> why would they be bound to pay out dividends or otherwise share the fruits of their economic labour?

because they don't control the physical paper that is money.

I dont understand what you mean by "fiat tokens". I don't imagine most people will accept tokens as a currency because they are as good hold of value and predictable as bitcoin.

In a token economy, certainly what you say is a possibility, but as you can imagine, that economy will be unsustainable so back to "regular" money.

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rich_sasha 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Money is a medium of exchange. If I want something, I can get money in some way, then swap it for something else.

But if I have a near magical genie who can make me anything - software, farming business, physical things - and at a fraction of economic input compared to the legacy monetary policy - then the money is worthless. As the Aztec shells were to the conquistadors.

That they can’t print USD is irrelevant.

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RemoteIsHeaven 5 hours ago | parent [-]

You need to put into some thought into this.

> Money is a medium of exchange

That's an oversimplification. It comes with a lot of rules and authority that will be enforced by the issuing authority that a simple "IOU" on a sheet of paper lacks. IN the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note. You certainly can refuse to accept the very IOU we agreed on a minute earlier.

Most of the developed world already has magical genies - certainly an overwhelming majority of people on HN earn enough to have LLM subs that build code, 3D Printers that print physical things.

The challenge always has been and will be humans.

You just cannot live in a vacuum. If you could subsist entirely on cheetos and figured out how to make an entire lifetime's supply of cheetos, after N days of watching Netflix, arguing on HN, raising chickens and goats, one day you will want to go and talk to a human.

Soon after, you will need a currency.

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> in the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note

This is a false–albeit common–misunderstanding. "Federal statutes do not require a seller to accept cash as a form of legal tender for payment of goods or services that were rendered. Thus, businesses may establish their own policies regarding whether they will accept cash as legal tender" [1].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legal_tender

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solyin 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> IN the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note.

Yeah you can. Tell that to all the stores in rougher neighborhoods that kept getting held up at gunpoint for the cash in the register, so they stopped taking cash. Bit harder to get money out of a stolen credit card terminal.

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bruckie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> IN the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note.

Minor side note: this is true only for repayment of debts. Some local jurisdictions require private parties to accept cash for new purchases, but there's no federal requirement to do so.

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RemoteIsHeaven 2 hours ago | parent [-]

If I purchased a stick of 32GB DDR4 RAM from you for $100, am I now not in $100 debt to you? We are private parties - can you refuse to accept a legal $100 and force me into paying you by Zelle?

	▲	burpingtree 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, but the argument is that the seller is under no obligation to sell you the stick of RAM originally that will incur the debt if you offer cash instead of Zelle. If you did manage to receive the stick of RAM without paying for it during the initial exchange and so still owe the $100, then yes, the seller is required to accept cash to settle that debt.

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10111001 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think what you're missing is if you have a "a near magical genie who can make [you] anything" you don't need to exchange for anything.

And if your "near magical genie" can make an operate military equipment, you don't have to respect existing authorities anymore.

Basically, the "AI maximalism" scenario kicks the legs out from under all these concepts and social institutions you're relying on.

> Most of the developed world already has magical genies - certainly an overwhelming majority of people on HN earn enough to have LLM subs that build code, 3D Printers that print physical things.

Not like in the scenario we're discussing. Whatever "magical genies" we already have are incomplete and need operators or have serious quality problems. Most of us depend on those limitations for our livelihoods, and those limitations also give levers to control them.

> You just cannot live in a vacuum. If you could subsist entirely on cheetos and figured out how to make an entire lifetime's supply of cheetos, after N days of watching Netflix, arguing on HN, raising chickens and goats, one day you will want to go and talk to a human.

An oligarch with the "near magical genie" could easily build a town of 5,000 to satisfy his needs to "talk to a human."

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nullc 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> in the continental US, you cannot refuse to accept a dollar note

Absolutely untrue. Outside of some local laws governing cash at retail you're under no general obligation to trade with someone if you only want payment in cybertrucks and all they've got is dollars.

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drcode 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I would be overjoyed if, 5 years from now, the entity in charge is still interested in talking to a human

	▲	RemoteIsHeaven 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Even if the "entity in charge" isn't interested in talking to humans, humans would certainly be interested in talking to humans. I'm also interested what this "entity in charge" does? and why would it do anything at all?

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oersted 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don’t think he means “tokens” as in LLM input/output units here.

He just means it as in “credits”. “Fiat tokens” as in arbitrary units that are said to have value de facto by consensus, but don’t have any inherent value.

Yeah not the best choice of words in this context. And it’s quite a LessWrong-esque leap of reasoning.

But I do get the point: either Anthropic is successful and they transcend money, and thus (somehow) screw over their investors, or they are not successful. Their investors get screwed regardless.

Again, I don’t really agree with it, but it’s an intriguing point.