly empowers lobbyists and special interest groups to go to Washington to get their needs met. And it makes sense. Or at least, it _made sense at the time._ After World War II, Allied nations realized that they never wanted to be caught flat-footed on technological or economic front ever again. Whenever one nation is too powerful, they become a risk factor. So the US said "I'm never gonna be the wimpy kid ever again." And they looked at what makes nations militarily powerful. * _**Economic prosperity.**_ Whatever it takes to raise GDP. GDP is a powerful predictor of dominance. * _**Technological progress.**_ Technology fuels the military. The military is the direct application of dominance. * _**Well fed soldiers.**_ Hence corn subsidies, the meat lobby, and so on. Every economic policy under Breton Woods at least attempts to maintain geopolitical dominance. That was the entire strategy for beating the Soviets: _outgrow them and prove that capitalism and democracy are the superior civilizational operating system._ Today, Russia has an equivalent GDP of _Texas._ Case closed. Right? ## **II. Attractor States** During the 1980's, with Japan in the ascendancy, people were worried that the world was going to be more Japanese than American. Multinational conglomerates were becoming powerhouses. That anxiety expressed itself in fiction. Blade Runner. Elysium. Cyberpunk 2077. Altered Carbon. The Expanse. Everyone saw the direction things were heading, so they wrote cautionary tales, warning of the civilizational disaster of undermining worker's rights, favoring corporatism, and focusing on techno-innovation at all costs. Cyberpunk is the lived experience within great power competition. The attractor state that created was one of high tech, low life. And it turned out not to be an exaggeration. Squeeze workers for every drop of GDP. Why? To feed the war machine. Give corporations sweetheart deals. Why? To feed the war machine. Grow or die. We can't let Russia/Japan/China outgrow us. It's the Red Queen theory applied to nations. ## **III. Possible Outcomes** The way I see it, the AI and robotics revolution has a few possible outcomes. Here are my top five attractor states in order from worst to best. 1. _**Extinction.**_ Either we wipe ourselves out with nukes or viruses, or the machines rise up and wipe us out. I don't believe this one is particularly likely. We have institutions like CBRN and IAEA to prevent the former, and so far there's no credible evidence of ASI-mediated X-risk. 2. _**Collapse.**_ Either civilization collapses or ecology collapses. The former possibility is romantic, and we gesture at previous collapses like Bronze Age collapse, the Roman empire, and Indus valley to say "See! Civilization can collapse!" but that seems unlikely today. Likewise, narratives about a dead earth are romantic, but the planet has been far warmer than it is today and it kept on trucking. 3. _**Technofeudalism.**_ This is the current trajectory and the default state. Strong property rights, great power competition, capitalism, democracy, when you sprinkle on advanced automation, this is the default trajectory. We're already living in it. 4. _**Nothing Ever Happens.**_ We just get more of the same. Work sucks, politicians are corrupt, but mostly things stay the same. This is a cognitive failure called "normalcy bias." The current regime is unstable, but our brains evolved to assume "the way things are will persist indefinitely." The farmers and weavers thought that during the industrial revolution. They were wrong. 5. _**Techno-abundance.**_ This is the state we want. It looks like a more abundant future, where human dignity is respected or even prioritized. It looks like the end of wage slavery and precarity. To get there, we need stronger democratic institutions, and new incentive structures around property and ownership. Wealth and power tend to concentrate over time. That's always been true throughout all of human history. Therefore, the base rate of "things get worse due to more concentration" is the most likely outcome. ## **IV. Labor 's Leverage** But wait, there's more. It gets worse. So much worse. Historically, the elites needed the rest of us. I call this _**double bilateral dependence.**_ * _**The People:**_ Need coordination and protection to provision safety and prosperity. * _**The Elites:**_ Need healthy, cooperative human bodies for production and military. Like it or not, the haves and have-nots have been locked in a codependent marriage since we invented the idea of civilization. They needed our labor. And that always gave us a trump card. That always gave us veto power. * Strike, refuse to work. * Desert, refuse to fight. * Boycott, refuse to buy. But with automation technologies rising meteorically, in the form of AI and robots, there is no strike. There is no desertion. And who cares about a boycott? While we might hate wage slavery, the alternative _could actually be even worse._ And history validates this. In places and times where human lives were cheap, the elites discounted the need for human rights and human dignity. Russia still does this today. It treats men like canon fodder. Meat for the grinder. It's not coincidence that Russia also was one of the last nations with serfs. ## **V. Bunker Builders** The elites know they are unpopular. That's why they are building bunkers. It's why they are becoming the ultimate preppers. This is Moloch taking over. Moloch spreads his wings, laughing, having created a Nash equilibrium where no elite can defect (and be generous) because they will just lose their wealth. No nation can defect (and stop the war machine) because they will lose on the world stage. The optimal strategy is: keep competing, keep escalating, keep concentrating wealth. But that results in an unsustainable world where the poor get poorer, the rich get richer, and democracy itself starts to decay. This is nothing new. That is the definition of a Molochian trap. Every agent makes rational choices at every step of the game, but the system becomes untenable anyways. In the case of the Roman empire, the ultimate collapse came when the legions stopped marching, and the provinces reverted to warlordism and feudalism. It's understandable that people would think that this time would turn out the same. But the truth is actually much worse. The reason is because even the local feudal lord needed peasants to work the land, minor houses to provide knights and men-at-arms. With AI and robots, the elites don't need either. ## **VI. Incentive Alignment** All systems operate based on the incentives and rewards they afford. Right now, the game is very much zero sum. Either America controls Venezuela and Greenland, or Russia and China do. (Don't shoot the messenger, I'm just reporting the calculus that _offensive realism_ dictates) Either the corporations get their way, or workers do. Either the elites win, or the voters win. But it's actually more complicated than that. Here, we can draw an analogy between humanity and AI. * _**Inner alignment.**_ Inner alignment in AI means "the model is actually optimizing the things you think it is optimizing for" rather than gaming the system. In humanity, inner alignment means all agents are working for each other's benefit, not against. * _**Outer alignment.**_ In AI, outer alignment means "the machine is actually behaving in a way that is beneficial to humanity" rather than just whatever objective function you gave, but having negative consequences. Think paperclip maximizers. For humanity, outer alignment means "we're not destroying our very habitat and substrate." When I started my work on AI alignment, some of my audience were convinced that "yes, you can align AI, but you cannot align humans." It's true. Aligning humans is damn hard. How would we exit Game A (winners and loser) and enter Game B (everyone wins)? How do we stop playing Finite Games (where the game ends) and switch to Infinite Games (where the game keeps going)? This is where we pivot to Generative Mutualism and defeat Moloch by ascending to the next payoff regime. ## **VII. The Grand Struggle** Charles Darwin said "if you have variation and selection, then you must have Evolution." I am saying "if you have plurality, volition, and scarcity, then you must have Struggle." * Plurality of agents - many entities * Volition of choice - many possible actions * Scarcity of resources - finite resources to compete over This defines all competitive systems, from Nature to Democracy to Geopolitics. It started with endosymbiosis. Billions of years ago, there were only archaea and bacteria. Single celled organisms. Primitive. They didn't even have cellular respiration as we understand it today. Then, one archaea tried to eat a bacteria. But a cosmically rare event occurred. The archaea did not succeed. Instead, the bacteria provided energy to the cell, and the joined forces, forever. That bacteria become our mitochondria. That cosmically rare event is called FECA (first eukaryotic common ancestor) And the Struggle evolved to a new payoff regime. Instead of individual cells competing with each other, they learned to join forces. 1. Proto-cells became eukaryotic cells 2. Eukaryotes joined forces to become multicellular organisms 3. Organisms eventually formed colonies, hives, and swarms (became social) 4. Social groups eventually became tribes and clans 5. Tribes and clans became civilizations 6. Civilizations became states and federations At ever level, you defeat competition not just by changing incentive structures, but through a process of endosymbiosis and increasing organizational complexity. It is a fractal regime. You create internal order so that you may better survive external conflict. That's why cells exist. It's why states exist. It's why bodies exist. Reduce internal entropy to outlast the competition. This is what we call Generative Mutualism. ## **VIII. Molochian Trap** Right now, we're still caught in the Molochian trap of competition at our current payoff regime. Once upon a time, it would have been inconceivable for continent-scale human societies to work together. But it is true today. Tomorrow, the payoff regime must become planetary in scale. You don't defeat Moloch permanently. You simply ascend to the next arena. For FECA, Molochian defection meant that most archaea simply ate and dissolved the bacteria. But the one that cooperated ascended to the next stage of evolution. Then, the cells that formed colonies, rather than attacking each other, learned how to be bigger and badder, by working together. Cooperation once again elevated the payoff regime. And so on and so forth, you get the idea. So how do we solve climate change and technofeudalism? You don't solve these problems directly. You evolve until these problems are trivial. You ascend the civilizational ladder until you have institutions powerful enough to force the change. Earth is a closed system, but right now, we are fighting within that system. Yours versus mine. We must keep building fences, trading punches, and stealing the ball from each other. But that great power conflict game is what's driving all underlying dysfunction. Cyberpunk dystopia is downstream of the military industrial complex, which is itself downstream of great power competition. Planetary thrashing is downstream of capitalistic resource maximization, which is itself downstream of great power competition. It is cancer. Cancer is when some of your cells defect and focus on acquiring as many resources for themselves as possible, and refusing to die. At the animal level of organizational complexity, cancer is Moloch's expression. At the tribal level of complexity, lying, stealing, and cheating are Molochian defection strategies. At the level of federations (where we are today), defection means offloading entropy into the environment, and burning out your citizens just to keep the fight going. It's a lose-lose-lose payoff regime. ## **IX. Building the Win-Win-Win Regime** Organizational ascension is the only path forward. Solving climate change is easy. We just need global institutions with enough enforcement teeth to say "stop polluting with so much carbon." But we're not sophisticated enough for that yet. Such an institution could only exist under a more maximal political regime, one which treats the entire Earth as a singular jurisdiction. This won't be a "one world government" at least not right away. Instead, it would be a "Federation of Federations" at the beginning. The US and the EU are the first federations. The African Union is on the ascendancy, and within a few decades, will be the largest power bloc on the planet. Solving technofeudalism, likewise, requires that we end great power competition and the need for human labor in the first place. This is where it gets dicey. Technology will obviate the need for human labor and human bodies within a decade or two. The proletariat will exit the great power game, but that doesn't mean that resources won't still be going towards great power conflict. But, in the grand scheme of things, every dollar spent on munitions and competition is just entropy. It's just value that we set on fire that could have gone towards more productive means. That excess entropy is a sign of inefficiency, a sign of friction. It's no different from an autoimmune disease: excess inflammation as your body attacks itself, rather than cooperating to better face the outside world. The resolution is to reduce friction, reduce inflammation, and stop attacking itself. A unified humanity is the only way to achieve this, but we cannot put the cart before the horse. In the same way that FECA could not have guessed that it would enable social tribes, likewise, each layer of organizational complexity is incremental and situated in a complex adaptive system. ## **X. Post-Labor Economics** Just as life needed to figure out circulatory and nervous systems from scratch, likewise, we must discover new immune, circulatory, nervous, and digestive systems for the superorganism of humanity. The internet, arguably, was our rough draft of a global nervous system. It's noisy, and has its own Molochian traps (namely attention mechanism). But it is impossible to coordinate an entire planet without a high bandwidth mesh network. The next thing we need is _**internal alignment**_ between agents. So that elites are not fighting proletariat. This is where Post-Labor Economics comes in. The fundamental argument is over labor. Labor is a claim on your body and your time. But macroeconomic theory does not require your labor. It only requires your consumption. GDP is about spending. It does not matter how you get the money. Jeff Bezos does not care how you get the money, so long as you spend it on Amazon. Ditto for Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and every other tech oligarch. Post-Labor Economics is entirely about creating new flows of capital, redirecting money through overlapping, mutually reinforcing pathways so that individuals and households have spending power without labor. Post-Labor Economics is the new global circulatory system. Artificial intelligence will be the new exocortex. Robots will be the new worker drones. The pain we are feeling today is the pain of necessary evolution. The selective pressures against civilization are pushing us into a high-inflammation regime where we are attacking our own tissues. The elites are exploiting the workers, the workers hate the elites, and we are all harming the host. ## **Conclusion** Every facet of today's problems is bound up in layer upon layer of complexity. Understanding the regime is complicated, but fortunately, the solutions are relatively simple. The harder part is simply deploying them. The reason that technofeudalism is the default trajectory is the same reason that aging and age-related disease are the default trajectory for human bodies. The system just breaks down over time. It becomes decrepit and cancerous. That is why people sense we are in "late stage capitalism." We know we must evolve, but evolution itself is difficult, dangerous, and painful. Consider how cosmically rare and difficult it was for FECA to exist. So far as we know, that event happened once in the history of life, and very well could be the Great Filter. Most planets bearing life might simply have seas full of archaea and bacteria that never learned to cooperate. Consider how geographically rare the phonetic alphabet was. Humanity discovered that coordination technology exactly once. Without it, we might never have created civilization as we know it. My point here is that every time life goes through a great filter event, the solution is narrower than a keyhole. We could absolutely ascend to a higher payoff regime - a planetary scale civilization. But that will be hard to figure out. It will require more sophisticated organs than we have today, and the design of those institutions are non-obvious and non-trivial. But if we are to survive, and escape the default technofeudal attractor state, evolution will be necessary. You're currently a free subscriber to David Shapiro's Substack. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid --- | | | Like --- | | Comment --- | | Restack --- (C) 2026 David Shapiro 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe