Notes Toward Economics at (or, more accurately, approaching) the Eschaton

No, not Dr. Black’s blog.  The real eschaton: the end of everything.  Or, in this case, its economics equivalent: the point at which almost all human work is no longer necessary but human beings still exist.

The scenario is a simple one.  There are x humans on Earth (x>>1).  Self-repairing, recycling machines can provide all the needs and wants of those x people and then some.*  There is only one job humans need to do: every day, one person needs to press one button once–during a specific time period—to start the self-rebuilding and repairing of the machines.

Applying basic micro and macro economic theories, and assuming a money-using society, we can come to several stylized facts:

  1. This is the true case where Chamley (1995, 1996) applies.  The only capital created is exactly that that replaces current capital.  With no new capital, the effective tax rate on capital should be 0%.**
  2. The requirement that someone presses the button has two aspects:
    1. It is not required to be skilled labor
    2. It is, however, essential labor
  3. In standard economic theory, the laborer is paid hisser Marginal Product
    1. The pressing of the button provides all of the goods to everyone for that day; since there is no MPK in this scenario, the MPL should equal the net profits from that day.
    2. Pressing the button requires the laborer to choose to do the job instead of something more pleasant; therefore, they must be compensated to provide at least as much Utility as not pushing the button would provide them
    3. For a sufficiently large population x, there may well be people who will not press the button in their lifetimes.  For even relatively large x, there will be people who will press the button less frequently than they will need to buy goods.
      1. In either of those scenarios—unless we consider Malthusian constraints necessary in a time of abundant plenty—any equilibrium condition will require that each person and any of hisser dependents be supported s.t. AD does not decline.

The natural scenario for button-pushing selection is by lottery, which would also minimize the substitution effect. Some constraints would be required: may not repeat for at least z days, cannot sell/buyout of doing the job (though some intraweek switching possible), backup available in case of illness,*** etc.

What is interesting is the tax rate t required.  It is fairly easy to show that for even moderate populations, t must approach 100% if the laborer is indeed receiving the day’s MPL.****  This is in part because, since no new capital is being created, tax revenues from capital must approach 0%.

The problem then becomes one of Game Theory.  We know what the Final State must be if all activity leading up to it is rational.  The next question is how we get there.  But that will have to be deferred to my next post.

Enjoy the Holiday.

 

*Excess capacity needs to be assumed if you assume humans are still breeding; that is, an additional y babies (y<

**It is caddish of me to note that Chamley’s brilliant realization that has been the underpinning of several decades of freshwater economic theory is, of course, completely reflected in the U.S. tax code, where investment is offset directly by depreciation.

***Anyone who designs a non-redundant system with a Single Point of Failure should be shot. The applicability of this to economic models, and most especially microeconomic models, is left as an exercise to the reader.

****It is also intuitive that a large consumption tax would not be a reasonable substitute for such an income tax; even a “luxury tax” presents significant timing issues for even a small population.