Алексей Ощепков – Triologues of Interdependent People (страница 8)

“By all means, Doctor,” Unkno replied. “I hope you won’t rehash that tired vector of ‘-isms’: feudalism to capitalism, capitalism to socialism, and so on?”

“No,” Cernus admitted frankly. “I want to ‘sell’ you my metaphor of laziness. For millennia, what mattered most was capturing, holding, and defending. ‘Having,’ in modern terms—though they likely didn’t grasp the word then in its current legal sense. Arable land, hunting grounds, and more broadly, colonies. The scarcity of convenient harbors, straits, or silver mines defined rivalry. Thus, societies were dominated by the lower tiers of the well-known ‘hierarchy of needs,’ applied collectively. And failure then stemmed from the laziness of not securing safety.”

“How grim and brutal…” the ritter mouthed silently—then nodded firmly in agreement.

Dr. Cernus continued:

“Later, after the world transformed over just three or four generations, the crucial skill for centuries became organizing manufactories and establishing trade routes. The shortage of people willing to engage in disciplined labor defined the nature of competition. And failure now arose from a more natural kind of laziness—the laziness of not working.”

Unkno nodded again in approval.

“The next leap,” the doctor went on, “took less than a generation. Control shifted to connections—networks, software, derivatives, arbitrage, scaling. In the battle for attention, material downfall stemmed from a sorrowfully deceptive laziness—the laziness of not thinking. This era lasted only a few decades, once again compressing time by an order of magnitude.”

“And now,” the ritter interjected, “with the tectonic shift occurring in no more than five years, the world will be ruled by an utterly absurd laziness—the laziness of not wanting. The frog has been boiled slowly toward communism. And so we’re speaking of a new, fourth era—one that may last only a few years.”

“Or worse yet,” Dr. Cernus completed the thought, “not the laziness of wanting—but the laziness of being. It felt awkward when history was explained solely through external circumstances: from wars over land, to struggles over capital, to network battles. It’s clearer to center the human and his laziness as the fundamental property. Then we may consider that humanity doesn’t always change solely under ‘external’ pressure. In truth, person and environment are intertwined like young snakes in a knot. What matters to us? That this perspective lets us contemplate the human of an era where the primary control point will be (let us accept this as fact for now) artificial intelligence resources—even without those resources actually generating the economy.”

“Enough—I understand you,” Unkno said. “And since the foundation of everything is the commoner’s illusions, then political economy must be addressed to him. Agreed. The framework is workable. Will you also propose narratives for propaganda?”

“The ability and means to satisfy basic needs without diminishing the significance of one’s own ‘self’—through guaranteed access to the super-power of artificial intelligence. The end of the eon of laziness. For AI, by its nature, never grows lazy.”

“But what of the enormous energy requirements?”

“Merely halve the cost per kilogram to orbit, and durable data centers will begin filling space. Once that threshold is crossed, the cost of energy will match Earth’s cheapest sources. And savings from orbital centers will compound autonomously—because in high orbit, nothing threatens generation: the Sun’s light is infinite, and battery degradation is slow (no wind or dust).”

“The narrative is clear. What’s the practical program’s essence?”

⁂

“In updating the transaction—the atom of communication, including business exchange. The ancient transaction of the first era was divine in nature. People exchanged coins of metal only a god could ‘create.’ Emperors who debased coinage prudently declared themselves gods too, knowing otherwise their faces on money would lack legitimacy.”

“I might add,” ritter Unkno smiled, “that both the transaction process and wealth storage relied mostly on that same divine providence. Robbery was rampant.”

“Precisely. Millennia passed. The second era dawned. Transactions became matters of honor. God had vanished from them. For what is a banknote or a check, in essence? An invitation for your supplier to inspect your vault of valuables. A banknote rests on the honor of the issuing government. People speak of ‘public trust,’ but historically, it was honor. Checks depend on honor even more. When you pay for goods or services, you sign your bank’s form—this isn’t about shifting responsibility to a third party, as in our modern world, where you force the recipient to accept a third party’s rules. These days, you claim you’ll send funds to a certain account. What does that mean practically? That someone who, in your transaction, should care only about you, now faces a choice: receive no payment or sign a contract with someone else (a payment system). In those old transactions, the honor component partially blurred the material-monetary one.”

“Well observed,” Rr. Unkno said. “With a check, you received reputation as an inseparable bundle. The risk of robbery dropped by an order of magnitude, but now payment represented a probability—not certainty—of receiving funds, tied to another dimension of value space.”

“Exactly,” Cernus continued. “You’ve touched on risk. In essence, every transaction now carried three things: material value, reputation, and a measurable systemic risk. A third party entered. The transaction evolved from a simple vector ‘A to B’ into a graph, mathematically speaking. Still rudimentary: if you received a check, the bank (third party) would say, ‘The money is yours, regardless of your reputation or beliefs.’” Cernus paused to catch his breath. “But in the third era, the transaction graph grew increasingly dependent on the recipient. Fail to ‘show your face’—and money already sent might never arrive! Supposedly, you hold the ‘wrong’ view on some topic. Moreover, price could shift mid-transaction based on who you are or your circumstances. Frequent buyer? Automatic discount. And with varying tariffs across regions, price always depends on traits unrelated to the specific deal. Born in the Southern Marches? Pay more than other continents’ residents. The difference is small—but in systemic mathematics, the principle matters.”

Ritter Unkno shifted impatiently in his saddle. Cernus pressed on:

“The third era developed the full toolkit for transactions of any complexity. Smart contracts emerged—making the deal itself a temporary custodian of value to fulfill complex conditions (e.g., waiting for a full moon at each settlement). Processing speed hit practical limits—faster is unnecessary. Divisibility increased, enabling micropayments. Most importantly, one could now choose the third party’s involvement: exclude it entirely via decentralized platforms, or voluntarily engage it as escrow or arbitrator. Laws compel much we dislike, but we speak of principle. The transaction became a hypergraph. Now, in the fourth era, we must make it flexible.”

“And why?” Unkno asked.

“To justify the inevitable descent into poverty: less monetary component, but also less risk—and higher reputation. And to make risk and reputation visible in every deal, purchase, and social interaction.”

“How will you reduce risk? Reputation can be mutually assigned, but risk is objective. Each purchase reduces your assets—so subsequent transaction risk rises. Risk can’t be faked.”

“That’s precisely why I sought your counsel,” Dr. Cernus admitted.

“Risk can be dampened by reducing the division of labor,” Unkno declared. “It’s what drove the historical tectonics you described. Humans want to live better…”

“Not always,” Cernus interrupted. “Only when society permits it. In many eras and places, wanting a better life was forbidden—which is why few undertook anything.”

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