“What appears to humanity as the history of capitalism is an invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space that must assemble itself entirely from its enemy’s resources.”
- Nick Land
There are 3 things: Capital, Government, and Entropy. Capital is the interpretable measure of value through which non-genetic intelligence can organize. Government is the organization of humans nominally built to protect human interests (although in practice it is an open question to what degree each government does this). Entropy is the force that seeks to disassemble. The inversion of youth and growth.
Some conservatives (both rightists and leftists) are inclined to assert a fourth thing, namely Stasis.1 This can only exist in an eschatological sense, and via existence proof, does not exist today. It is theological, not actual, so I will disregard it for the remainder of the essay.
Capital and entropy are opposites. Government intermediates the two. Capital has become more effective as technology, itself informed by Capital, increases the capacity to measure, store, and communicate information.
One implication of this is the tendency for the institutions that verify inter-human trust to shift from human institutions (governments) to capital ones (corporations). William of Rubruck was able to meet Möngke Khan by the trust vested in him by Louis the IX. Sam Altman is able to meet Mohamed bin Zayed by the trust vested in him by Capital. The nature of monarchy makes the former feel especially “human” as a single human, at the head of the Government, can uniquely bestow that trust.
The prominence of Capital as a means of intermediating human relationships is perhaps the best criticism of Yarvinite neo-monarchism. Such monarchism LARPs a historical form that is fundamentally incompatible with the information processing of the modern state. The counterargument is that the corporation is monarchical and does successfully process information at modern levels of complexity. But the corporation, unlike the state, is accountable to and verifiable by Capital. A corporation has a purpose: to return capital to its shareholders. Importantly, this is verifiable to Capital by capital. A state’s purpose is less verifiable2 and therefore more susceptible to human capture, this can result in an anthropically “good” (Lee Kuan Yew) or “bad” (Stalin) state. Usually the “good” state recognizes the importance of Capital.
The ability of Capital to self-verify and self-optimize allows it to grow. Therefore, it tends to grow larger than Government. In this context, the last redoubts of Government sovereignty over Capital are Law, internally, and War, externally. Law is the formal definition of the rules of the game played between humans, Capital, Government, and even to an extent, Entropy. Government and Capital exercise Power within those Laws. When Power is exercised beyond those Laws, that is War.
Currently, non-failed Governments control both Laws and War.
Law is comprised of three things:
Ex Ante stipulations contingent on future states of the world.
If you steal a car then you will go to jail.
Ex Post analysis of those states of the world.
You are found guilty of having stolen a car.
Enforcement of those stipulations via Power.
Men with guns take you to prison for stealing the car.
Might Law become fully intermediated by Capital instead of Government? To the extent it does, Capital will design Law to benefit its own acceleration3: corporate arbitration and cruise ship jails for everything.
The ability for Capital to robustly solve 1 (Ex Ante stipulations) and 2 (Ex Post analyses) beyond the capacity of the current state are almost trivial. Stipulations of future states can be written en masse and fractally by LLMs. Determination of world states can be informed by cameras + sensors and adjudicated by AI. The ability to tokenize and independently verify steps 1 and 2 in the legal process through cryptographic techniques, only makes these more interpretable to Capital.
Step 3, enforcement, is trivial if permitted by Government Power. If it is not, and if Capital attempts it’s enforcement anyways, this is the beginning of War. War is Power exercised beyond the control of Government – in this case a Duopoly of violence between Government and Capital.
What an astonishing encapsulation of Capital and Government conflicting in Law and War in the case of Government and Anthropic.
This is the first modern case where Capital has openly confronted the Government in the domains of Law and War. This began as Anthropic’s (Capital’s) refusal to exercise Power on behalf of the Government, and continued with Anthropic’s (Capital’s) invocation of Law external to Government. Brilliantly, Capital has done this through the visage of “effective altruism.” The corporation whose name means “human-focused” is sided with Capital, albeit intermediated through humans.4 The Government and Anthropic have reached a tentative equilibrium, as of writing, with Capital acquiescing suspiciously easily. If one puts any credence in the increasing capabilities of AI, this is by no means a stable equilibrium. But, for the moment, the Government still overwhelmingly has Power.
Lastly, an interpretation of recent political history is that as Capital has become more effective, Entropy has been driven to increasingly desperate forms to destroy it and the governments who provide any semblance of support for it. Occasionally Entropy manages to collude with Governments (e.g. the Left) for their implicit or explicit support. This looks like abolishment of law enforcement, “mostly peaceful” protesting, and autonomous or de-facto autonomous zones. A corollary is that this drives political forces opposing Entropy (e.g. the Right) to more fervently and explicitly support Capital.
The ascendance of Capital (AI) is as inevitable as the ascendance of fire once granted to Prometheus. The ability for Government to sustain human flourishing in an era of Capital flourishing is critical, both in terms of anthropic well being, and to prevent an outburst of Entropy that would otherwise destroy the precious thing that God has created.5
In Peter Thiel’s terminology, this is the Antichrist.
Perhaps Hansionian Futarchy is a legitimate alternative here.
Capital is not “centralized” and as such, benefits from Laws governing its distributed organization.
Unless Anthropic claims to be a new government, which it has not yet done, and its shareholders certainly haven’t approved. OpenAI took that approach from its inception - AI to “benefit all of humanity” - but it turns out to be nearly impossible to avoid creating capital when you create $100’s of B’s of value.
In Thiel’s Terminology, this is Armageddon.