The Permissions Economy
Lock-in is the rule in modern technology. The industrial revolution took us from agriculture to goods. The last century took us from manufacturing goods into a predominantly services-based economy. But now, with the popularization of the Internet, I'm getting an inkling of what the next major sector of economic activity might look like: the permissions economy. Agriculture, goods, services, permissions.
Copyright-based industries, such as books, music, movies, and software, work on this model. Once the creators of these works have their production costs met, reproduction is so trivial - whether that reproduction is done by publishers or others - the license to have, use, or share that work attains more value than the work itself. At that point, the "service" of granting licenses and collecting fees acquires a kind of trivial feel that doesn't seem worthy of the label.
A popular pasttime for people discussing the impact of AI is to imagine what kinds of jobs will be more or less "future-proof" against encroachment by intelligent machines. At times, I venture guesses of doctors and lawyers, because their jobs have much more to do with offering liability protections and trustworthiness than about skill or labor. But then it dawned on me that "artificial persons" already exist, and they do so for the express purpose of limiting liability. They are encoded, not in software, but in legal code, as corporations.
Politicians can be considered a subset of lawyers. But, in the same way that autonomous AIs would need to be permitted expressly to pass the bar, they'd probably also need to be permitted expressly to be considered citizens, and to be canddiates for public office, regardless of their ability to perform in either role.
That plain, binary permission, then, is what serves as the ultimate basis for a post-services economy, whether it is sought from or granted by individual citizens, aggregated through unions, clubs, families, municipalities, corporations, NPOs, or other associations. Permission is not a service, but a vote. The permissions economy is one which already exists, in the same way that manufacturing and services have always existed prior to their dominant role in the economy.
As automation continues to disrupt labor markets, civic participation in the granting or witholding of permission through law and regulation, will be the only remaining tool most people will hold in common with others to make their way in life. I suggest we learn to start using it now, and to re-assert that power and authority. As labor markets are dominated by capital in the form of productivity-boosting automation, your permission may become more important than your dollars.
