Enter the Complex - Atlas is Shrugging, Part 2

Gibson imagined it. Stephenson satirized it. Srinivasan formalized it. Próspera is building it. I wrote a novel about it. Here’s how we get there.

This is a companion piece to The Monthly SUC, Universal Basic Income: The Great Destroyer of Worlds. Read that first.

Last week I laid out the path to UBI — the sovereign debt spiral, the AI employment crisis, the government’s inevitable decision to spend its way deeper into the hole. I ended with a warning: Universal Basic Income isn’t a safety net. It’s the last policy a dying government implements before it loses the ability to govern at all.

In the article I didn’t address the question that follows.

What comes after the government fails?

I did, actually, address the question (albeit years it ago). Not in my writings here, but in a novel. I just didn’t expect reality to start running the same script so soon.