David Shapiro · Tech & AI
TIER 5 Fri, 21 Nov 2025 12:59:35 +0000
Thanks to Nano Banana Pro, and my forthcoming book, here's how we can visualize the future. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ | | ---|---|--- | | | Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more --- # The Pyramids of Prosperity and Power, Visualized ### Thanks to Nano Banana Pro, and my forthcoming book, here's how we can visualize the future. | | David Shapiro --- | Nov 21 --- | --- --- | | | --- | | --- | | --- | | --- | | READ IN APP --- | | ---|---|--- Feel free to download and share the full size image With Nano Banana Pro, I was able to generate this AWESOME infographic explaining my "Pyramid of Prosperity" concept. This is not an invention ex nihilo, but rather it is a taxonomy, a way of organizing dozens or hundreds of interventions that have already been trialed everywhere. And it solves ONE problems: "How do we shore up household income after jobs go away?" Because that's the core problem of Post-Labor Economics (hence the name: post-LABOR). AI, automation, and robotics don't break capitalism, they force us to double down on it! Many economists already agree that a sustainable path to an abundant future is to "broaden capital ownership" but that's more easily said than done. So, how does the Pyramid of Prosperity "broaden capital ownership"? We start with UNIVERSALS - stuff like UBI, UHC, and so on. We create a powerful floor of prosperity for all citizens. This is not the be-all end-all though. This is just a starting point. You don't want a government-provided "UHI" (Elon's idea of Universal High Income) because that still relies on taxes and puts too much power in the hands of the government. Instead, you want to accumulate appreciating capital assets. But, as many people ask "how the heck do you accumulate capital if you don't have any to start with?" Which is a good question! That's where the next layers of the pyramid come into play. Layer 1 is the UNIVERSALS and Layer 2 is the "collectively owned public assets" \- this is stuff like sovereign wealth funds and public resource trusts. In other words, it's capital we all technically own already by virtue of being citizens of a nation, but packaged up as a trust, endowment, or fund. Furthermore, these assets pay out, either in the form of dividends or royalties. What this does is create a scalable, appreciating, guaranteed asset basket for all citizens. Next up is layer 3, which is "collectively owned PRIVATE assets" \- this layer is everything from local trusts and cooperatives, to ESOPs and DAOS. What we do here is multiple: 1\. We make it easier to create and manage these assets (which will be a piece of cake once AI is smart enough to nuke all the jobs!) 2\. We create tax policies that incentivize the participation and accumulation of these assets, maybe even making it automatic in some cases. This layer creates a thicker cushion and allows everyone to participate and accumulate free-market based capital assets. Anything from farmland and forests to data centers and solar farms. Put them on a DAO, securitize them, and run them with AI on the blockchain. Next up is layer 4 - individual private assets. This doesn't change from today - stocks, bonds, businesses, rentals, and so on. But the difference in the future is that EVERYONE (and we mean everyone) will basically be a venture capitalist. That's the Post-Labor model. Your "job" in the future is to be an investor. You take the proceeds from the first few layers of the Pyramid and you find the best place to invest that money. This new mechanism replaces wages as the primary distribution mechanism. That's right, in the future, everyone becomes a VC (more or less) rather than working a 9-to-5. And finally, residual wages. Automation will nuke most jobs, however, there will always be some human jobs left. Those will mostly cluster along the meaning-authenticity-experience-attention axis. People like Taylor Swift will always have a job, but most of us won't. For the people who do land jobs (like the cute barista at your favorite coffee shop) we'll need to see very strong labor protections. That means higher minimum wages, guaranteed benefits, and more. The reason is because those remaining jobs will be in sharp demand, which is good for employers, but bad for employees. | | ---|---|--- How do we retain power when we're all "useless eaters"? Now, one of the most daunting challenges of Post-Labor Economics was the question "how do we maintain any semblance of power or equilibrium when we're all _useless eaters? "_ I should like to note, that the term "useless eaters" was used by the Nazis to justify eradication of disabled persons. However, I'm using this term not to be flippant or hyperbolic, but because I was asked _this exact question_ numerous times by concerned citizens. Think about it, if we accept the premise that AI, automation, and robotics are about to nuke all jobs, then what utility do citizens have? Sure, some people might say "oh we will be the _validators_ of AI output" but that's an extremely thin margin. Already, AI companies are creating "validator agents" that check code written by other AIs, and guess what? They don't need humans. Some of these security validator agents are already finding zero-day exploits that humans missed. So, no, I don't see any evidence that "humans in the loop" will be checking AI's work for long. Furthermore, when we look across the scope of history, undermined labor power usually coincides with eroded civic power. Throughout all of history, when there's a structural labor glut, or labor power wanes, civil protections follow suit, and human life is cheapened. Therefore, the real problem of Post-Labor Economics is not "how do we produce enough abundance"--that's all but automatic due to market forces. If Company A embraces automation and produces their goods and services at half the price of Company B (who didn't) then Company A wins. Then a new startup, Company C, says "actually, we can just automate from the outset and have zero employees" and so Company C is fully AI native, and eats Company A's lunch. So on and so forth. The free market of capitalism and neoliberalism all but guarantee we'll have productivity hyperabundance. The scarcity, then, is _**leverage**_. Right now, the social contract is based upon citizens being obedient workers and consumers. But if our labor value is trashed, we lose the ability to drive the economy with consumption. It's an economic death spiral, what I call the _**Economic Agency Paradox**_. Here's the paradox: 1. Technology is deflationary. It lowers the cost of goods and services, thereby increasing economic agency (your dollars go further) 2. HOWEVER, this time, that technological progress comes at the expense of _**jobs and labor**_ , meaning you get no dollars in the first place to buy those cheaper goods and services 3. If you double down and just automate more to lower the cost further, this actually makes the problem _**worse**_ , because then hiring humans for anything becomes increasingly irrational (why hire a human if they are 10,000x more expensive than automation?) So how do we break this paradox? We must completely renegotiate power and the social contract. What does that look like? Well, if we accept that _**labor power is sunsetting**_ we need a new _**kind of power**_. This is what I call _**algorithmic power.**_ To understand this, we must look at _**what gives labor so much power in the first place?**_ 1. Labor is _**inalienable**_ --you cannot separate it from the human body. 2. Labor is _**perishable**_ --meaning you cannot store it on a shelf. A human must be present to provision it. 3. Labor is _**refusable**_ --you can always say "no" and furthermore, you can collectively say no. 4. Labor is _**mandatory**_ --for states who want healthy soldiers and firms who want willing employees. Without labor, all productivity of the elites grinds to a halt. That's a tall order to replace. So what could _**possibly serve as a backstop**_ here? Let's take a look at algorithms. Blockchain in particular. 1. Blockchain is _**decentralized --**_without any single node or weak point, it replicates the decentralized nature of labor. 2. Blockchain is _**immutable**_ --it cannot be erased, tampered with, or hijacked (when implemented correctly) 3. Blockchain is _**permissionless**_ --meaning you can create it and run it without the government's approval. 4. Blockchain is _**enforceable**_ --smart contracts, quadratic voting, withholding resources. 5. Blockchain is _**zero-trust**_ --meaning designed for a trustless world, allowing you to "never trust, always verify" everything. Taken together, blockchain technologies offer us the perfect alternative to labor power. Now, you might be thinking "that's great in principle, but what do we actually implement?" Great question! At _**Layer 1**_ we implement an immutable civic bedrock. Identity, records, property. This forms the substrate of a new social contract based on algorithmic power rather than labor and trust in government. This is a low lift as it's already being implemented across the world in various formats. It normalizes blockchain-based governance and sets the stage for tamper-proof civic infrastructure that neither requires the government, nor needs the government's permission to exist. At _**Layer 2**_ we implement open payment rails like India's UPI or Brazil's Pix. What this does is shatter the banking hegemony. We wouldn't have thought this possible until we learned that two nations (including the most populous nation on the planet) already had. This creates a "freedom to transact" that, even if it run on government-standardized rails, takes power away from the institutions and puts them back into the hands of real, living, breathing humans. At _**Layer 3**_ we implement radical transparency, such as in the case of Ukraine's ProZorro procurement platform. As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant (and democracy dies in darkness). So why don't we double down on that, hmm? Radical transparency is built upon the first layers, where blockchain all but guarantees transparency and immutability of things like property records and government actions. So we take it one step further and operationalize it. At _**Layer 4**_ we implement direct democracy. That includes participatory budgeting, tighter feedback loops, and collective decision-making beyond just "voting for a corrupt politician"--the direct expression of willpower of the people. This has already been implemented at various scales, and with the first few layers of the Pyramid of Power, it becomes easier, automatic, and perhaps even inevitable. At _**Layer 5**_ we start to look at metagovernance--rules for changing the rules. After all, perhaps a Constitution written when AI didn't exist and horses and trains were the fastest modes of communication could be a bit out of date, no? The combination of AI, automation, robotics, and blockchain could afford us entirely new modalities of government. But we need to get there incrementally without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. When you stack these together, they create a framework that we can all build upon, that will renegotiate the social contract, and rebalance the civic equilibrium. * * * The best part about both Pyramids of Power and Prosperity is that they exist in pieces today, and we don't need to wait until all jobs are gone to start implementing them. 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) 2025 David Shapiro 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe