
Humans Who Dream Of Companies That Won't Need Us - prostoalex
http://www.fastcompany.com/3047462/the-humans-who-dream-of-companies-that-wont-need-them?utm_content=buffer04e59&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
Gravityloss
At some point we must get rid of all the humans on earth to keep up economic
growth.

Not entirely joking.

Since companies are legal entities and can be run by algorithms, then it's
possible that such non-human companies end up with all the capital and all the
power. Of course nations and legal systems will also be automatized, with
maximum growth as the objective. Then the algorithms can just starve people to
death in a legal way.

Though human controlled companies weren't necessarily that humane so far
either. At least they would try to keep the owners alive...

~~~
ZenoArrow
Why does trade require growth?

~~~
fwn
It doesn't. But trade requires calm politicans. Those aren't calm if people
aren't calm. And people aren't calm the moment TVs don't get bigger anymore.
That's what makes them angry.

------
facepalm
What I don't understand about the Blockchain hype (and I say that as a fan of
Bitcoin): isn't the primary problem it solves the avoidance of double
spending?

Or in the case of Ethereum, perhaps double contracts. But still, the issue
seems a bit overblown to me: to double spend (or present fake contracts, or
more generally, fake data), you somehow have to isolate the victims network
before injecting the fake transaction into it?

Sharing data in a p2p network was possible before the blockchain. Maybe a lot
of applications don't really need the bullet proof security of the blockchain
to exchange data?

I don't see the real advantage for a self driving car company, for example.
Why couldn't it just as well live on a server - maybe in the cloud so that it
has backups? The issue of cheating could be countered with trust, just as
normal businesses do (screw over your customers too often and they'll stay
away).

The real problem seems to be political, I don't think it is legally possible
to instantiate a business without human background?

Suppose I launch a contract on Ethereum that tries to buy a self-driving car
and rent it out to passengers. How would that car get a license plate? And
without it, wouldn't the police quickly remove it from the street?

~~~
icebraining
Legally, creating a company without humans is impossible, but in practice,
well:

 _Registering Planet Money 's Delaware company took one day and three emails.
The company that set it up for us asked for absolutely no documentation. I
gave them my real name, but I could have been anybody from anywhere in the
world._

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/27/157421340/how-t...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/27/157421340/how-
to-set-up-an-offshore-company)

Of course, opening a bank account to receive the income of those rides would
be a different story.

~~~
facepalm
The bank account issue at least is solved by Bitcoin.

Maybe some businesses don't need to be real businesses - especially illegal
ones :-/

I wonder about the consequences of running an illegal business on the
blockchain, though. Say, a marketplace for drugs on Ethereum. Worst case it
would make using Ethereum illegal?

------
spiritplumber
Sounds like the first chapter of Accelerando.

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html)

------
Moshe_Silnorin
It should be noted that ethereum does not scale any better than Bitcoin, which
is to say not much at all. Unlike a lot of people in the crypto currency scene
Vitalik acknowledges this and is working on upgrades to fix this. He is a
very, very smart guy but this would require solving extremely difficult
technical and economic problems.

------
Animats
They're not talking about automated companies. They're talking about
distributed companies. That's entirely different. This is the micropayment
dream, again - everything is making tiny micropayments to everything else. I
knew some of that crowd back when Xanadu was a thing. (Xanadu was Ted Nelson's
thing, a predecessor of the World Wide Web. Everything is pay per view in
Xanadu.) They were all fanatical libertarians.

Somebody read "Atlas Shrugged" too many times. (Part 3 of the movie is out,
and in Redbox, if anybody cares. "The weak cinematic trilogy derived from Ayn
Rand's 1957 screed-cum-novel limps to its merciful end." \- Variety)

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PaulHoule
There is probably already some "thing" out there running in the AWS cloud that
both cashes checks and pays it's bills and is still running after the demise
of its owner.

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httpagent
Vitalik Buterin's
response:[http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3ai4pm/the_humans_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3ai4pm/the_humans_who_dream_of_companies_that_dont_need/cscu4pa)

------
dataker
I find the title to be somewhat misleading as it tries to get readers'
attention.

Most of the article is related to the Blockhain, but "won't need us" makes
most assume it's purely related to automation.

~~~
dang
What would be a better title?

------
314
Companies are simply a tool that helps a group of people to make a profit. If
you remove the group of people then what would be the point?

~~~
bjelkeman-again
In some contexts we have nearly removed all the people in this equation
already. 85 people own as much as about half the world's population [1]. So,
capitalism in the form we have it today, which includes companies, are simply
a way to concentrate wealth among the few. Some of these few use the money IMO
vicely, but a more equitable system would probably work better. I say this
after having lived and worked in the US and the UK (less equal) compared to
Sweden and Netherlands (more equal).

[1]
[http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-ric...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/20/oxfam-85-richest-
people-half-of-the-world)

Edit: clearer argument

~~~
yummyfajitas
All that statistics says is a lot of people have debt. I personally have more
wealth than about half the world _in my wallet_ \- I've got about $150 in
there, and billions of people have negative net worth.

Global inequality is actually declining, by the way, so can't modern
capitalism get some credit for that?

[http://www.maxroser.com/economic-world-history-in-one-
chart/](http://www.maxroser.com/economic-world-history-in-one-chart/)

[https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-
Center/P...](https://www.gc.cuny.edu/CUNY_GC/media/CUNY-Graduate-
Center/PDF/Centers/LIS/Milanovic/papers/2014/Where14.pdf)

~~~
phaemon
No, you don't. The report makes clear that you need wealth of USD 3,650 to be
in the top 50% in the world, and USD 77,000 to be in the top 10%.

[https://publications.credit-
suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fi...](https://publications.credit-
suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=60931FDE-A2D2-F568-B041B58C5EA591A4)

~~~
yummyfajitas
You are missing the point. Let me make a mathematical example. Suppose the
population distribution is $[-100000 (1M people), 100000 (1M people), 200000
(1 person)]. Then anyone with $1 in net assets has more wealth than the bottom
2/3\. In particular, the top person also has more wealth than the bottom 2/3.

All this fact says is that a bunch of assets minus a bunch of debts adds up to
small numbers.

(Also note that I said "about half the world" \- I don't claim to know the
exact cutoff.)

~~~
phaemon
Your point appears to be that if enough people have debt, you don't need to
have much to be above them. In short, you're trying to argue that there aren't
many actual poor people and that there aren't a small number of super rich
people (as the report suggests). Your point is wrong.

Most people are not in debt, as illustrated by the fact that you require USD
3,650 to have more wealth than 50% of people. If most people were in debt then
USD 1 would be _more_ than required.

Your figure of USD 150 is ludicrously inaccurate. That's nowhere near half the
world. That's my point.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_In short, you 're trying to argue that there aren't many actual poor
people..._

I never claimed this. I merely said the specific statistic used to argue this
is a poor one.

Again, let me tweak my counterexample to _precisely_ debunk your claim, since
you seem to believe $3650 is a magic number while $100k (what I used) is not:
[-3650, -3650, 3650, 3650, 3651]. This is a population with median wealth of
$3650. The net wealth of the bottom 4/5 is $0 < $1 < $150.

Thus, you have not debunked my claim. Median(x) > $150 does not imply
cumsum(x) > $150.

~~~
phaemon
> I merely said the specific statistic used to argue this is a poor one.

No, you claimed, "All that statistics says is a lot of people have debt."

It does not say any such thing. The fact you can choose a contrived set of
figures to match the median wealth figures doesn't mean that those figures are
representative in any way of the _actual_ distribution of wealth in the world.
They certainly are not.

Your claim that the value of the median is mostly due to debt is flat out
wrong. Your claim that possession of $150 puts your wealth above 50% of the
planet is flat out wrong.

Your claim that Median(x) > $150 does not imply cumsum(x) > $150 is correct,
assuming you don't know the distribution. One out of three ain't bad, I guess.

------
donaldmcintyre
Ethereum components are:

\- cryptocurrency \- blockchain \- consensus mechanism \- miners \- virtual
machine \- programmability \- browser client

As an open source project it leaves it open to developers, entrepreneurs and
organizations to use it and create the applications they wish.

All external political and social dramatization is personal opinion and
judgement.

~~~
rorykoehler
One thing which I think could hold projects like this back a little is the
cryptocurrency component. I haven't delved into developing with Ethereum
yet... would it be possible to use the non-cryptocurrency components with a
FIAT payment system such as Stripe or Paypal?

~~~
mike_hearn
Banks don't normally give bank accounts to robots.

~~~
donaldmcintyre
They do and very frequently. A big chunk of intraday trading of currencies and
bonds is done by bots that connect through APIs to brokers like interactive
brokers.

There a some mutual fund companies that have "black box" investment managers,
which are computer programs that manage whole portfolios and trade their
institutional accounts at investment banks.

Program trading on the NYSE has been active since the 1980s.

~~~
mike_hearn
They gave the account to a company and the company delegated access to a
robot. However the account is not in the name of the robot.

