What Is The New Economic Order
A credible, governed pathway to a democratic post-labor civilization Preamble — the fact of the thing
Digitization is creating not an incremental change but a new economic layer. As W. Brian Arthur warns: “Digitization is creating a second economy—an autonomous one—that’s vast, silent, connected and unseen.” This second economy, he writes, is “remotely executing and global, always on,” and intelligence has “moved outward into the conversation among intelligent algorithms.” If we do not treat that layer as a political and economic object of governance, its outputs will be captured. (sites.santafe.edu)
Thesis
We accept four linked premises as the basis for urgent action:
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The formation of a self-configuring, algorithmic “second economy” is real and accelerating; it will change who produces value and how value is distributed. (Arthur). ( sites.santafe.edu )
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Automation displaces tasks more than whole jobs in linear phases; the human comparative advantage shifts to framing, governance, coordination and meta-skills. As Andrew McAfee has put it, “being able to define the question becomes the key human superpower.” Policy must prioritize augmentation, reskilling, and institutional redesign. ( Milken Review )
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Technology does not determine justice. Ownership and power do. “Who owns the robots, owns the world,” is the central political risk Frase identifies; the distributional regime will determine whether abundance delivers emancipation or new rentier rule. ( From Poverty to Power )
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Abundance is possible but will only be universal if we capture automation gains democratically—through mechanisms such as a technological dividend and Universal Basic Services (Bastani’s policy direction)—and if we simultaneously embed ecological and safety guardrails. ( TED )
Immediate imperative
The stakes are not only distributional but existential. Nick Bostrom’s work reminds us that novel capabilities can produce civilization-scale vulnerabilities if governance does not keep pace; his Vulnerable World formulation shows that certain inventions can require “greatly amplified capacities for preventive policing and global governance” or risk collapse. We therefore must treat the governance of the second economy as a strategic emergency, not a long-term policy curiosity. ( Nick Bostrom )
Core commitments
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Democratic stewardship of algorithmic capital. Treat large-scale algorithmic systems, essential datasets, and critical compute infrastructure as commons to be governed for public benefit. Public stakes, data trusts, cooperative platform ownership, and public AI agencies must be piloted and scaled. This responds directly to Arthur’s diagnosis and Frase’s ownership pivot. ( sites.santafe.edu )
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Institutionalize a technology dividend and Universal Basic Services. Automation creates surplus; we will pilot and scale mechanisms that convert automation rents into services and income guarantees for all—health, housing, connectivity, childcare, and transport—following Bastani’s policy direction while measuring social welfare with new metrics. ( TED )
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Rebuild education and civic practice for meta-skills and meaning. As McAfee notes, question-framing and sense-making matter. Public investment must shift from credentialism to lifelong modular learning, civic fellowships, and creative residencies that anchor identity beyond wage labor. ( Milken Review )
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Embed ecological and mission-oriented constraints. Raworth’s doughnut frames and Mazzucato’s mission economics show that abundance must be pursued within planetary and social limits and with active public investment. Post-labor governance must be designed to sustain planetary boundaries, not expend them. ( Oxfam )
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Harden global governance and risk institutions. Bostrom and Yudkowsky make it plain: the speed of capability growth can outstrip institutional adaptation. We will create international compacts for critical-tech governance, rapid cooperation mechanisms for catastrophic-risk mitigation, and globally coordinated oversight of key automated supply chains. ( Nick Bostrom )
Strategic program (first 5 years)
We will focus on a small set of high-leverage pilots that prove the model:
• Public stake pilot: a city/state acquires minority stakes in key automation assets (logistics, municipal automation); returns flow to a local “automation dividend” and UBS. This tests Frase’s ownership contention and Bastani’s dividend idea. (
From Poverty to Power
)
• Data-trust pilot: multisector data commons with governance boards including workers, citizens, and technologists. This operationalizes Arthur’s point about externalized intelligence. (
sites.santafe.edu
)
• Education &civic fellowships: modular reskilling + guaranteed civic fellowships for those displaced by automation; measure outcomes in sense of purpose and economic resilience, not only earnings. This leans on McAfee’s human role framing. (
Milken Review
)
• Global norms: coordinated international working group to draft minimum rules for cross-border flows of algorithmic capital and critical compute. This responds to Bostrom’s governance urgency. ( Nick Bostrom )
On failure modes and governance gaps (clear prose — not checklist)
The single most dangerous failure mode is ownership capture :
if the autonomous layer remains proprietary, returns and influence will concentrate, reshaping politics and social identity.
Frase’s core point — that political power decides which of his four futures emerges — is our guide: technological abundance can be turned into rentism or communism, and the difference is who controls capital and platforms.
Therefore, the governance priority must be to convert extractive ownership structures into democratic, public, or cooperative ownership before concentration becomes irreversible.
A second failure mode is institutional lag :
public institutions adapt slowly; technology can accelerate faster than law. Bostrom’s Vulnerable World argument shows that when capabilities producing existential or civilizational vulnerabilities are reachable, democracy alone may struggle to coordinate fast enough.
This means we must build both technical safeguards (alignment research, audits, red-teams) and quicker political mechanisms (pre-agreed emergency compacts and cross-national surveillance for misuse).
A third failure mode is narrative failure :
if societies cannot imagine a world where dignity is decoupled from wage work, resistance and demagogues will block redistribution.
Brynjolfsson &McAfee’s emphasis on human meta-skills points us to education
and cultural investment as part of governance :
we must cultivate stories, institutions, and public rituals that legitimize non-wage roles (care, stewardship, arts, civic governance).
Finally, ecological failure is possible if abundance is pursued without planetary constraints. Raworth and Mazzucato make clear that public mission orientation and planetary boundaries must be built into economic metrics and policy at the outset, not retrofitted later.
Why this approach is credible
This manifesto combines:
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Arthur’s structural insight that a second, algorithmic economy exists and must be governed;
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Brynjolfsson &McAfee’s operational template for how automation penetrates work;
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Frase’s political diagnosis that ownership will determine justice;
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Bastani’s policy program for capturing automation gains democratically;
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Mazzucato/Raworth’s institutional and ecological frameworks;
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Bostrom/Yudkowsky’s urgent case for governance and safety against catastrophic failure. ( sites.santafe.edu )
Concluding commitment
The World Economic Quorum commits to convene, fund, and pilot democratic ownership experiments, policy scaffolds for automation dividends and UBS, educational and civic infrastructures that replace work-as-identity with flourishing-as-identity, and international governance mechanisms for critical tech. We will measure success in human flourishing (including Bastani’s proposed abundance metrics and Raworth’s doughnut indicators), not only GDP.
We invite cities, nations, investors, technologists, civil society, and cultural leaders to join this program of pilots and governance design. We will be explicit about risks, test transparently, and escalate successful models rapidly.
Sources (high-value primary references)
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W. Brian Arthur, The Second Economy / The Autonomous Economy (McKinsey Quarterly / Santa Fe Institute summary). ( sites.santafe.edu )
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Erik Brynjolfsson &Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age and related MIT Sloan pieces. ( Milken Review )
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Peter Frase, Four Futures: Life After Capitalism (analysis and reviews). ( kortina.nyc )
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Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (TED transcript and book coverage). ( TED )
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Mariana Mazzucato, The Entrepreneurial State and mission-oriented economics material. ( Mariana Mazzucato )
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Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics / A Safe and Just Space for Humanity . ( Oxfam )
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Nick Bostrom, Vulnerable World Hypothesis and Superintelligence discussions. ( Nick Bostrom )
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Eliezer Yudkowsky, essays and public op-eds on AI alignment and risk (e.g., TIME op-ed). ( TIME )
