我读过Joyce Appleby的《无情革命：资本主义的历史》(2010年)，如果我们把市场资本主义看作是第一种行星智能，就像许多人(包括我)所做的那样，它们的相似性比你们想象的要近。
Appleby的著作是资本主义的横跨历史，从在现代早期的英国不太可能出现到全世界最终的转型。 她的中心论点是，资本主义不是人类永恒的本能交易和积累财富的必然表现。 农业改良、扩大贸易、改变关于工作、财富和人性的思想，使农业成为可能，这是历史上偶然出现的文化发明。 特别是，它需要摆脱旧的、基本上是零和的世界观的假设，在这个世界观中，财富意味着控制土地、金块和大部分穷人的劳动。
当人们开始发现财富可以创造，而不仅仅是被俘虏时，资本主义就出现了，普通人可以成为需求和主动性的源泉，而不仅仅是被命令作为生产要素的劳动。
与我们当前时刻的相似之处令人震惊。
正如Appleby所说，资本主义之前的重商主义世界观建立在大约四个相互交织的信仰之上。
首先，财富基本上是稀缺和有限的。 它主要由土地、该土地的农产品和它所含的通过采矿、贸易和征服而积累的贵金属组成。 经济状态的目的是控制更多的领土，保持有利的贸易平衡，积累金块。 一个国家的收益被认为是另一个国家的损失。 由此产生的政治是寻宝和乞讨邻居的竞争。
第二，不能相信普通人有太多的自由。 穷人被假定是鲁莽的、无知的，如果被留在自己的装置上，容易陷入混乱。 他们需要由上层人士进行强制管理，据称是为了他们自己的利益和社会的稳定。
第三，经济思维主要面向供应及其控制。 财富来自对生产资源的控制，其产出价格很高。 总体需求，特别是穷人的需求，几乎不被认为是重要的经济力量。 普通人主要是生产要素。 他们吃、工作、复制，没有任何盈余。 唯一真正自由裁量的消费者是精英阶层，他们购买豪华物品，统领所有盈余。
第四，没有什么理由可以想象大多数人除了从事农业劳动外还做其他事。 如果80%的人口从事低效率的自给农作，那只是事物的自然秩序。 还有什么用呢？把他们从田里带走，你只会有数百万个没用的嘴来喂食。
现在用智慧取代财富，用认知的美因主义取代美因主义。
平行几乎是尴尬的直接。
首先，情报被想象成一种固定的资源，它体现在人类大脑和从中挖掘的知识产品中。 国家和公司战略的目标是吸引最佳人才，控制其产出，积累知识产权，保持知识贸易的有利平衡。 认知重商主义想囤积智力及其产品如金刚。 全球的人才竞争成为对天才大脑和他们能产生的宝贵知识物种的寻宝，现在除了有版权的文化和专利的发明外，还包括AI.
第二，所谓愚蠢的人不能被信任为自己思考。 他们需要被认知精英所支配，他们更了解，必须为了自己的利益调节知识不足者的行为。 实现情报的民主化是危险的，因为大众会滥用情报，陷入无稽之谈，或者制造混乱。 其假设是，情报只有在那些已经证明拥有情报的人手中才是安全的。
第三，情报供应被视为中央经济事实。 控制其生产、保持其稀缺性以及维持大脑和知识产品(包括AI)的高价格是主要关注的问题。 需求方几乎没有登记。 智力较弱的人被视为知识精英们选择提供的任何知识产品的有限认知劳工和被动消费者。 人们不认为这些情报本身就是对情报需求的重要来源，更不要说参与进一步编制情报了。
第四，认知重商主义假设，大多数人在智力上对很多东西都不好。 如果80%的人类处于低水平的认知劳动中，或者只是混杂在一起，而完全没有产生很多智能，那很不幸，但很自然。 他们的认知工作自动化，只是威胁着创造数十亿无用的思想来占据。
最后的假设是类比变得特别有趣的地方。
帮助发布资本主义的农业革命开始推翻让大多数人类从事农业的明显必要性。 在随后的几个世纪里，农业生产力的提高使先进经济体生产粮食所需的人口从大多数减少到极少数。
结果不是一个充满无用嘴的世界。 在这个世界上，除了农场以外，有更多的人能够做其他事情，同时享受到更多的食物。
我不知道如何耕作。 我几乎不能维持一个家庭工厂的生命。 但我可以得到惊人的种类的食物，数量在早期现代农民看来是不可思议的。 我无法生产食物在经济上几乎无关紧要。 重要的是，我可以消费它，享受它，发展它的味道，把我的精力投入到其他的事情上。
AI的类似可能性是，大多数人不再需要成为情报的重要制作者，从而成为情报的重要消费者。
这就是认知中庸主义开始像十七世纪的前身一样古板。
欲望中的革命
Appleby的叙述中更令人着迷的一个内容是她强调英国新需求类型的出现，早在蒸汽机、工厂和工业资本主义这一熟悉的故事真正开始之前。
随着国际贸易的扩大，普通的不列颠人开始对以前为富人保留的奢侈品发展口味。 烟草、茶叶、糖和多彩的印度棉花是有助于创造新消费文化的商品。 人们开始想要的东西既不是生活必需品，也不是传统的贵族地位标志。 并且他们愿意自愿地更努力地工作来争取他们。
Appleby描述了在工业革命前，每年工作天数从250天增加到300天(有时被称为勤奋革命)。 这不仅仅是地主或工厂业主强迫更多的劳工离开不愿意的工人的问题。 增加的很大一部分是自愿的，其动力是获得理想商品的前景。 人们多工作几天，采取更具生产力的农业做法，进入新的行业，并寻求获得更多现金收入的机会。
生产率的提高产生盈余收入，维持了对消费品的不断增长的需求，这反过来又刺激了生产力的进一步提高。 良性循环正在形成。
这大约发生在有组织的劳动运动和社会主义成为主要政治力量之前一个世纪。
到20世纪末期，这是全球违约。 正如C.K.Prahlad所说，全球总需求是“金字塔底部的财富”。
这里有一个重要的历史倒置。 我们习惯于主要从抵制剥削的角度来思考劳动政治：为逃避奴役，胁迫，以及业主提取剩余物而斗争。 这当然是故事的一部分，也是非常重要的部分。
但Appleby的描述表明，另一种同样根本性的力量正在发挥作用：希望参与日益扩大的消费机会。
现代的劳动政治可以部分理解为在扩大可能性的社会中相对贫困的政治。 一旦人们发现除了生存之外还有可取的东西，并且他们的劳动可以让他们获得这些东西，政治问题就会改变。 它不再仅仅是如何逃避统治，而是如何确保公平分享不断增长的盈余和它所提供的机会。 西方的善人们常常惊讶地得知(例如)第三世界贫民窟的人们往往愿意削减食物开支以购买电视。
这是对自由的另一种要求。 不仅仅是免于胁迫的自由，还有参与经济生活日益扩大的可能性的自由。
的确，两种形式的自由可能相互缠绕。 人们可能自愿地更加努力地寻找消费机会，但发现自己受到新形式的剥削，因为雇主和机构从提高生产率中获益。 然后，劳工政治不仅产生于旧形式的奴役的持续存在，而且也产生于新的富裕世界本身造成的紧张。
对扩大消费机会的公平份额的需求可以说是资本主义定义性的政治发明之一，广义地理解为也包括劳动政治(即使是马克思也认为资本主义不是一个可支配的现象，而是通往共产主义乌托邦道路上的过渡阶段 )。
这个模型比起熟悉的自动化取代工作的故事，更有趣地思考AI的过渡。
认知的杰出革命
整个知识经济是围绕着情报生产成本昂贵的假设组织起来的，因此必须谨慎配置。 教育、专业知识、研究、咨询、软件开发以及知识工作，一般都是由认知制作的高成本决定的。
大赦国际正在迅速破坏这一假设。
我们正走向一个普通人能够掌握数量和种类的情报的世界，这些情报以前需要训练有素的专家队伍。 就像我能享受食物，而不知道如何耕作一样，我越来越能享受智能产品，而不知道如何自己生产这些产品。
因此，关键的经济问题不是情报人员能产生多少情报，而是他们能找到多少情报的用途。
这一要求没有明显的上限。
这不仅仅是每个人需要更多的答案、报告、软件或娱乐的问题。 丰富的智能改变了人们最初想要的。 它使以前无法想象的项目可行，以前无法进入的领域可以探索，以前难以负担的奇才值得追求。
对情报的需求并不是等待满足的固定欲望。 它本身可以随着满足成本的下降而增长。
在这里，与早期现代消费者革命的类比变得特别具有暗示性。
正如多彩的印度棉花和进口的烟草刺激了新的欲望，而新的欲望刺激了更多的志愿劳动和更多的生产性工作形式，丰富的智力可以刺激新一轮的自愿认知努力，并开辟出新的方法，使你能够更加努力地工作。
很多人看起来很蠢，不是被骗的
本文由 AI图鉴自动抓取并翻译，版权归原作者所有；如需查看原文请点下方链接。
I’ve been reading Joyce Appleby’s The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (2010), and it has me circling a rather delicious thought: AI panic is really a form of cognitive mercantilism. If we regard the market capitalism as the first planetary intelligence, as many (including me) do, the parallels are closer than you might think.
Appleby’s book is a sweeping history of capitalism, from its unlikely emergence in early modern England to its eventual transformation of the entire world. Her central argument is that capitalism was not the inevitable expression of some timeless human instinct to trade and accumulate wealth. It was a historically contingent cultural invention, enabled by agricultural improvements, expanding trade, and changing ideas about work, wealth, and human nature. In particular, it required escaping the assumptions of an older, essentially zero-sum worldview, in which wealth meant controlling land, bullion, and the labor of largely impoverished populations.
Capitalism emerged when people began discovering that wealth could be created rather than merely captured, and that ordinary people could be sources of demand and initiative rather than merely labor to be commanded as a factor of production.
The parallels with our current moment are striking.
As Appleby tells it, the mercantilist worldview that preceded capitalism rested on roughly four interlocking beliefs.
First, wealth was fundamentally scarce and finite. It consisted primarily of land, the agricultural produce of that land, and the precious metals it contained, accumulated through mining, trade and conquest. The goal of economic statecraft was to control more territory, maintain a favorable balance of trade, and accumulate bullion. One nation’s gain was presumed to be another’s loss. The resulting politics was one of treasure-seeking and beggar-thy-neighbor competition.
Second, ordinary people could not be trusted with much freedom. The poor were assumed to be unruly, ignorant, and prone to disorder if left to their own devices. They needed to be governed coercively by elites, supposedly for their own good and for the stability of society.
Third, economic thinking was overwhelmingly oriented toward supply and its control. Wealth came from controlling productive resources and commanding high prices for their output. Aggregate demand, especially demand from the poor, was barely recognized as a significant economic force. Ordinary people were primarily factors of production. They ate, worked, and reproduced, with no share of any surplus. The only real discretionary consumers were elites, who bought luxuries and commanded all surplus.
Fourth, there was little reason to imagine most people doing anything other than agricultural labor. If something like 80% of the population was engaged in inefficient subsistence farming, that was simply the natural order of things. What else were they good for? Remove them from the fields and you would merely have millions of useless mouths to feed.
Now replace wealth with intelligence, and mercantilism with cognitive mercantilism.
The parallels are almost embarrassingly direct.
First, intelligence is imagined as a fixed resource embodied in human brains and the knowledge products mined from them. The objective of national and corporate strategy becomes attracting the best brains, controlling their output, accumulating intellectual property, and maintaining a favorable balance of knowledge trade. The cognitive mercantilist wants to hoard intelligence and its products like bullion. The global competition for talent becomes a treasure hunt for genius brains and the valuable knowledge species they can produce, which now includes AIs in addition to copyrightable culture and patentable inventions.
Second, supposedly stupid people cannot be trusted to think for themselves. They need to be governed by cognitive elites, who know better and must regulate the behavior of the less intelligent for their own good. Democratizing intelligence is dangerous because the masses will misuse it, fall for nonsense, or unleash chaos. The assumption is that intelligence is safe only in the hands of those already certified to possess it.
Third, the supply of intelligence is treated as the central economic fact. Controlling its production, preserving its scarcity, and maintaining high prices for brains and knowledge products (including AIs) are the primary concerns. The demand side barely registers. Less intelligent people are regarded as limited cognitive laborers and passive consumers of whatever knowledge products elites choose to provide. They are not imagined as significant sources of demand for intelligence in their own right, let alone as participants in its further production.
Fourth, the cognitive mercantilist assumes that most people are not good for much intellectually. If 80% of humanity is occupied in low-grade cognitive labor, or simply muddling along without producing much intelligence at all, that is unfortunate but natural. Automating their cognitive work merely threatens to create billions of useless minds to occupy.
This last assumption is where the analogy gets especially interesting.
The agricultural revolution that helped launch capitalism began overturning the apparent necessity of having most of humanity engaged in farming. Over the following centuries, improvements in agricultural productivity reduced the fraction of the population required to produce food from a large majority to a tiny minority in advanced economies.
The result was not a world full of useless mouths. It was a world in which vastly more people could do things other than farm, while enjoying access to vastly more food.
I don’t know how to farm. I can barely keep a houseplant alive. Yet I can obtain an astonishing variety of foods, in quantities that would have seemed fantastical to an early modern peasant. My inability to produce food is economically almost irrelevant. What matters is that I can consume it, enjoy it, develop tastes for it, and devote my energies to other things.
The analogous possibility with AI is that most people will no longer need to be significant producers of intelligence in order to become significant consumers of it.
And this is where cognitive mercantilism begins to look as quaint as its seventeenth-century predecessor.
The Revolution in Desire
One of the more fascinating elements of Appleby’s account is her emphasis on the emergence of new kinds of demand in Britain, well before the familiar story of steam engines, factories, and industrial capitalism really gets going.
As international trade expanded, ordinary Britons began developing tastes for goods that had previously been luxuries reserved for the wealthy. Tobacco, tea, sugar, and colorful Indian cottons were among the commodities that helped create a new consumer culture. People began wanting things that were neither necessities of subsistence nor traditional markers of aristocratic status. And they were willing to voluntarily work harder to get them.
Appleby describes a striking increase in the number of days worked annually, from something like 250 to 300 (sometimes called the industrious revolution), before the Industrial Revolution. This was not simply a matter of landlords or factory owners coercing more labor out of unwilling workers. A significant part of the increase was voluntary, driven by the prospect of acquiring desirable goods. People worked more days, adopted more productive agricultural practices, entered new trades, and sought opportunities for earning larger cash incomes.
The increase in productivity generated surplus incomes, which sustained the expanding demand for consumer goods, which in turn incentivized further increases in productivity. A virtuous cycle was taking shape.
This happened roughly a century before organized labor movements and socialism emerged as major political forces.
By the late 20th century, this was the global default. Aggregate global demand was the “fortune at the bottom of the pyramid” as C. K. Prahlad put it.
There is an important historical inversion here. We are accustomed to thinking of the politics of labor primarily in terms of resistance to exploitation: the struggle to escape servitude, coercion, and the extraction of surplus by owners. That is certainly part of the story, and a very important part.
But Appleby’s account suggests that another, equally fundamental force was at work: the desire to participate in an expanding universe of consumption opportunities.
Modern labor politics can be understood partly as the politics of relative deprivation in a society of expanding possibilities. Once people discover that there are desirable things beyond subsistence, and that their labor can earn them access to those things, the political question changes. It is no longer merely how to escape domination, but how to secure a fair share of the growing surplus and the opportunities it makes available. Western do-gooders are often surprised to learn (for instance) that people in third-world slums are often willing to cut back on spending on food in order to buy a TV.
This is a different kind of demand for freedom. Not merely freedom from coercion, but freedom to participate in the expanding possibilities of economic life.
Indeed, the two forms of freedom can become entangled. People may voluntarily work harder in pursuit of consumption opportunities, only to find themselves subject to new forms of exploitation as employers and institutions capture the benefits of their increased productivity. Labor politics then emerges not simply from the persistence of old forms of servitude, but from the tensions created by the new world of abundance itself.
The demand for a fair share of expanding consumption opportunities is arguably one of the defining political inventions of capitalism, broadly construed to include labor politics too (even Marx saw capitalism not as a dispensable phenomenon, but as a transient phase on the path to communist utopia).
And this is a much more interesting model for thinking about the AI transition than the familiar story of automation replacing jobs.
The Cognitive Industrious Revolution
The entire intellectual economy has been organized around the assumption that intelligence is expensive to produce and therefore must be carefully rationed. Education, professional expertise, research, consulting, software development, and knowledge work more generally are all shaped by the high cost of cognitive production.
AI is rapidly undermining that assumption.
We are moving toward a world in which an ordinary person can command quantities and varieties of intelligence that would previously have required teams of highly trained specialists. Just as I can enjoy food without knowing how to farm, I can increasingly enjoy the products of intelligence without knowing how to produce them myself.
The crucial economic question then becomes not how much intelligence people can produce, but how much intelligence they can find uses for.
And there is no obvious upper bound on that demand.
This is not simply a matter of everyone consuming more answers, reports, software, or entertainment. Abundant intelligence changes what people can want in the first place. It makes previously unimaginable projects feasible, previously inaccessible domains explorable, and previously unaffordable curiosities worth pursuing.
The demand for intelligence is not a fixed appetite waiting to be satisfied. It is itself something that can grow as the cost of satisfying it falls.
Here the analogy with the early modern consumer revolution becomes especially suggestive.
Just as colorful Indian cottons and imported tobacco stimulated new desires, and new desires stimulated greater voluntary labor and more productive forms of work, abundant intelligence may stimulate a new wave of voluntary cognitive effort, and open up new ways in which you can work harder.
Many people who appear stupid are not incapabl
Auto-fetched and translated by AI Atlas. All rights belong to the original author.