the automated future
The automation of all production means that any work required to satisfy human desires can be done most cheaply through a mechanical process. Machines that design, build, operate, maintain, and improve other machines, all without human effort beyond expressing a desire.
But automation doesn't eliminate scarcity. Production still requires raw materials, physical space, energy, and time. No machine can create something from nothing. What changes is that human effort is no longer a limiting factor reflected in the opportunity cost of doing the useful thing.
Follow the chain of any product back to its origins and every link resolves to natural resources and time. Human labor has always been, at its core, the conversion of energy into useful work, and humans are remarkable machines for this. Automation replaces the biological converter with a mechanical one, making the underlying energy dependency direct and explicit. In the automated future, the cost of everything reduces to the opportunity cost of allocating natural resources—above all, energy—over time.
What changes
- Human labor in production
- Human decision-making in business
- Human entrepreneurship & investing
- Human scientific & engineering work
What stays
- Scarcity of natural resources
- Energy: the input that labor always was
- Markets, money, and pricing
- Trade-offs between competing desires
- Management of capital over time
Machines will find money, commodity pricing, private capital, and markets every bit as useful for planning and economizing as people do today.
the obsolescence problem
The other side of the coin: if machines do all work better and cheaper, human labor becomes worthless. People become economically obsolete when the value they can add to production falls below the cost of keeping them alive.
This isn't hypothetical. As technology advances, human labor is bounded by subsistence—the minimum a worker will accept rather than die. Automation pushes that margin relentlessly. The endgame is a world where a person is better off dying than laboring to sustain their life.
But not everyone becomes obsolete. There is one thing that keeps a person relevant: the legal right to command natural resources. Economic "land" means all inputs to production freely provided by nature, not just dirt but space, raw materials, and energy. It is the natural bounty of the earth, and it cannot be created.
Without land rights
Your labor value falls below the cost of food and shelter. You cannot sustain yourself. You survive only at the mercy of those who own the resources.
With land rights
You command resources. You can command machines. Your capacity to meet your desires is limited only by the natural resources you have the right to direct.
capital's vanishing edge
The early creators and owners of powerful machines will benefit from a meaningful time advantage. It might end up being one of the most lucrative time advantages in history. But in a world of automated production, new machines are limited only by the scarcity of raw materials, energy, space, and time. Anyone with the right resource access can eventually match or exceed the productive capabilities of the early capital owners.
The advantage of owning already-made machines compresses to zero as better machines are made ever more cheaply. Meanwhile, the opportunity cost of the non-producible inputs, the natural resources, remains. The result: the value that capital owners temporarily capture flows increasingly to whoever controls the land.
Early advantage
First movers profit from superior machines
Competition erodes advantage
Better, cheaper machines flood the market
Land captures all
All remaining value resolves to natural resource access
The creation of bona-fide capital is not, will not be, and has never been free. But its competitive advantage dissipates as machines make more machines. What remains scarce is land over time.
geoism
Geoism is a practical theory of resource justice. It doesn't seek to tear down capitalism but to define it correctly. Economic land is all inputs to production freely provided by nature: space, raw materials, and energy sources. It cannot be created, and it commands market value due to scarcity. Under automation, energy sources dominate: solar exposure, wind patterns, geothermal gradients, fossil deposits, nuclear fuel. These are natural endowments, not products of effort. The competitive advantage of holding land rights is measured by the land's rent: the market price of tying up a site or resource for a period of time.
Geoism asserts that no individual has an inherently better claim to the earth than another. While exclusive land rights are an invaluable convention—providing the security and stability necessary for productive use—they must not become a tool of monopoly. Geoism resolves this by demanding that land users be liable for the market rent of the land they consume, and that this rent be distributed as an equal citizen's dividend. In effect everyone receives the same base budget for natural resource access. Use less and pocket the difference; use more if you pay for it.
Collect
Land users pay only the market rent for the natural resources they occupy or consume
Distribute
Rent is returned in equal shares through a citizen's dividend
Result
Everyone has the economic power to command automation toward their own desires
This is not a rejection of capitalism but a proper definition of it. Equal access to nature's inputs does not necessarily mean equal outcomes. Those who invest wisely, save patiently, or spend resources on things others value can still come out ahead. Geoism simply ensures that getting ahead starts from productive contribution, not from monopolizing what nature provided for free.
the automated future needs geoism
Before automation, a person's economic power combined their labor with whatever natural resources they controlled. In conditions where labor was scarce and land plentiful, a healthy middle class could thrive. But in the automated future, labor has no value. A person's economic well-being is determined entirely by the natural resources which they command.
Geoism gives every person a stake in the earth's value. It means people pay for natural resources they use but receive a perpetual dividend from those very payments. In doing so, it gives each person the power to command machines toward the future they want to see: to invest, to conserve, to save, or simply to enjoy life.
The automated future is a test of humanity's moral and political constitution.
Geoism is how we pass it.