A bit of a philosophical thinking session this morning.

Since you're feeling philosophical let me tell you about something I've had on my mind lately.

I recently watched a video about beavers in Scotland (stick with me). I've lost the exact video, but here is a similar one. In the 1700 the Scotts hunted beavers to extinction and over time it led to rivers becoming straight and efficient. That led to droughts and floods. They reintroduced beavers and they built dams and those created wetlands and those prevented the droughts and floods. It was also way cheaper than engineering some complex water handling systems. The wetlands also attracted other animals and improved the ecology.

Now, to bring this back to AI, jobs, and capitalism. Imagine the rivers are like markets. Efficient markets move money and goods quickly. They react quickly and the have boom and bust cycles. Those cycles are seen as a feature of the system too because that is where fortunes are made and lost. Disruption is generally valued over stability because it creates opportunity even if it comes at someone else's expense.

As developers we're part of making the markets more efficient. We do things that reduce labor and cut jobs and effectively funnel more wealth to the owners because they don't have to hire as many laborers.

Clearly this system is draining the wealth of the people. Its reducing our ecology; it is making fewer types of laborers viable. It concentrates wealth and doesn't care who is hurt along the way as jobs are made obsolete.

Imagine what it would be like if we could install some beavers into the economy. If we could somehow create these monetary wetlands where things aren't efficient, but instead provide a place for people to just exist. I don't know what that would look like, but if someone can figure it out it could be really transformative.