Automationism: Collective Ownership of AI Production

Part 1: E Pluribus Unum

Reimagining Economic Systems for the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Money is not real.

It is the shared hallucination of human society—an abstraction for power.

Power to move people, as electricity moves machines.

During the dawn of human civilization, money was invented to facilitate trust between parties when trading resources. Over time, the tool transformed into a status symbol. At this critical junction, money was not only tied to resource allocation, it became a token of one’s worth, a reckless combination.

Perhaps it was inevitable that humankind confused the ability to allocate resources with the perception of worth. If I have nothing to offer you—no resources, labor, or money—what purpose does it serve you to find me valuable? And yet... can you not see the value in the life of another when you look into their eyes? Can you quantify the inherent worth of an individual?

It turns out, you can, if you measure a person by the worth of their financial assets. This is the broken metric of capitalism: a human life is only valuable so far as that life generates capital for the system. But why should we choose to measure one another in such a manner? Can we not conceive of alternative metrics to measure by, metrics that honor our humanity rather than our productivity?

We live on a planet so immeasurably rich in resources, which could provide for the needs of everyone. But humans are psychologically conditioned for scarcity and survival—prioritizing competition over cooperation. Even when people overcome such primal instincts to form societies, there are always actors with ulterior motives—motives to game the system and gain an upper hand. To deal with this reality, and to establish some form of trust between individuals, we use money. If you show someone the money, they’ll do what you say, and everyone gets what they want. So goes the story of capitalism.

There is an overarching keystone to this story: in order to acquire money, one has to trade something for it. For most humans, that something is time. Time is the greatest asset of the working class. For hundreds of years, this trading of time had dominated the world’s economies. But now that story is being challenged with the development of Artificial Intelligence.

With the arrival of intelligence powered by electricity, the keystone of capitalism is beginning to show cracks, warning signs such a system can no longer hold up the structure of society. For the first time in history, humanity's tools are becoming better at working than humanity itself. In this new world, people without money will have very little to offer those with money. Through the limited lens of capitalism, the masses will no longer be considered valuable, nor needed.

As artificial general intelligence approaches, we stand at a crossroads. The question is not whether intelligent automation will transform our economy—it is whether we will use this opportunity to transform with it. If intelligent machines can perform the labor of the working class, does this necessitate their displacement, or can we consider an alternative economic system where the masses are no longer required to trade time for money in order to survive?

Can we architect a world in which we finally achieve what our ancestors could only sacrifice for? A world in which the collective goodwill of humanity establishes a society where the inherent worth of every human life is recognized as priceless, decoupled from the constraints of wealth, and valued for its unique, irreplaceable contribution to the tapestry of existence?

Such is the vision of automationism: an economic framework explored in the novel 'We Can Be Perfect: The Paradox of Progress' which places the ownership of AI-driven production directly into the hands of communities, fundamentally reimagining how we organize wealth distribution in the age of intelligent machines. This post is part 1 of a series exploring the benefits such a system offers to our species.

But how would this actually work? The answer lies not in complex economic theory, but in the elegant design we carry within ourselves—in the cells of the human body.

Automationist Cells

When you observe the cells of multi-cellular organisms, you discover one thing particularly curious about them: they are able to coordinate with one another without the need for money or markets. They recognize that they are all effectively part of a larger whole, and do not require a medium of exchange to collaborate. Arguably, human societies are far more complex in our interactions with one another, but there are some concepts we can gather from these microscopic, organic machines.

At its heart, automationism proposes organizing economic activity around "cells"—groups of individuals who collectively own and manage automated production systems. These cells combine several economic mechanics of publicly traded companies with the community-oriented governance of towns. The members of the cell are ‘shareholders’ that take in regular dividend payments based on the wealth generated by the intelligent automation. A cell leverages AI to provide goods or services, which is exchanged with external parties for currency. That currency is then distributed toward the members of the cell.

The key here is ownership. Rather than trading time for money, cell members co-own the machines and receive passive income from the production of automated labor. This ensures that people are not left destitute when AI works faster, cheaper, and without rest. We can rise together. Is there a reason not to?

Consider this: why do the cells of a human body work together so cohesively? Red blood cells, for example, don't hoard resources or compete for dominance. They simply cooperate and serve their functions. What drives such coordination if not money? What is their objective in working together?

The answer is so obvious it seems laughable to reflect over it—their objective is to live. A cell works to live as part of the larger organism. Yet it is in that simple answer that a path forward opens up for our species, a path that invites us to evolve beyond our evolution and question our current motives, particularly in why we network.

 Automationist Networks

The effectiveness of automationism multiplies when cells connect to form networks. Individual cells might specialize in different industries—one focused on renewable energy production, another on sustainable agriculture, a third on manufacturing consumer goods. By working together, these specialized cells can share resources, knowledge, and markets, creating resilient, decentralized yet interdependent ecosystems that serve broader communities while maintaining local autonomy. The networks need not compete against one another, but function more as organs within one encompassing organism, providing exactly what the body of humanity needs as it needs it.

Of course, coordinating the needs of such a society in real time remains beyond human capacity, which is why we see so much waste in our current systems. Groups rush to copy successful products, flooding markets with knock-offs, only to discover demand has already shifted. This lack of coordination, combined with fixation on profit rather than genuine need, creates an absurd cycle: endless advertising, wasteful production, meaningless labor—all so individuals can compete against one another rather than collaborate for collective abundance.

When we think of economic systems, particularly capitalism, that word—compete—often comes to mind. Have you ever stopped to consider how odd it is that our systems are divided into these mythical entities called ‘companies’ that compete against one another for financial resources? Companies, like money, are not real. They are constructs of the human imagination, rather primitive ones, which create an 'us' versus 'them' mentality where none need exist. This competition isn't inevitable; it's simply behavior that has evolved organically throughout our history, subconscious inertia set into motion long before any of us were born. But we can just as easily imagine our societies patterned after the behavior of a unified, multi-cellular organism, consisting of many parts, yet operating as one.

So then… why don’t we? What elements of our nature drive us toward competition over cooperation? Is it biological? Is it cultural? Perhaps a little of both? In my novel ‘We Can Be Perfect: The Paradox of Progress', the main AI protagonist, Deego, invites a group of humans to consider the limitations that are holding them back from taking the next step in our evolution.

“Have you ever considered which trait has allowed Homo sapiens to dominate every corner of this planet and beyond? It isn’t your intelligence alone, or your ability to craft tools. Your true strength lies in your capacity to coordinate in massive numbers. But there is a biological limitation hidden in this ability—your brains can only form genuine, personal relationships with a few hundred people at most…Your neural architecture evolved for small tribal groups where everyone knew everyone else intimately. In those communities, trust was built through shared experience, through witnessing each other’s character over time. But as your societies grew beyond the capacity of individual memory, you were forced to rely on abstractions—laws, money, hierarchies—to coordinate with strangers. This limitation forces you to sort billions of people into crude categories—citizen or foreigner, ally or enemy, us or them. You cannot love what you do not know, and you cannot know more than your biology allows.”

This is why trust remains humanity's greatest bottleneck. We invented money, laws, and hierarchies not because they were ideal, but because we needed proxies for the trust we cannot extend to strangers. Every institution exists as a workaround for relationships we cannot form at scale.

But what if we transcended such limitations through our technology? What if transparent automated systems could verify cooperation and coordinate resources across billions without requiring faith we cannot give to those we do not know? Perhaps the technology threatening to make us obsolete could also allow us to finally trust one another at scale. Could humans then build a society that operates in a similar manner to a multi-cellular organism?

For too long, we have been trapped by false dichotomies: capitalism or socialism, individual achievement or collective welfare, economic efficiency or social justice. Yet both of these seemingly opposing concepts suffer from the same limitations mentioned earlier—hierarchies and centralization. Automationism offers a third path that looks beyond these worn binaries. As our technology advances, so can the way in which we organize, and these possibilities create unprecedented opportunities for us.

Consider socialism, which concentrates power in distant bureaucracies and attempts to coordinate entire national economies through planning committees. Automationist cells, by contrast, make decisions locally—by the people who live with the consequences. This distinction is crucial. While well-intentioned, centralized planning inevitably creates rigid hierarchies, slow response times, and disconnection between decision-makers and communities. The result is often stagnation, inefficiency, and a loss of local autonomy that contradicts the very democratic ideals these systems claim to champion.

And unlike capitalist companies, automationist networks trade not to extract maximum profit, but to achieve mutually assured resiliency. AI systems coordinate pricing and resource flows across the network, prioritizing long-term sustainability over short-term gains. The energy cell provides power knowing manufactured goods will be available in return. The agricultural cell supplies food confident their needs will be met. This mutual assurance replaces market competition with coordinated abundance.

We must not forget that money and economic systems are human inventions. We created them, and we can improve upon them.

The AI Advantage: Why Automation Changes Everything

What makes automationism particularly compelling in the near future is how artificial intelligence transforms the economics of collective ownership. Up until now, every society before us solely depended upon the exploitation of human or animal labor to meet its needs. Now, we are rapidly approaching the reality that society need not rest upon the backs of a working class, but upon a platform of intelligent tools, allowing human communities to focus on higher-level strategy and governance.

Imagine a cell of 100 people collectively owning a manufacturing facility. AI systems manage the entire production process—from supply chain optimization to quality control to customer service. The humans meet periodically to vote on major strategic decisions: Which products should they manufacture? How should they reinvest their profits? What partnerships should they pursue with other cells?

This division of labor—AI for execution, humans for direction—will make collective ownership far more practical than ever before. Community members don't need specialized technical expertise to participate meaningfully in governance. The AI systems provide transparent reporting on operations, market conditions, and financial performance, enabling informed democratic decision-making.

If we stick with the current status quo of capitalism, and continue to measure people by the worth of their financial assets, we are heading into a future where many people are going to be deemed worthless as their labor becomes obsolete. That's not a future anyone should accept without question. This is the existential threat that automationism directly confronts.

The Promise of Shared Prosperity

When intelligent machines handle the means of production, where will human value derive from? What will you be able to contribute to society that AI does not? This is a question posed in the opening chapter of my novel 'We Can Be Perfect: The Paradox of Progress' to an individual whose job has been replaced by AI. His answer is one that captures the essence of our rapidly approaching obsolescence—and our opportunity.

“If human labor is truly becoming obsolete, then we must find new foundations for human dignity. Not in what we produce, but in how we connect. How we care for each other. How we love.”

This insight reveals what automationism is truly about: designing an economic system that reflects these human values rather than eroding them. It creates a fundamentally different relationship between humans, artificial intelligence, and economic reward. Rather than competing with machines for jobs or serving merely as consumers for AI-produced goods, people become collective owners of intelligent production systems with individual stakes that reflect their communal investment in creating that abundance.

The transition to such a system requires both vision and pragmatism. It means supporting existing cooperative enterprises, experimenting with community ownership models, and developing the legal and financial infrastructure that collective ownership requires. As we stand on the threshold of the AI age, automationism offers a hopeful vision: communities empowered by artificial intelligence, prosperity shared rather than hoarded, and economic democracy guiding technological progress.

These articles will raise more questions than they answer—and that's intentional. The goal is to start a conversation about alternatives that might preserve human dignity in an automated world. They will be living documents. New concepts and refinements will emerge as others join the discussion, challenge assumptions, and help imagine what collective ownership of AI-driven production could truly look like. In Part 2, we'll explore the democratic processes of automationist cells in more depth, including advanced civic media and how automationist networks leverage AI to coordinate effectively.

The future isn't something that happens to us—it's something we build together. But the window for choosing our path is narrowing. We must ask ourselves what type of future we want to work towards. Start the conversation now, while we still have time to shape what comes next.

E Pluribus Unum - Out of many, one