00:48:05 · Eric Seufert
[00:48:05] S2: Yeah. Prosper Society has started out I wanted to write, an economic bull case for AI. We've heard all of the, you know, bear cases. We've heard all of the, you know, doom narratives around the around the economy. It's gonna just basically displace all white collar work. You know, you're gonna get DoorDash created with the vibe coding session and so all these companies are gonna go out of business. And I wanna make the case that it's probably not gonna that's probably not gonna happen. And, actually, there's lot of reasons to be optimistic. Right? And I think, you know, in writing that, it ended up becoming you know, we live in a in a sort of, like, very pivotal moment, I think. You know, if you look at the elections, you know, in the sort of the the house primaries in New York, you look at what's happening with the the, you know, the New York City mayoral election, you look at what's happening in the LA mayoral election, like, there's there's this this this sort of moment where these sort of, like, impulses against capitalism have become a lot more popular. Right? And, like, there's reasons for that, and, you know, I you know, I'm I'm not an expert on those reasons, so I won't delve into them. But I think, you know, ultimate's a mistake to go down that path. And the thing is, like, my sense is a lot of the AI or the anti AI narratives are actually have nothing to do with AI. Right? That's just seen as an avatar or like a bogeyman for capitalism. And so what I wanted to do is sort of, like, anchor this economic defense of AI, this economic bull case of AI in, you know, the sort of like liberal tradition of of of the Western world. And and and in in doing so, like, you could say, like, you know, you could anchor it to these these sort of like these these great thinkers, you know, this sort of like enlightenment thinkers and and sort of the economic giants that have built, you know, built this sort of intellectual framework that our that our western civilization is is based upon. And people could say, look. Well, look. You've you've misinterpreted them and so go, okay. Well, maybe. But but if that's not the case, then they you're gonna make them drop the mask. Mhmm. You're gonna make them drop the mask and say, no. That's not my problem with AI. I just don't wanna live in a liberal economic society based on these western thinkers.
00:49:53 · Eric Seufert
And I think if you actually kind of force that to be articulated out loud, you make a lot of progress against the anti AI narratives. But the whole point of the Prosperous Society is my sense is, you know, a lot of these AI investments, they're going to push, the economic constraints, away from production and towards just distribution. Right? They're gonna make distribution the binding constraint. And so because you just have this this this flourishing of of content creation. And and and and so when that becomes the actual problem with distribution and these AI investments go into things like ads platforms, digital advertising, you know, REXIST, recommend recommendation systems, then actually commerce, the economy, becomes much more efficient. Mhmm. And it's a really good thing, and you generate a lot of value by pushing that binding constraint to the distribution layer. Mhmm. And you get then as a result, you get a lot more heterogeneous product development because you can actually reach those people economically. Right? So, like, what is the constraint now? It's like, well, can I reach a big audience? Right. Right? Can I reach a big enough audience to support a business because, well, I've just got this kinda, like, blunt tool? But if these AI investments go to making recommendation systems better, digital ad systems better, reaching these these these these pockets of people that have these very specific interests that were totally un unserved before, then you enable a lot more commerce. Right? Yeah. And and then and then, you know, you support this, like, flourishing of people making this wide diverse variety of goods. You get rid of this idea of, like, the Pareto principle. We have
00:51:12 · Josh Lindgren, Eric Seufert
[00:51:12] S7: to serve, [00:51:12] S2: you know, the the 20% that supply 80% of the commerce. Well, no. Now you can serve everybody, and they can pay what they're willing to pay for these things. You reduce consumer surplus sorry. You reduce consumer surplus, you just you create this flourishing of of of everyone getting exactly what they want. Yep. Right? And that's the prosperous society. And so the way I frame it is kind of a reaction or, like, call call it a conversation with John Kenneth Galbraith. He wrote, The Affluent Society. Right? But this was written in the postwar economy. It serves kind of as the degrowth or handbook. And my sense is like, you know, John Kenneth Galbraith is a brilliant man. I'm not saying he's wrong or he was wrong when he wrote [00:51:46] S7: the book, but I'm saying
00:51:46 · Eric Seufert
[00:51:46] S2: it just doesn't apply anymore. Mhmm. Right? He was talking he had this idea of the dependence effect. Advertising actually is a way to whip up demand so we can maximize production because that was what he called this conventional wisdom at the time. You should be maximizing production. Mhmm. But the the reality is in the time he wrote this book, 1958, you had people moving to the suburbs, getting big houses. They you know, the GI bill helped them buy these homes. You had the suburb the the idea of the suburbs was was being deployed. And so, you know, people needed washing machines. They needed cars. They needed refrigerators for the first time. And so you had these big companies that made these mass market goods. They advertised in mass market media. Mhmm. And they and and and John Kenneth Galbraith's idea was, like, well, that's creating demand. The the there there is no actual inherent demand for these things. It's creating it through advertising. And my point is the opposite. Yep. You know, we don't have this homogenized society anymore, and we don't have people that need these homogenized goods anymore, and we have a lot more particular specific media now. And we can reach people and advertise to them the things that they have demand for, for products that weren't economically viable prior to these systems, these distribution systems. And that is the Prosper Society, is being able to reach people to meet the demands that they have with the products that they couldn't access before with ads that they wouldn't otherwise see absent these systems. And so I think it's it's, you know, I think it's a very it's my sense is like you can make a very credible bull case that that's what AI delivers to us. And it's not about wiping out white collar labor because the reality is, like, that's gonna create more jobs. And we're seeing that now. Like, there's no there's no justification for that skepticism. It just doesn't exist. We're seeing an increase in hiring. Maybe not at the entry level, and you could Yeah. Discuss if there should be some intervention there. But my sense is, like, AI actually if you look at the data and there's a Financial Times article about Standard Data. If you look at the data, it doesn't support that bear case. And so Yeah. That bear case should be absolutely eliminated as something that even enters the conversation.
00:53:37 · John Coogan
[00:53:37] S1: Yeah. No. I completely agree. That was an amazing speech. I don't know if I have any real yeah. No. I I I love this idea. We've been talking about a bunch just, more customization, the long tail of commerce getting even longer, and it feels unfathomable. We've seen this with, like, you know, specific shirts that are just for you designed and targeted to you on Facebook. We've seen that, but, like, it can, in fact, get more personalized.
00:54:01 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:54:01] S0: Well, yeah, I mean, we've we've seen this with, like, content Yeah. These platforms. Right? They're very good at they're very good at, like, find they're they they they are very good at serving you. They can serve you a video that has 50 views from a new channel on YouTube, and you'll be like, that's interesting. I will watch this. Right? And it and then and it's a niche that is, like, so small. It never could have existed in the era of, you know, radio and television and, you know, seeing that seeing that trend accelerate. It reminds me, I was I I was wanting, you know, you know these, like, kids RC, like, ride on cars? I got, like, incredibly frustrated with these because I've tried a bunch of the different brands. I've tried spending, like, $800 on them and, you know, $400. And all of them just suck, like, the kids, even when you have the you're driving the kid on the controller, the kid can still hit the gas and just like run into stuff and, you know, it's just absolute chaos. I'm like, what is the version of this that is like, you know, you know, the the top of the line version because of I wanna get it. I I use these things a lot. And I searched around, couldn't find it anywhere. And then John just, like [00:55:05] S1: Within twenty four hours, I got served exactly what he was looking for. I don't even know how how it got served to me, but it was fantastic. Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. [00:55:15] S0: Electric. [00:55:15] S1: Back. Always always a great time.