The phrase “Another World is Possible” has echoed through protest movements across the globe, but how many have truly done the work of rigorously describing economic alternatives to the status quo? What mechanisms, values, and structures do we imagine will replace the current order? If we manage to develop AGI, discussions about the institutions of post-labor economics will no longer be theoretical - foresight can make the difference between dystopia and gay, luxury, techno-communist utopia

To create a better future, we first have to decide what we want. Techno-optimists often begins with a new tool and goes in search of a problem. This workshop/discussion is not about chasing the next shiny use case for blockchain or AI—it’s about returning to our fundamental normative assumptions. If distributed technologies are to play a role in building a more just and humane society, we will first build the "specs" for what such a society would look like.

OpenAI, in its 2018 charter, defined AGI as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.” We must now confront a future where labor—the organizing principle of human society for millennia—becomes obsolete. So what comes after work? How do we organize distribution, meaning, and identity in a post-labor economy?

This workshop is an invitation to collectively sketch the specs for a better future. Can we revisit the socialist calculation debates in light of modern AI? Can distributed technologies help us design economic systems of distribution that don’t revolve around remuneration of labor as their central mechanism? What is value in a world of material abundance? If we no longer need to work to survive, how do we want to live?

Let’s find out—together.