The Intelligence Economy
Essays for decision makers on AI, judgement, trust and the economics of abundant intelligence.
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Labour policy · 9 minBill Gates proposes that governments reserve certain occupations for humans. The metaphor is his own - and it concedes the entire argument.
A job is a legal wrapper around a bundle of tasks, and AI arrives one task at a time. The full map of policy levers - accelerator, brake, equity, tax - shows the question the essay never reaches: who owns the reserve.
Read the essay↗︎Labour policy · 9 min
Bill Gates proposes reserving jobs for humans. A reserve protects a unit that no longer exists - and every reserve has a warden.
14Payments · 12 min
Stablecoins will not kill the card networks. They are relocating the payment that keeps them alive - from merchant flow to balance-holder float.
13AI & engineering · 5 min
AI may be reviving an old sequence: performance first, explanation later - and assurance, not explanation, carrying the burden of trust.
12Agentic commerce · 7 min
When software shops for us, the useful question is not what it can do. It is who the agent works for - and where behavioural rents migrate.
11AI sovereignty · 23 min
Most enterprise AI risk sits outside the contract. Eight levers reveal what a model the organisation does not own hands to someone else.
10Decision rights · 12 min
When agents do the work they absorb the context judgement is built from - leaving humans to decide more and understand less.
09Corporate security · 5 min
Proprietary intelligence is leaving through two doors: the approved model and the shadow system nobody installed.
08Technology risk · 9 min
Why the most expensive technology bet in modern history rests on a capability test most buyers have not run.
07AI economics · 3 min
As intelligence commoditises, value migrates to the relationship layer. Human attachment recognised that scarcity long ago.
06Unit economics · 9 min
The AI economy is two business models pretending to be one. One is laying rails; the other is financing freemium fog.
05Strategy · 4 min
When reasoning is abundant, judgement, trust, context and orchestration become scarce - and that is where value moves.
04Market structure · 4 min
When a credible free alternative arrives, premium pricing does not erode gradually. It changes regime.
03Political economy · 5 min
Cheap intelligence creates the asymmetry cheap manufacturing once did. The last shock’s lesson was the policy vacuum.
02Talent · 4 min
Knowledge work is being automated on the same pattern as the power loom - but the work disappearing is also how experts are made.
01Institutional memory · 5 min
Firms pulling ahead are not using better models. They are building the context systems that make each model interaction cumulative.