Autonomous Public Benefit Corporations
A substantial proportion (up to 25%₁) of the revenue of many local and state governments derives from parking fines and speeding tickets. Furthermore, autonomous vehicles will decimate ancillary income streams associated with traffic enforcement (law enforcement personnel, traffic/parking enforcement, attorneys, court staff/Judges, DMV employees, insurance industry, etc.
The MV Ticket and Traffic Court system is a tremendously large income stream for all local and state/commonwealth governments. Many lawyers and bail bondsmen also will find much of their bread-and-butter work drying up.
In a world of autonomous vehicles where very few people drive, or even own a vehicle (we will have perhaps 60% fewer passenger road vehicles registered within 10 years), how will cities replace this lost revenue? Especially at a time when truckers and taxi drivers are facing irrelevance.
I have doubts as to whether many municipalities can adapt quickly enough to avoid substantial shortfalls, and the risk of Detroitification.
It may, however, be possible to use the same technologies sweeping away our traditional assumptions to also pave a way to new public revenue opportunities.
An autonomous entity, such as a vehicle itself can become a source of capital. A car that one operates a taxi within is a job; a car that drives itself is an asset. Whilst you are busy, your car can be ferrying others around and earning money (maybe for you, maybe for its own personal corporation). These new economics mean that businesses are for the first time becoming wholly automated.
Smart contract technologies enable new ways of specifying and formalizing agreements through self-executing code.
Smart Contracts with AI atop can make something called a Distributed Autonomous Organization. This is essentially a business that has the capability to run itself. It’s an AI business that can conduct trades and even hire humans to do work for it (first you hire one HR professional to hire the rest).
In the past we've seen machines eat working class labor, and middle-class clerks. Next it may usurp the C-suite itself.
We are likely to enter an age of the iCEO, a Cambrian explosion of commerce, with AI-controlled ventures providing services in perfect competition.
Executing on an idea is about to become an order of magnitude more simple. One can feasibly go from a crazy idea to a global profit-making venture in less than a day. This means that disruptive innovations are going to hit the market even more rapidly.
These DAOs have huge promise. Because they are autonomous, they can run a charity for free, for example. We’re going to see a lot of mutual insurance funds sprout up that basically run themselves. Any area that has a low profit margin that typically isn't of interest to human-led organizations can be organized through these new means.
DAOs might also provide a kind of alternative welfare system, since they can pay dividends to humans. No government required, all in the free market.
There is a lot of discussion of whether Universal Basic Income will be required for folks who are unable to compete meaningfully in successfully more advanced and talent-driven economies.
The assumption is that heavy taxation and redistribution of wealth will be required for this, to a degree that may not be financially feasible, and certainly may not be feasible (let alone desirable).
I believe that there are other alternatives. The power of DAOs and AI CEOs running companies in the cloud that may be bootstrapped within days, means that we can create wealth voluntarily within the free market, yet serving the public good and those with need.
Something akin to the maxim of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need' can actually work quite nicely, but only when participation is voluntary. The Free and Open Source Software movement powers many of our smartphones, servers, and cyber security. Our world runs on it, but not exclusively. There remains plenty of room for proprietary software also.
Many of these amazing FOSS contributions (with some corporate exceptions) have been created by random nerds producing things for free, entirely voluntarily, for a little bit of status within a very small community, and out of a desire to see something exist in the world.
This same spirit will enable free and open source businesses run by AI that can trade, arbitrage, and perhaps even provide micro services, almost entirely autonomously.
These businesses, producing real value for real people, can also produce dividends for real shareholders. Those with capability and the FOSS mindset can bootstrap an open business in a few days, and common people can receive a real lifestyle boost via 'Doge Corp' or whatever. No taxation or coercion necessary, and whoever creates one gains huge, lasting props for their noblesse oblige. Those with virtual virtue, discerned via machine ethics technologies, will have first dibs in the bestowal of alms.
We have companies today like this already, such as Newman's Own, and co-operatives, but with the power of AI and decentralized structures we can spawn similar ventures at a huge rate. Traditional companies will remain, thereby creating a mixed market of for-profit and public benefit ventures.
Autonomous Public Benefit Corporations, tokenized forms of cooperatives, and Autonomous Basic Income methods may become an essential crutch for pressured public welfare systems in the years ahead.