For most of human history, the value of labor was so inexpensive that it was below cheap. This is one of the mainly unstated reasons why human slavery of all kinds flourished all over the world for as long as it did. There were a lot of extra humans, and it was too expensive to just allow them to exist. And besides, work needed to be done.

Farm work.

Building work.

Hauling work.

House work.

Fighting work.

But when the Industrial Revolution began, human labor started to become more expensive, and the value of that labor began to increase. Sure, factory labor was hard, but it was less likely to be devalued if the person running the machine knew more about how to turn out a product on a repeat basis than the guy running the business. Even if that guy had started the business by turning the product out himself.

Then, computers came along, and knowledge became specialized. And with specialization, labor tottered precariously between being expensive (after all, there are still a lot of humans around) and being cheap (after all, there is still a lot of work to be done). Add to this the fact that monetizing knowledge is hard because it tends to develop on a long timeline (20-25+ years), and you’ve got a situation where labor and knowledge have been in a weird truce for some time.

But now, since the advent of the Internet, knowledge is perceived as being cheap. And since knowledge is cheap, human labor must return to the forefront in value. Except that the LLMs combined with robotics will render both labor and knowledge increasingly inexpensive, but also unevenly.

So, how can humans differentiate themselves from both knowledge and labor in order to create value for other humans and to accomplish all the work that (still) needs to be done in the world?

I don’t have the answer to that question, nor does anyone else.

I know what the answers aren’t. And Universal Basic Income–or money for just hanging around and existing–is not one of them. I also know that human creativity, unbound from both knowledge and labor, is a petri dish in which all the old spiritual and psychological diseases that still beset us as a species will grow and flourish in unprecedented ways. I also know that the smartest people in the world don’t have any other answers to the question either.

We are all in this together now.