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The Last Economy: A Guide to the Age of Intelligent Economics
Your economic life expectancy is shrinking. This is not a recession. It is a phase transition. Emad Mostaque, founder of Stability AI and Intelligent Internet, calls this the Intelligence a new age where artificial intelligence turns human intellect into an abundant commodity. That single shift is cracking the old engines of work, money, and meaning that were built on scarcity.
Our dashboards show record profits, while daily life shows a loss of purpose. The gap signals a paradigm collapse. Mostaque argues we have a finite window, the Thousand-Day Window, to choose among three a comfortable cage of Digital Feudalism, a paranoid fortress of the Great Fragmentation, or a living partnership of Human Symbiosis.
The Last Economy is not another warning. It is a build plan for the third future. Drawing from physics, complexity science, and computer science, Mostaque offers a blueprint for systems that treat abundance as a feature and defend human agency at scale. In this world, human worth is no longer tied to economic utility. Value flows from creativity, judgment, and care. The work ahead is a civilization-scale software update that turns this blueprint into code, policy, and culture.
Our dashboards show record profits, while daily life shows a loss of purpose. The gap signals a paradigm collapse. Mostaque argues we have a finite window, the Thousand-Day Window, to choose among three a comfortable cage of Digital Feudalism, a paranoid fortress of the Great Fragmentation, or a living partnership of Human Symbiosis.
The Last Economy is not another warning. It is a build plan for the third future. Drawing from physics, complexity science, and computer science, Mostaque offers a blueprint for systems that treat abundance as a feature and defend human agency at scale. In this world, human worth is no longer tied to economic utility. Value flows from creativity, judgment, and care. The work ahead is a civilization-scale software update that turns this blueprint into code, policy, and culture.
239 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 22, 2025
267 people are currently reading
341 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
August 25, 2025
Really sharp stuff from Mostaque here. There’s plenty of people yelling back and forth about AGI timelines, but so few helping us think through the implications of a world where intelligence is getting cheaper with every passing year. The ramifications are huge, so I appreciate a sane voice tackling a very difficult topic where emotions are running high.
September 2, 2025
If you're into economics, you should read this.
If you're not into economics, you should read this even more.
An imperative, innovative, and impactful book, which may upend your present understandings and make you question what you learnt as rote. It brings to the fore the failures of the current economic system and the very real likelihood of a paradigm collapse. It's alarming, yes, but it's truthful. Mostaque, drawing not only from hopes but from science and maths, presents an entire new economic framework for the Intelligence Age; one that harnesses the potential of AI to build a future that benefits all humanity. This book is a warning, a manifesto, and a beacon of hope.
If you're not into economics, you should read this even more.
An imperative, innovative, and impactful book, which may upend your present understandings and make you question what you learnt as rote. It brings to the fore the failures of the current economic system and the very real likelihood of a paradigm collapse. It's alarming, yes, but it's truthful. Mostaque, drawing not only from hopes but from science and maths, presents an entire new economic framework for the Intelligence Age; one that harnesses the potential of AI to build a future that benefits all humanity. This book is a warning, a manifesto, and a beacon of hope.
September 5, 2025
For those who have long suspected that human society and economy are bound by the same laws of physics that govern the rest of the universe, this book brings the pieces together in an elegant, approachable way. It reads both as an overview of the science of human civilization & intelligence and as a prescient guide, offering a compass to make our next steps the right ones, while the course of the coming societal shift is still ours to shape. Far from being a collection of idealist aspirations written from an ivory tower, it relays a sober perspective of the world today and the paths ahead. By confronting the reality of the everyday person's experience with our current economy, it makes clear why the system can't continue as it has.
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this is the most important book I've ever read. Its insights are not just for those interested in AI or the economy; they are for anyone concerned with the future of humanity. The rapid development of AI and the dire state of the global economy are simply what make its lessons urgent today. This book reveals how AI, rather than an existential threat, can instead become the herald of a future defined by equality and human flourishing. If enough of us understand, refine, and act on its guidance now, the results will - inevitably, as a matter of physics - compel the rest.
P.S. You don’t need to buy it - the book is available for free in multiple formats (including web) on their site at https://www.thelasteconomy.com/
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this is the most important book I've ever read. Its insights are not just for those interested in AI or the economy; they are for anyone concerned with the future of humanity. The rapid development of AI and the dire state of the global economy are simply what make its lessons urgent today. This book reveals how AI, rather than an existential threat, can instead become the herald of a future defined by equality and human flourishing. If enough of us understand, refine, and act on its guidance now, the results will - inevitably, as a matter of physics - compel the rest.
P.S. You don’t need to buy it - the book is available for free in multiple formats (including web) on their site at https://www.thelasteconomy.com/
September 24, 2025
Mostaque is a polarizing figure in the startup world, on one hand he's seen as a Robin hood who used $1Billion in VC money to make AI diffusion models free, making him a villain in the aforementioned VC community. What cant be denied though, is the man's searing intellect (watch him on any podcast, he's one of those original thinkers whose IQ sticks above all other guests).
In this seminal book (almost a white paper to the new world economy) he tries to pin down where we came from, what our current systems lack in the face of AI, and a blueprint for how to create the new economic world order. While this is meant to be a silhouette at best, it also tells how how complex systems tend to have an emergent property to them and its almost impossible to build them top down. But an important read nevertheless.
In this seminal book (almost a white paper to the new world economy) he tries to pin down where we came from, what our current systems lack in the face of AI, and a blueprint for how to create the new economic world order. While this is meant to be a silhouette at best, it also tells how how complex systems tend to have an emergent property to them and its almost impossible to build them top down. But an important read nevertheless.
September 2, 2025
If pondering complex ideas is a mark of intelligence, then simplifying them is a sign of even greater intelligence, and Emad Mostaque does just that. This is one of those books that challenges you to think deeply, leaving you with an entirely new perspective by the end. I'll be rereading this a few times over the next few weeks.
September 12, 2025
This is a stunning read. When I finished the book, I turned to my wife and said, “I feel like I’m witnessing the writing of a new constitution.” It truly feels that historic.
I’ve always appreciated Emad's rare ability to distill complex topics into succinct frameworks. While the current AI conversation is dominated by massive foundation models and huge AI data centers, he brings a powerful voice to a neglected, more personal vision: the AI that can improve our health, help teach our kids, and empower our communities. He compellingly argues this technology is already here and can run on much smaller systems.
What has been missing is a roadmap for how the economic, social, and technological pieces can work together for everyone's benefit. This book provides that vision. It is a sorely needed breath of fresh air.
I’ve always appreciated Emad's rare ability to distill complex topics into succinct frameworks. While the current AI conversation is dominated by massive foundation models and huge AI data centers, he brings a powerful voice to a neglected, more personal vision: the AI that can improve our health, help teach our kids, and empower our communities. He compellingly argues this technology is already here and can run on much smaller systems.
What has been missing is a roadmap for how the economic, social, and technological pieces can work together for everyone's benefit. This book provides that vision. It is a sorely needed breath of fresh air.
November 1, 2025
A provocative manifesto with a few sharp ideas; intelligence inversion, abundance trap, metabolic rift, MIND capitals but undermined by speculative timelines (a thousand-day revolution with no evidence), vague prescriptions (critiquing GDP is old; nucleation sites lack mechanics), and slippery language (negative value for labour but zero cost for AI; symbiosis with entities that don’t need us). Useful as a lens to rethink AI’s economic impact, but not as a roadmap; more spark than structure.
January 17, 2026
Inevitable Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence has never been a hotter topic than now and Emad Mostaque has been working in the field for some time. He founded Stability AI in 2019 but left the company in 2024. Soon after, he set up a new startup called Intelligent Internet (II), which, according to its website, aims at developing open-source AI agents and proposes an architecture for new digital currencies to serve both the real (atomic) world and the digital (bit) one. This book seems to be a companion to II's white paper, found on the company's website.
Sure, as an unsuspecting reader, I didn't know all that when I started reading TLe, and was a little bit surprised when I incidentally discovered all this on II's website, because the book reads primarily as an ambitious intellectual exercise. It presents itself as an all-encompassing theory of everything in economics and social contract theories, aiming at unifying all previous theories from Adam Smith, Marx, Keynes and Hayek to Hobbes, Rousseau and even John Rawls, into a single complex system (which Mostaque names as "The Great Synthesis" or "this unification." His words : "For centuries, (the blind scholars of economics)'s heirs have been fighting. That fight is over. The mathematics is clear. The physics is undeniable.") I must confess learning Mostaque's Last Economy was part of II's manifesto made me read more deeply between the lines and see gaps in the theory I would probably just ignore otherwise.
Granted, there is nothing wrong with writing a book to promote your business. I remember reading **Behind The Cloud** by Marc Benioff and having lots of fun with his stories at and about Salesforce. However, Mostaque dresses his theory with terms such as Lagrangians, Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition, stochastic gradient descent on geometric manifolds, borrowing concepts from physics and applied mathematics. This vocabulary pertains to academia and doesn't blend all too well with mass communication. Mind you, physics has been used by some scholars to expand economic theory, and this is a valid, although tentative, enterprise. When used more loosely, however, it may have the effect of imposing authority through scientific jargon and a pretense of analytical rigor that may be inaccessible to most people.
I remember reading Benoit Mandelbrot's **The (Mis)Behavior of Markets** and feeling it was original, thought-provoking and authoritative. In his book, Mandelbrot did criticize Fama's Efficient Market Hypothesis, Markowitz and CAPM as well as the Black-Scholes option pricing model, for the limitations of their assumptions. He finished it with a call to arms (literally, 'Aux Armes!'), inviting academics to investigate further because underestimating risk in financial markets was **dangerous**. His words : "(such) Pragmatism is needed in financial theory. It is the Hippocratic Oath to 'do no harm.' In finance, I believe the conventional models and their more recent 'fixes' violate that oath. They are not merely wrong; they are dangerously wrong. (...) Like the weather, markets are turbulent. We must learn to recognize that, and better cope." Considering that he wrote his book in 2004, four years before the subprime crisis, Mandelbrot's prescience was astonishing, but he didn't act like a prophet; he wrote his book as a scholar.
Differently, TLe's tone is mostly prophetic and imperative, ironically using science as argument for inevitability : it expects future to follow its logic with the certainty of a natural phenomenon guided by the strict rules of thermodynamics and the absolute certainty of mathematical deduction. The book concludes not with an invitation for further research but a summons to 'join the club'. Mostaque's words : "The clock started before you opened this book. It is running as you read these final words. The future is not a destination we arrive at; it is a world we build with every choice. The demolition is done. The theories are laid. The blueprints are drawn. The choice is every choice now. (...) Welcome to the rest of your life. Begin."
On the other hand, citing or quoting many authors that could read as erudition may instead reveal lack of academic discipline if it is inconsistent or incomplete. In TLe, Mostaque strived to add as many references as possible but wrote a whole section entitled **Innovator's Dilemma** without giving credit to the late Clayton Christensen, the author who coined the expression as part of his famous theory of disruptive innovation.
The lack of academic discipline becomes more evident in the several appendixes Mostaque adds at the end of the book. Differently from what he argues, they are not "rigorous proof" of what is discussed in the main text but condensed summaries and repetitive glossaries of the same material. The most compelling argument about this theory's lack of rigor is in Appendix C, where Mostaque lists the "recommended indicators and proxies for each of" his four capitals--they are all conventional data series used in standard economic empirical research, with a very important caveat : they are all low-frequency. They are also difficult to handle econometrically : some are not continuous over time, some are subjective in nature, many are inconsistently collected. To me, this is the most revealing evidence of Mostaque's limited familiarity with the everyday challenges faced by economists : the whole of human economic relations is extremely difficult to measure.
Alan D Sokal and Jean Bricmont in **Fashionable Nonsense** warned about the misuse of scientific language in other realms of the human knowledge. In the book, they tell how they managed to publish a hoax article in a respectful academic magazine in which they used plenty of physics and mathematical terms in the context of postmodernist philosophy, only to confess, later, that the text was totally meaningless.
To TLe's credit, I don't think the book is a hoax. It is thought-provoking enough to spark ideas, some of which I laid out here. But it is not as fun as Benioff and it is certainly not as authoritative as Mandelbrot. It is not total nonsense either, but it is, certainly, fashionable.
Artificial Intelligence has never been a hotter topic than now and Emad Mostaque has been working in the field for some time. He founded Stability AI in 2019 but left the company in 2024. Soon after, he set up a new startup called Intelligent Internet (II), which, according to its website, aims at developing open-source AI agents and proposes an architecture for new digital currencies to serve both the real (atomic) world and the digital (bit) one. This book seems to be a companion to II's white paper, found on the company's website.
Sure, as an unsuspecting reader, I didn't know all that when I started reading TLe, and was a little bit surprised when I incidentally discovered all this on II's website, because the book reads primarily as an ambitious intellectual exercise. It presents itself as an all-encompassing theory of everything in economics and social contract theories, aiming at unifying all previous theories from Adam Smith, Marx, Keynes and Hayek to Hobbes, Rousseau and even John Rawls, into a single complex system (which Mostaque names as "The Great Synthesis" or "this unification." His words : "For centuries, (the blind scholars of economics)'s heirs have been fighting. That fight is over. The mathematics is clear. The physics is undeniable.") I must confess learning Mostaque's Last Economy was part of II's manifesto made me read more deeply between the lines and see gaps in the theory I would probably just ignore otherwise.
Granted, there is nothing wrong with writing a book to promote your business. I remember reading **Behind The Cloud** by Marc Benioff and having lots of fun with his stories at and about Salesforce. However, Mostaque dresses his theory with terms such as Lagrangians, Helmholtz-Hodge decomposition, stochastic gradient descent on geometric manifolds, borrowing concepts from physics and applied mathematics. This vocabulary pertains to academia and doesn't blend all too well with mass communication. Mind you, physics has been used by some scholars to expand economic theory, and this is a valid, although tentative, enterprise. When used more loosely, however, it may have the effect of imposing authority through scientific jargon and a pretense of analytical rigor that may be inaccessible to most people.
I remember reading Benoit Mandelbrot's **The (Mis)Behavior of Markets** and feeling it was original, thought-provoking and authoritative. In his book, Mandelbrot did criticize Fama's Efficient Market Hypothesis, Markowitz and CAPM as well as the Black-Scholes option pricing model, for the limitations of their assumptions. He finished it with a call to arms (literally, 'Aux Armes!'), inviting academics to investigate further because underestimating risk in financial markets was **dangerous**. His words : "(such) Pragmatism is needed in financial theory. It is the Hippocratic Oath to 'do no harm.' In finance, I believe the conventional models and their more recent 'fixes' violate that oath. They are not merely wrong; they are dangerously wrong. (...) Like the weather, markets are turbulent. We must learn to recognize that, and better cope." Considering that he wrote his book in 2004, four years before the subprime crisis, Mandelbrot's prescience was astonishing, but he didn't act like a prophet; he wrote his book as a scholar.
Differently, TLe's tone is mostly prophetic and imperative, ironically using science as argument for inevitability : it expects future to follow its logic with the certainty of a natural phenomenon guided by the strict rules of thermodynamics and the absolute certainty of mathematical deduction. The book concludes not with an invitation for further research but a summons to 'join the club'. Mostaque's words : "The clock started before you opened this book. It is running as you read these final words. The future is not a destination we arrive at; it is a world we build with every choice. The demolition is done. The theories are laid. The blueprints are drawn. The choice is every choice now. (...) Welcome to the rest of your life. Begin."
On the other hand, citing or quoting many authors that could read as erudition may instead reveal lack of academic discipline if it is inconsistent or incomplete. In TLe, Mostaque strived to add as many references as possible but wrote a whole section entitled **Innovator's Dilemma** without giving credit to the late Clayton Christensen, the author who coined the expression as part of his famous theory of disruptive innovation.
The lack of academic discipline becomes more evident in the several appendixes Mostaque adds at the end of the book. Differently from what he argues, they are not "rigorous proof" of what is discussed in the main text but condensed summaries and repetitive glossaries of the same material. The most compelling argument about this theory's lack of rigor is in Appendix C, where Mostaque lists the "recommended indicators and proxies for each of" his four capitals--they are all conventional data series used in standard economic empirical research, with a very important caveat : they are all low-frequency. They are also difficult to handle econometrically : some are not continuous over time, some are subjective in nature, many are inconsistently collected. To me, this is the most revealing evidence of Mostaque's limited familiarity with the everyday challenges faced by economists : the whole of human economic relations is extremely difficult to measure.
Alan D Sokal and Jean Bricmont in **Fashionable Nonsense** warned about the misuse of scientific language in other realms of the human knowledge. In the book, they tell how they managed to publish a hoax article in a respectful academic magazine in which they used plenty of physics and mathematical terms in the context of postmodernist philosophy, only to confess, later, that the text was totally meaningless.
To TLe's credit, I don't think the book is a hoax. It is thought-provoking enough to spark ideas, some of which I laid out here. But it is not as fun as Benioff and it is certainly not as authoritative as Mandelbrot. It is not total nonsense either, but it is, certainly, fashionable.
September 12, 2025
Emad Mostaque’s The Last Economy crackles with ideas about how cheap, abundant AI will remake value, work, and coordination. The writing is clear and step by step, and it nudged me to rethink my place in the world and the startup I am building. I now look for what stays scarce when intelligence gets cheap, and how to design incentives and governance that matter. I felt real energy in the vision of a more symbiotic society. My critique is simple. The book leans optimistic and underplays regulation, market power, uneven access to compute and data, and the messy details of governance, liability, and externalities. I also wanted tighter metrics, concrete mechanisms, and more non-Western perspectives. Even so, it sharpened my thinking and I recommend it to builders and policymakers.
September 16, 2025
I graduated with an AI degree in the 90's, and it felt like something that would impact the future. Well, that future has arrived, and this book contextualises what we are seeing now. It is not really a technical book, but a work that gives a clear-eyed view of what we must do as a society to make use of this new technology.
The author is a legend in the world of AI, which makes his ideas not only compelling, but ones we should also heed. It is a book about what humanity can be, with a roadmap outlining how we get there.
I would urge you to read it, consider the implications, and act.
The author is a legend in the world of AI, which makes his ideas not only compelling, but ones we should also heed. It is a book about what humanity can be, with a roadmap outlining how we get there.
I would urge you to read it, consider the implications, and act.
September 16, 2025
A wonderfully written vision of how the new economy could work in a world that becomes more enlighted, more caring, less extractive and intelligent abundant.
I highly recommend it as a read and am looking forward to using the tools.
I highly recommend it as a read and am looking forward to using the tools.
September 25, 2025
This is the most relevant piece of information available today. I cannot think of any other content that should be paid attention prior to this.
In the era of exponential AI capabilities, the default way is not the one with the happy ending, we need to create the one that will really drive us towards real utopia.
Read it, understand it.
In the era of exponential AI capabilities, the default way is not the one with the happy ending, we need to create the one that will really drive us towards real utopia.
Read it, understand it.
September 22, 2025
What a take on a new future we are embarking on. Change is coming and this book gives humanity a roadmap to a potential future we could all realise.
A must read.
A must read.
December 1, 2025
Fascinating vision for our future as a species
Fascinating vision for our future as a species that considers how AI will shape our societies and how we need to act to bring about a desirable future
Fascinating vision for our future as a species that considers how AI will shape our societies and how we need to act to bring about a desirable future
December 3, 2025
This book should be reading for everyone because AI will impact every human being in the planet. There will be a new paradigm and a new economy so soon or later people has to understand this.
November 29, 2025
A Guide to a future of abundance without those pesky jobs
All that free time does worry me. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Also, without the need for GDP and Social Security paying young labor; I wonder if nations will actually become more tribal, relying on AI to keep the trains running and UBI flowing freely.
All that free time does worry me. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. Also, without the need for GDP and Social Security paying young labor; I wonder if nations will actually become more tribal, relying on AI to keep the trains running and UBI flowing freely.
September 28, 2025
Dit boek biedt zowel een diagnose van onze huidige (macro)economie als een oproep én blauwdruk voor een compleet nieuwe manier van economie bedrijven. M. gelooft op basis van de afgelopen 1000 dagen dat onze huidige beschaving zich in een overgangsfase bevindt die ongeveer nog een 1000 dagen duurt – een korte maar cruciale periode waarin kunstmatige intelligentie de basis van onze kapitalistische samenleving volledig op zijn kop zet.
M. begint met wat hij de ‘intelligentieomslag’ noemt: voor het eerst in de geschiedenis is intelligentie geen schaars, menselijk bezit meer, maar iets wat we in overvloed kunnen maken en uitbreiden. Dit is de vierde en laatste grote economische transitie (van grond naar arbeid naar kapitaal naar intelligentie), en hierna is er geen volgende stap meer voor de mensheid om te maken. Dit leidt tot wat hij de ‘overtolligheidsval’ (abundance trap) noemt: ons systeem dat gebaseerd is op schaarste, ziet deze overvloed aan intelligentie als een ramp (massawerkeloosheid, alles wordt waardeloos).
Hij stelt dat ons huidige kapitalistische systeem op instorten staat, wat je kunt zien aan verschillende waarschuwingssignalen (M. haalt deze losjes uit de natuurkunde van de ‘complex systems’): onze economische systemen herstellen steeds langzamer van crises en worden steeds grilliger. Het kernprobleem zit in de zeven grote denkfouten van de traditionele economie – zoals het idee dat schaarste natuurlijk is, dat menselijk werk altijd waarde heeft, en dat markten vanzelf in evenwicht komen. Een ander probleem is dat we de economie meten met het waardeloze Bruto Nationaal Product (BNP). Dat is een ongeschikte maat omdat het focust op totale toegevoegde waarde van alle goederen en diensten terwijl het ‘humanum’ afbrokkelt en de aarde kapotgaat. Het BNP telt kankerbehandelingen, milieuschade en sociale problemen gewoon mee als economische groei en moet volgens M. zo snel mogelijk afgeschaft worden als maat waarmee we onze samenleving analyseren en evalueren.
M. komt vervolgens met de ‘intelligentietheorie’ om de economie anders te waarderen, ook weer eclectisch gebaseerd op natuurkundige wetten. Volgens hem draait economische waarde om het creëren van orde uit chaos. Intelligentie is het proces dat dit doet, en elk systeem dat wil overleven moet goed zijn in het scheppen van orde.
Om te meten hoe gezond een systeem is, bedenkt hij het MIND Dashboard, ter vervanging van het BNP. Een systeem is gezond als het vier verschillende soorten ‘kapitaal’ in balans houdt, die elkaar versterken (M x I x N x D):
(M)aterieel kapitaal: De fysieke basis (bijv. zonnecellen)
(I)ntelligentie kapitaal: Alle kennis en het vermogen om te leren
(N)etwerk kapitaal: Hoe goed mensen elkaar vertrouwen en samenwerken
(D)iversiteit kapitaal: Verschillende opties die zorgen dat je flexibel blijft. (Dit is een directe vertaling van Talebs antifragiliteitsdenken).
Waar één of meerdere van deze vier kapitaalvormen verdwijnt, stort een systeem in.
Vervolgens plaatst M. de theorieën van Smith, Marx en Hayek in deze nieuwe theorie door ze benaderen als ‘flow’. Hij doet dat wat impressionistisch, maar wel heel aardig.
Om in de komende 1000 dagen te voorkomen dat we voorsorteren op een digitaal feodalisme (een paar techbedrijven alle AI bezitten en de rest van de mensen van een uitkering leeft) of een digitale versnippering (waar landen het Internet uitschakelen, nationaal gaan en de Koude Oorlog 2.0 begint) wil M. een nieuw sociaal contract.
In dit nieuwe sociale contract krijgt elke wereldburger toegang tot basisintelligentie (persoonlijke AI), de overheid stopt met slechts belasting innen en wordt een soort ‘tuinier’ die de vier soorten kapitaal van het land verzorgt door de economische spelregels in te richten.
Ook moet er een dubbel geldsysteem komen – de gewone munteenheid voor schaarse fysieke spullen, én ‘cultuurcredits’ (die langzaam hun waarde verliezen om uitgeven aan te moedigen). Door de cultuurcredits op te zetten via een blockchain (Bitcointechnologie) voorkom je te veel machtsconcentratie en misbruik door overheden.
Voor nu is belangrijk om hier mee te gaan experimenteren. M. komt binnenkort met een nieuwe cryptomunt. Door de berekeningen van de crypto te koppelen aan culturele ontwikkeling en medisch onderzoek snijdt het mes aan twee kanten: het ‘minen’ van de munt komt de mensheid ten goede – i.t.t. Bitcoin waar de energie verloren gaat – én bij een (wereldwijde)recessie, waar investeerders veel crypto zullen kopen, zal de tweede geldstroom automatisch in waarde stijgen.
M. streeft niet naar een grote revolutie, maar naar het ‘planten van een paar zaadjes’: kleine, succesvolle voorbeeldprojecten creëren (steden, bedrijven, netwerken) die het nieuwe model uitproberen. Als deze zones goed werken, zal hun aanpak zich vanzelf verspreiden naar andere plekken.
Wat dit boek goed doet
M. gooit niet zomaar een hoop losse ideeën op tafel, maar bouwt alles op vanuit één heldere basis (de intelligentietheorie, gebaseerd op entropie). Alles – van het MIND-dashboard tot het dubbele geldsysteem – volgt logisch uit die ene grondgedachte. M. weet op overtuigende wijze concepten uit de natuurkunde (warmteleer), informatica (AI, netwerken), economie (Smith, Marx, Hayek) en filosofie samen te brengen tot één verhaal. Deze brede aanpak maakt zijn analyse diep en (zeer) origineel.
En ondanks alle dreigingen blijft het boek hoopvol. Naast kritiek op de huidige economie en AI biedt M. een uitgewerkt plan en een realistische strategie (kleine succesvolle voorbeelden) om iets beters te bouwen. Het motiveert je als lezer mee te werken aan de oplossing. [Koop deze crypto zodra het gelanceerd wordt! (https://ii.inc/web)]
Waar het boek mogelijk tekortschiet
Er komt wel veel vertrouwen op technologie bij kijken. De voorgestelde oplossingen – zoals persoonlijke AI voor iedereen en een nieuwe cryptovaluta – gaan nu voorbij aan de mogelijke bijwerkingen. Er is altijd kans op bugs en (creatieve vormen van) machtsmisbruik binnen deze nieuwe systemen.
De strategie van kleine succesvolle voorbeelden is elegant, maar gaat er misschien te makkelijk van uit dat de ethisch ‘betere’ systemen zullen winnen. Het onderschat hoeveel macht gevestigde belangen (staten, grote bedrijven) hebben om zulke experimenten tegen te houden, over te nemen of kapot te maken voordat ze een kans krijgen. Macht volgt niet altijd de meest efficiënte of humane logica...
De praktische uitvoering vraagt meer aandacht. Hoe kan een stad die vastzit aan nationale wetten en onderdeel is van een wereldeconomie een dubbel geldsysteem invoeren? Hoe worden de MIND-indicatoren precies gewogen en omgezet in beleid?
M.s theorie, met zijn basis in de natuurkunde, stelt de ontwikkeling van de economie voor als een bijna onvermijdelijk optimalisatieproces. Dit bagatelliseert de rol van cultuur, ideologie, toeval en pure menselijke onredelijkheid. De geschiedenis is meer dan een algoritme.
M. begint met wat hij de ‘intelligentieomslag’ noemt: voor het eerst in de geschiedenis is intelligentie geen schaars, menselijk bezit meer, maar iets wat we in overvloed kunnen maken en uitbreiden. Dit is de vierde en laatste grote economische transitie (van grond naar arbeid naar kapitaal naar intelligentie), en hierna is er geen volgende stap meer voor de mensheid om te maken. Dit leidt tot wat hij de ‘overtolligheidsval’ (abundance trap) noemt: ons systeem dat gebaseerd is op schaarste, ziet deze overvloed aan intelligentie als een ramp (massawerkeloosheid, alles wordt waardeloos).
Hij stelt dat ons huidige kapitalistische systeem op instorten staat, wat je kunt zien aan verschillende waarschuwingssignalen (M. haalt deze losjes uit de natuurkunde van de ‘complex systems’): onze economische systemen herstellen steeds langzamer van crises en worden steeds grilliger. Het kernprobleem zit in de zeven grote denkfouten van de traditionele economie – zoals het idee dat schaarste natuurlijk is, dat menselijk werk altijd waarde heeft, en dat markten vanzelf in evenwicht komen. Een ander probleem is dat we de economie meten met het waardeloze Bruto Nationaal Product (BNP). Dat is een ongeschikte maat omdat het focust op totale toegevoegde waarde van alle goederen en diensten terwijl het ‘humanum’ afbrokkelt en de aarde kapotgaat. Het BNP telt kankerbehandelingen, milieuschade en sociale problemen gewoon mee als economische groei en moet volgens M. zo snel mogelijk afgeschaft worden als maat waarmee we onze samenleving analyseren en evalueren.
M. komt vervolgens met de ‘intelligentietheorie’ om de economie anders te waarderen, ook weer eclectisch gebaseerd op natuurkundige wetten. Volgens hem draait economische waarde om het creëren van orde uit chaos. Intelligentie is het proces dat dit doet, en elk systeem dat wil overleven moet goed zijn in het scheppen van orde.
Om te meten hoe gezond een systeem is, bedenkt hij het MIND Dashboard, ter vervanging van het BNP. Een systeem is gezond als het vier verschillende soorten ‘kapitaal’ in balans houdt, die elkaar versterken (M x I x N x D):
(M)aterieel kapitaal: De fysieke basis (bijv. zonnecellen)
(I)ntelligentie kapitaal: Alle kennis en het vermogen om te leren
(N)etwerk kapitaal: Hoe goed mensen elkaar vertrouwen en samenwerken
(D)iversiteit kapitaal: Verschillende opties die zorgen dat je flexibel blijft. (Dit is een directe vertaling van Talebs antifragiliteitsdenken).
Waar één of meerdere van deze vier kapitaalvormen verdwijnt, stort een systeem in.
Vervolgens plaatst M. de theorieën van Smith, Marx en Hayek in deze nieuwe theorie door ze benaderen als ‘flow’. Hij doet dat wat impressionistisch, maar wel heel aardig.
Om in de komende 1000 dagen te voorkomen dat we voorsorteren op een digitaal feodalisme (een paar techbedrijven alle AI bezitten en de rest van de mensen van een uitkering leeft) of een digitale versnippering (waar landen het Internet uitschakelen, nationaal gaan en de Koude Oorlog 2.0 begint) wil M. een nieuw sociaal contract.
In dit nieuwe sociale contract krijgt elke wereldburger toegang tot basisintelligentie (persoonlijke AI), de overheid stopt met slechts belasting innen en wordt een soort ‘tuinier’ die de vier soorten kapitaal van het land verzorgt door de economische spelregels in te richten.
Ook moet er een dubbel geldsysteem komen – de gewone munteenheid voor schaarse fysieke spullen, én ‘cultuurcredits’ (die langzaam hun waarde verliezen om uitgeven aan te moedigen). Door de cultuurcredits op te zetten via een blockchain (Bitcointechnologie) voorkom je te veel machtsconcentratie en misbruik door overheden.
Voor nu is belangrijk om hier mee te gaan experimenteren. M. komt binnenkort met een nieuwe cryptomunt. Door de berekeningen van de crypto te koppelen aan culturele ontwikkeling en medisch onderzoek snijdt het mes aan twee kanten: het ‘minen’ van de munt komt de mensheid ten goede – i.t.t. Bitcoin waar de energie verloren gaat – én bij een (wereldwijde)recessie, waar investeerders veel crypto zullen kopen, zal de tweede geldstroom automatisch in waarde stijgen.
M. streeft niet naar een grote revolutie, maar naar het ‘planten van een paar zaadjes’: kleine, succesvolle voorbeeldprojecten creëren (steden, bedrijven, netwerken) die het nieuwe model uitproberen. Als deze zones goed werken, zal hun aanpak zich vanzelf verspreiden naar andere plekken.
Wat dit boek goed doet
M. gooit niet zomaar een hoop losse ideeën op tafel, maar bouwt alles op vanuit één heldere basis (de intelligentietheorie, gebaseerd op entropie). Alles – van het MIND-dashboard tot het dubbele geldsysteem – volgt logisch uit die ene grondgedachte. M. weet op overtuigende wijze concepten uit de natuurkunde (warmteleer), informatica (AI, netwerken), economie (Smith, Marx, Hayek) en filosofie samen te brengen tot één verhaal. Deze brede aanpak maakt zijn analyse diep en (zeer) origineel.
En ondanks alle dreigingen blijft het boek hoopvol. Naast kritiek op de huidige economie en AI biedt M. een uitgewerkt plan en een realistische strategie (kleine succesvolle voorbeelden) om iets beters te bouwen. Het motiveert je als lezer mee te werken aan de oplossing. [Koop deze crypto zodra het gelanceerd wordt! (https://ii.inc/web)]
Waar het boek mogelijk tekortschiet
Er komt wel veel vertrouwen op technologie bij kijken. De voorgestelde oplossingen – zoals persoonlijke AI voor iedereen en een nieuwe cryptovaluta – gaan nu voorbij aan de mogelijke bijwerkingen. Er is altijd kans op bugs en (creatieve vormen van) machtsmisbruik binnen deze nieuwe systemen.
De strategie van kleine succesvolle voorbeelden is elegant, maar gaat er misschien te makkelijk van uit dat de ethisch ‘betere’ systemen zullen winnen. Het onderschat hoeveel macht gevestigde belangen (staten, grote bedrijven) hebben om zulke experimenten tegen te houden, over te nemen of kapot te maken voordat ze een kans krijgen. Macht volgt niet altijd de meest efficiënte of humane logica...
De praktische uitvoering vraagt meer aandacht. Hoe kan een stad die vastzit aan nationale wetten en onderdeel is van een wereldeconomie een dubbel geldsysteem invoeren? Hoe worden de MIND-indicatoren precies gewogen en omgezet in beleid?
M.s theorie, met zijn basis in de natuurkunde, stelt de ontwikkeling van de economie voor als een bijna onvermijdelijk optimalisatieproces. Dit bagatelliseert de rol van cultuur, ideologie, toeval en pure menselijke onredelijkheid. De geschiedenis is meer dan een algoritme.
December 28, 2025
The Last Economy delivers a raw, incisive exploration of how technology reshapes power, work, and meaning
Read
November 11, 2025GOATed prophet or just another megalomaniac from the CEO-class overhyping his product? You can be the judge by reading this short and compelling vision of a utopian future where the robots take over.
I found his criticism of how he assess “the economy” to be spot on, and his solution to the post scarcity, post job world to be correct (I am ready bro, let us fill our time on this world with art, not chores!).
Something things are less clear. His “blueprint”for achieving this utopia is too abstract to be considered as such. His rebuttals to critiques of his vision were short and perfunctory. Perhaps because of its abstraction and succinctness, I didn’t quite understand what was so bad for the most likely “dystopia” he imagined (perhaps because I am not well read and have not read Huxley’s “Brave New World”.) In “digital feaudalism”, are we not liberated from our chores and free to “consume”, as in few to pursue artistic experience? Perhaps the concentration of power will be so much that it would diminish the potential of civilization in his mind? Or allows for an Orwellian system where subjugation of thought is on the table? It seems for people like me who don’t care to be important, there is no difference in how we would live our lives. Certainly, being able to afford a subscription without having to worry about finances, and actually having the time to use said subscription, seems to be a step up from the current reality. I’m not trying to be the pirate king, just want to have the time to read “One Piece”, you feel me?
Implicit in this book, though not spelled out, is that the the robots would develop actual physical robots to do our physical labor for us. Otherwise, I don’t see how we become liberated from our jobs. Instead we become butlers and laborers for the robot-controlling aristocracy. Making robots capable of human level dexterity seem far off though. Robots on YouTube be dancing and waving, but where are the ones that can cook and clean? How we get to a future with physical robot laborers is ignored here. It seems to generally be handwaved by “the ai will figure it out” in these types of treatises.
As a document to take seriously, the main weakness is that the author is one of the top guys within the “ai revolution”. Treating it as an inevitability that the robots will be capable enough to replace human labor (needs to have drastically lower hallucination rates than than the publicly available models) centers the hype / bubble around the robot companies, which surely helps the bottom lines fir shareholders of Stability AI. According to Wikipedia, The author allegedly tricked his cofounder into selling his shares to the author right before the company hit it big. So, maybe this shine thing is a scheme too? I don’t know. But it certainly reads as cogent and intelligent and thoughtful, unlike the Internet writings of other famous rich people in (and out) this space who have revealed themselves to be extremely stupid.
As a science fiction premise though, his vision is interesting and exciting. It charts a kind of unified theory of economics by way of “physics” / computer science analogy. Reading it, I was reminded of Neal Stephensons “baroque cycle”, an incredible adventure story that chronicles the dawn of a new age in the economy that also hinted coming industrial and digital revolutions that would follow the scientific and economic revolution depicted in the books. I felt that there was more to this story, especially between newton and Liebnitz, that their discourse was unfinished, and perishes their metaphysical conversation would continue metaphysically, perhaps reincarnated metaphysically as robots in a follow up book? I’m under the impression that shaftoes and Waterhouses and ending root appear in subsequent novels but not sure which ones. I wonder if Stephenson has a take on robots in any of is novels? He is one of many (including Asimov, one of the OGs of robot literature) science fiction authors I have dreamed of reading more of but put off because of chores (aka necessary labor to survive in this reality). So, I guess, my main reaction is, whether it’s a Dystopian ubi or utopian abundance dividend culture credit, I say bring it on! Both future are better than what I think is more likely: the improvement of the robots decelerate, there isn’t enough data to make use of the increased number of parameters, the llms are overfit and a next level algorithm never materialized to take its place. But they are fast and the bosses think it’s good enough. The llms take over knowledge work with high hallucination rates. Civilizations progress decelerates even more while wealth inequality accelerates (most of us are fired and take menial jobs, cleaning yachts of the owners of employees of OpenAI and such). Finding time to pursue the arts becomes even more of a pipe dream, or there is a “butlerian jihad” of sorts and we go back to our knowledge work and go back to our sedentary chores, squeezing in an Episode of tv or a TikTok video when we can spare the time.
I found his criticism of how he assess “the economy” to be spot on, and his solution to the post scarcity, post job world to be correct (I am ready bro, let us fill our time on this world with art, not chores!).
Something things are less clear. His “blueprint”for achieving this utopia is too abstract to be considered as such. His rebuttals to critiques of his vision were short and perfunctory. Perhaps because of its abstraction and succinctness, I didn’t quite understand what was so bad for the most likely “dystopia” he imagined (perhaps because I am not well read and have not read Huxley’s “Brave New World”.) In “digital feaudalism”, are we not liberated from our chores and free to “consume”, as in few to pursue artistic experience? Perhaps the concentration of power will be so much that it would diminish the potential of civilization in his mind? Or allows for an Orwellian system where subjugation of thought is on the table? It seems for people like me who don’t care to be important, there is no difference in how we would live our lives. Certainly, being able to afford a subscription without having to worry about finances, and actually having the time to use said subscription, seems to be a step up from the current reality. I’m not trying to be the pirate king, just want to have the time to read “One Piece”, you feel me?
Implicit in this book, though not spelled out, is that the the robots would develop actual physical robots to do our physical labor for us. Otherwise, I don’t see how we become liberated from our jobs. Instead we become butlers and laborers for the robot-controlling aristocracy. Making robots capable of human level dexterity seem far off though. Robots on YouTube be dancing and waving, but where are the ones that can cook and clean? How we get to a future with physical robot laborers is ignored here. It seems to generally be handwaved by “the ai will figure it out” in these types of treatises.
As a document to take seriously, the main weakness is that the author is one of the top guys within the “ai revolution”. Treating it as an inevitability that the robots will be capable enough to replace human labor (needs to have drastically lower hallucination rates than than the publicly available models) centers the hype / bubble around the robot companies, which surely helps the bottom lines fir shareholders of Stability AI. According to Wikipedia, The author allegedly tricked his cofounder into selling his shares to the author right before the company hit it big. So, maybe this shine thing is a scheme too? I don’t know. But it certainly reads as cogent and intelligent and thoughtful, unlike the Internet writings of other famous rich people in (and out) this space who have revealed themselves to be extremely stupid.
As a science fiction premise though, his vision is interesting and exciting. It charts a kind of unified theory of economics by way of “physics” / computer science analogy. Reading it, I was reminded of Neal Stephensons “baroque cycle”, an incredible adventure story that chronicles the dawn of a new age in the economy that also hinted coming industrial and digital revolutions that would follow the scientific and economic revolution depicted in the books. I felt that there was more to this story, especially between newton and Liebnitz, that their discourse was unfinished, and perishes their metaphysical conversation would continue metaphysically, perhaps reincarnated metaphysically as robots in a follow up book? I’m under the impression that shaftoes and Waterhouses and ending root appear in subsequent novels but not sure which ones. I wonder if Stephenson has a take on robots in any of is novels? He is one of many (including Asimov, one of the OGs of robot literature) science fiction authors I have dreamed of reading more of but put off because of chores (aka necessary labor to survive in this reality). So, I guess, my main reaction is, whether it’s a Dystopian ubi or utopian abundance dividend culture credit, I say bring it on! Both future are better than what I think is more likely: the improvement of the robots decelerate, there isn’t enough data to make use of the increased number of parameters, the llms are overfit and a next level algorithm never materialized to take its place. But they are fast and the bosses think it’s good enough. The llms take over knowledge work with high hallucination rates. Civilizations progress decelerates even more while wealth inequality accelerates (most of us are fired and take menial jobs, cleaning yachts of the owners of employees of OpenAI and such). Finding time to pursue the arts becomes even more of a pipe dream, or there is a “butlerian jihad” of sorts and we go back to our knowledge work and go back to our sedentary chores, squeezing in an Episode of tv or a TikTok video when we can spare the time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 13, 2025
This is the book we needed at this moment- visionary yet grounded, challenging yet hopeful, paradigm-shifting yet deeply practical. It deserves to be read not just by economists and technologists, but by anyone ready to participate in humanity's next chapter.
From its etymological onboarding through nuanced semantics accompanied by rich historical-contextual settings, Emad Mostaque's "The Last Economy" reads like a masterpiece- not merely of economic analysis, but of civilizational diagnosis and visionary prescription for humanity's next chapter.
Mostaque's observation that we have become "richer on paper but poorer in spirit, we made efficiency our god and wonder why we feel so empty" resonates with profound accuracy in our current Orwellian times. This isn't hyperbole- we are living through times where human value has been algorithmically reduced to productivity metrics, where the soul of human experience has been sacrificed on the altar of optimization.
The book serves as both cautionary tale and inspiring wake-up call, weaving together visionary perspectives that illuminate the precipice upon which we stand. Mostaque doesn't simply diagnose our ailment; he maps the terrain of our potential transformation.
Perhaps the most revolutionary insight comes in Mostaque's recognition that we are "the first generation to define human value beyond economic utility, the first to ask not how do we work, but why do we exist?" This paradigmatic shift denominates nothing less than a fundamental reimagining of human purpose.
For neurodivergent individuals, this represents an unprecedented opportunity. In the old paradigm where work equated worth, the vast majority of human cognitive potential- estimated at using only 5% of our brain capacity- was deemed irrelevant. The remaining 95% of our neurological capabilities were considered surplus to economic requirements
The arrival of artificial intelligence creates space for all those "unused" human capabilities to emerge and flourish. As Mostaque notes, "the machines have freed us of the lie that we are our work." This liberation is particularly significant for neurodivergent minds, whose pattern recognition abilities, hyperfocus capabilities, unconventional processing methods, and unique perspectives were often marginalized in efficiency-focused systems.
With AI handling routine cognitive tasks, humanity can finally explore the full spectrum of consciousness, creativity, and connection that has long been suppressed by industrial economic demands. Neurodivergent individuals, with their natural tendency toward non-linear thinking and innovative problem-solving, may well lead this cognitive renaissance.
Mostaque's work embodies the Japanese understanding that crisis and opportunity share the same linguistic root. We stand at a inflection point where the lies of the old paradigm are becoming impossible to maintain. The author doesn't shy away from acknowledging our current predicament, but neither does he succumb to despair. Instead, he charts a course toward shattering these obsolete constructs and building something fundamentally more human.
Reading "The Last Economy" while feeling "the water about to boil" creates a unique cognitive dissonance. The book acknowledges our precarious position without minimizing the genuine challenges we face. Yet it also provides the intellectual and spiritual framework for understanding why this crisis was necessary- and why it contains the seeds of humanity's greatest evolutionary leap.
Mostaque has written more than an economic analysis; he's crafted a philosophical manifesto for the next phase of human development. For those of us who have always felt like misfits in the efficiency- obsessed world, this book offers validation that our time has come.
From its etymological onboarding through nuanced semantics accompanied by rich historical-contextual settings, Emad Mostaque's "The Last Economy" reads like a masterpiece- not merely of economic analysis, but of civilizational diagnosis and visionary prescription for humanity's next chapter.
Mostaque's observation that we have become "richer on paper but poorer in spirit, we made efficiency our god and wonder why we feel so empty" resonates with profound accuracy in our current Orwellian times. This isn't hyperbole- we are living through times where human value has been algorithmically reduced to productivity metrics, where the soul of human experience has been sacrificed on the altar of optimization.
The book serves as both cautionary tale and inspiring wake-up call, weaving together visionary perspectives that illuminate the precipice upon which we stand. Mostaque doesn't simply diagnose our ailment; he maps the terrain of our potential transformation.
Perhaps the most revolutionary insight comes in Mostaque's recognition that we are "the first generation to define human value beyond economic utility, the first to ask not how do we work, but why do we exist?" This paradigmatic shift denominates nothing less than a fundamental reimagining of human purpose.
For neurodivergent individuals, this represents an unprecedented opportunity. In the old paradigm where work equated worth, the vast majority of human cognitive potential- estimated at using only 5% of our brain capacity- was deemed irrelevant. The remaining 95% of our neurological capabilities were considered surplus to economic requirements
The arrival of artificial intelligence creates space for all those "unused" human capabilities to emerge and flourish. As Mostaque notes, "the machines have freed us of the lie that we are our work." This liberation is particularly significant for neurodivergent minds, whose pattern recognition abilities, hyperfocus capabilities, unconventional processing methods, and unique perspectives were often marginalized in efficiency-focused systems.
With AI handling routine cognitive tasks, humanity can finally explore the full spectrum of consciousness, creativity, and connection that has long been suppressed by industrial economic demands. Neurodivergent individuals, with their natural tendency toward non-linear thinking and innovative problem-solving, may well lead this cognitive renaissance.
Mostaque's work embodies the Japanese understanding that crisis and opportunity share the same linguistic root. We stand at a inflection point where the lies of the old paradigm are becoming impossible to maintain. The author doesn't shy away from acknowledging our current predicament, but neither does he succumb to despair. Instead, he charts a course toward shattering these obsolete constructs and building something fundamentally more human.
Reading "The Last Economy" while feeling "the water about to boil" creates a unique cognitive dissonance. The book acknowledges our precarious position without minimizing the genuine challenges we face. Yet it also provides the intellectual and spiritual framework for understanding why this crisis was necessary- and why it contains the seeds of humanity's greatest evolutionary leap.
Mostaque has written more than an economic analysis; he's crafted a philosophical manifesto for the next phase of human development. For those of us who have always felt like misfits in the efficiency- obsessed world, this book offers validation that our time has come.
November 12, 2025
**Review: *The Last Economy: A Guide to the Age of Intelligent Economics***
*by Emad Mostaque*
Let’s start with the obvious: this book is a mess. I went in curious — 99 cents on Kindle seemed like a harmless investment — but even that now feels like a small act of misplaced optimism. *The Last Economy* is one of those grandiloquent tech-philosophy manifestos that promises to explain everything, from capitalism to consciousness, and ends up explaining nothing.
Mostaque seems convinced that throwing around words like “entropy,” “intelligence,” and “non-metabolic labor” makes an argument profound. It doesn’t. The book is full of pseudo-intellectual smoke: neat phrases, zero logic. His claim that human economic value is “negative” compared to AI isn’t just wrong — it’s lazy thinking wrapped in apocalyptic language. Reality is, of course, far more complex. Human value doesn’t disappear because machines can automate tasks. It evolves, adapts, redefines its edges. That’s how every technological leap has worked, from steam to silicon.
At times, the book reads like a self-help guru trying to cosplay as an economist. There’s a section about how the education system is a “Factory School” designed for obedience — a cliché repeated so many times online that it should come with a copyright symbol next to Reddit. Then there’s the “Everything Bubble” rant, where the author confidently declares that all assets — from art to crypto — are equally inflated. How does he know? He doesn’t say. Apparently, intuition and dramatic flair are substitutes for data now.
Mostaque’s method is simple: take a banal truth (“We are drowning in data but starving for wisdom”), strip it of nuance, inflate it with pseudo-poetry, and call it insight. The result is a text that tries very hard to sound like Yuval Harari, but ends up closer to a LinkedIn influencer on a caffeine rush.
Even his moral indignation feels artificial. Describing cancer treatment as a “GDP windfall” isn’t a revelation — it’s a grotesque simplification of how macroeconomic metrics work. And claiming that a “happy family contributes nothing to GDP” is both false and conceptually confused. Economics isn’t a moral scoreboard. It’s a descriptive system, not a sermon.
By the end, the book collapses under its own pretensions. Mostaque positions himself as a visionary thinker standing at the crossroads of AI and economics, but he never delivers a single coherent model, equation, or even fresh idea. Everything he writes has been said better — and decades earlier — by people who actually understand systems theory and market dynamics.
If there’s one honest insight here, it’s unintentional: that the modern world is indeed flooded with noise disguised as intelligence. This book is a perfect specimen of that phenomenon — confident, empty, and verbose.
I don’t regret the 99 cents I spent; it was cheap tuition in critical reading. But if this is what “intelligent economics” looks like, I’ll take good old dumb capitalism any day.
November 14, 2025
This book is provocative and bold. Provocative because it's radical in the three futures it depicts, and bold because it proposes a definite economic model based on intelligence abundance, to which to transition after the "intelligence inversion" makes our current scarcity based model obsolete, as land, labor, and capital will be managed by intelligent machines. I agree on the direction that intelligence by machines will become abundant and tapped from the digital realm. For sure, AI will become our most valuable asset and greatest invention in history to date.
But the book treats the Intelligence Economy as if it were mostly "frictionless code" but in reality it is constrained by three hard layers of friction: (1) human and institutional inertia, (2) compute, energy and cooling bottlenecks, and (3) material and geopolitical constraints around copper, rare earths, batteries, steel, cement, plastic, land, and water. I mean, we will need to physically build this new economy.
I do understand the argument that intelligence progress will find solutions to these bottlenecks, but even so, R&D from concept to scalable solution takes 5 to 10 years, not his 1000-day timeline.
Mustaque uses the well known analogy of the blind scholars and the elephant trying to understand reality, but he becomes one more of them. Hubris, as he dismisses the "systemic friction".
That said, it is a thought provoking text with a good narrative and conceptual articulation. He's insightful on consciousness but naive on infrastructure; I find the 'Arts of being human' framework particularly valuable (attention, relationship, meaning, and reality anchors), we do need to start developing our innermost expressions and self-awareness. The computation vs. consciousness distinction echoes with me, we do need to separate them to start identifying with our wisdom and not our minds.
This is a thought provoking read for those futures thinkers focused on finding the best path for human development.
But the book treats the Intelligence Economy as if it were mostly "frictionless code" but in reality it is constrained by three hard layers of friction: (1) human and institutional inertia, (2) compute, energy and cooling bottlenecks, and (3) material and geopolitical constraints around copper, rare earths, batteries, steel, cement, plastic, land, and water. I mean, we will need to physically build this new economy.
I do understand the argument that intelligence progress will find solutions to these bottlenecks, but even so, R&D from concept to scalable solution takes 5 to 10 years, not his 1000-day timeline.
Mustaque uses the well known analogy of the blind scholars and the elephant trying to understand reality, but he becomes one more of them. Hubris, as he dismisses the "systemic friction".
That said, it is a thought provoking text with a good narrative and conceptual articulation. He's insightful on consciousness but naive on infrastructure; I find the 'Arts of being human' framework particularly valuable (attention, relationship, meaning, and reality anchors), we do need to start developing our innermost expressions and self-awareness. The computation vs. consciousness distinction echoes with me, we do need to separate them to start identifying with our wisdom and not our minds.
This is a thought provoking read for those futures thinkers focused on finding the best path for human development.
September 17, 2025
I have a ridiculous amount of highlights from this book, Emad is a superb high level thinker and his proposals will have some resonance with people already familiar with abundance (post-scarcity) narratives and Austrian economics.
He proposes and alternative to the dystopian view that we all get UBI and sit around drinking cocktails watching our robots do the vacuuming and folding washing.
"When hands became obsolete, we pivoted to our minds. But when our minds are out-competed by a form of labor that does not need to eat, sleep, or live, there is nowhere left to pivot. We are not just facing a more efficient competitor; we are facing a different category of economic life."
His proposal for new money does whiff of a "yet another shitcoin scam" and I've read the whitepaper too and "Proof of Benefit" (his analogy to BTC's proof-of-work) remains ill-defined for me ("loan me your GPUs" seems to be the main way to mint/mine/acquire the II foundation coin.
For me the book's momentum faltered in the last act where I was really hoping for implementation clarity. I get that this is an early missive and that much work must be done to colour in between the lines but the details are still a little sketchy to give the book 5 credibility stars. Some of their ii-agent benchmarks are looking promising (https://ii.inc/web/blog/post/ii-medical) so maybe its just a matter of me investing more time.
I recommend "the Last Economy" as a very good read for people sufficiently interested understanding what will constitute meaning in a world where our identities are no longer derived from our jobs.
He proposes and alternative to the dystopian view that we all get UBI and sit around drinking cocktails watching our robots do the vacuuming and folding washing.
"When hands became obsolete, we pivoted to our minds. But when our minds are out-competed by a form of labor that does not need to eat, sleep, or live, there is nowhere left to pivot. We are not just facing a more efficient competitor; we are facing a different category of economic life."
His proposal for new money does whiff of a "yet another shitcoin scam" and I've read the whitepaper too and "Proof of Benefit" (his analogy to BTC's proof-of-work) remains ill-defined for me ("loan me your GPUs" seems to be the main way to mint/mine/acquire the II foundation coin.
For me the book's momentum faltered in the last act where I was really hoping for implementation clarity. I get that this is an early missive and that much work must be done to colour in between the lines but the details are still a little sketchy to give the book 5 credibility stars. Some of their ii-agent benchmarks are looking promising (https://ii.inc/web/blog/post/ii-medical) so maybe its just a matter of me investing more time.
I recommend "the Last Economy" as a very good read for people sufficiently interested understanding what will constitute meaning in a world where our identities are no longer derived from our jobs.
January 24, 2026
I have never read anything about AI even remotely like this. It is a fascinating look at how AI will transform our economic future and the choices we will need to make as a society to guide our future. I'm not an economist, but found much of the author's theories plausible. I don't know if I fully buy in to everything he lays out, but he makes some bold predictions and prescriptions that are great food for thought and worth discussing. I would love to see these kinds of thoughts and discussions move to the mainstream. I do wish there were more concrete steps and actions laid out in the book. How do I identify where the important nucleation site for a human symbiosis future is going to be so I can go there and be a part of it? It seems like it will be a small country with a populace that can collectively agree to harness AI for balancing the M-I-N-D resources and create a blueprint for others to follow through their success.
I am left with lots of questions after reading this book. How do we navigate the transition? What do I suggest my high school age kids study in college? Will they be the last generation to go to college? Is my default thinking about how to invest in this shift to maximize my monetary returns irrelevant (seems like yes if we end up on the symbiotic path, but maybe not if we end up on the default Digital Feudalism path). Is there a Reddit forum to discuss this kind of stuff? I'll go ask AI...
I am left with lots of questions after reading this book. How do we navigate the transition? What do I suggest my high school age kids study in college? Will they be the last generation to go to college? Is my default thinking about how to invest in this shift to maximize my monetary returns irrelevant (seems like yes if we end up on the symbiotic path, but maybe not if we end up on the default Digital Feudalism path). Is there a Reddit forum to discuss this kind of stuff? I'll go ask AI...
January 20, 2026
A provocative "build plan" for a post-scarcity world that challenges us to redesign civilisation before the window of opportunity closes.
This is the first book I have read that truly thinks through what economics might look like in a post-scarcity world. While others speculate on if AI will change the economy, Mostaque assumes the shift is inevitable and focuses on how we survive it. The core of the book revolves around the "Thousand-Day Window" - a critical period where we must choose between three potential futures: the control of Digital Feudalism, the chaos of Fragmentation, or the abundance of Human Symbiosis. What makes this read so compelling is that the frameworks are incredibly thought-provoking. I was particularly impressed by how the author clearly reasoned through the impact that abundance in an AI world will have on our social and economic structures. He argues that our current systems (GDP, traditional labor markets) are designed to manage scarcity, and when applied to abundance, they break. His proposal for a "MIND" capital system—valuing Material, Intellectual, Network, and Diversity capital - offers a tangible alternative to our current obsession with purely financial metrics.
I’d also recommend his chat with Raoul Pal on The Journey Man to hear him talk discuss this further - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aonr8...
This is the first book I have read that truly thinks through what economics might look like in a post-scarcity world. While others speculate on if AI will change the economy, Mostaque assumes the shift is inevitable and focuses on how we survive it. The core of the book revolves around the "Thousand-Day Window" - a critical period where we must choose between three potential futures: the control of Digital Feudalism, the chaos of Fragmentation, or the abundance of Human Symbiosis. What makes this read so compelling is that the frameworks are incredibly thought-provoking. I was particularly impressed by how the author clearly reasoned through the impact that abundance in an AI world will have on our social and economic structures. He argues that our current systems (GDP, traditional labor markets) are designed to manage scarcity, and when applied to abundance, they break. His proposal for a "MIND" capital system—valuing Material, Intellectual, Network, and Diversity capital - offers a tangible alternative to our current obsession with purely financial metrics.
I’d also recommend his chat with Raoul Pal on The Journey Man to hear him talk discuss this further - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aonr8...
September 1, 2025
This book blew my mind.
Have you ever studied economics? You don't have to. This book can take you from noob to shrewd. I recommend that, as you're reading it, you really take the time to research and study it out as you go, it's worth the time, you can even pop the book PDF into Gemini or Chat GPT and ask it questions.
I listen to the news, I do a bit of research each day, I went to University, I've done my Masters, I go to work, I have never studied economics. ... but never has anything eloquently explained GDP the way this has, the economic system the way this has. The effects of Artificial Intelligence the way this has.
It pretty much explains all key aspects of economics and how AI can effect it - the new epoch the book calls the 'Intelligence Age' which is the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Each new transition; from Land, to Labour, to Capital all took relatively less years to transition into, from 200 years; 70 years: a decade... so imagine how fast our new transition period will be. It's not to scare you, it's to empower you.
If you want to be clued up, read this!
- Chanel
Have you ever studied economics? You don't have to. This book can take you from noob to shrewd. I recommend that, as you're reading it, you really take the time to research and study it out as you go, it's worth the time, you can even pop the book PDF into Gemini or Chat GPT and ask it questions.
I listen to the news, I do a bit of research each day, I went to University, I've done my Masters, I go to work, I have never studied economics. ... but never has anything eloquently explained GDP the way this has, the economic system the way this has. The effects of Artificial Intelligence the way this has.
It pretty much explains all key aspects of economics and how AI can effect it - the new epoch the book calls the 'Intelligence Age' which is the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Each new transition; from Land, to Labour, to Capital all took relatively less years to transition into, from 200 years; 70 years: a decade... so imagine how fast our new transition period will be. It's not to scare you, it's to empower you.
If you want to be clued up, read this!
- Chanel
September 19, 2025
As someone who has observed the world’s suffering and searched for ways to alleviate it, I dare say Emad has proposed an elegant solution to our current crisis—the advent of AI and our rotten socio-economic structure. Don’t get me wrong; it has taken us far, and I’m grateful for its blessings. However, like so many other things, it’s at the end of its useful life, and we need to let it go—otherwise we may well be crushed beneath it.
In the book Emad helps us understand Economy from a new perspective. One of the things that I enjoyed the most was how smooth the transition from foundational truths of reality to their application in our lives was. Simply brilliant!
Don’t take my word for it—just read it! Do go in with an open mind. We’ve all been fed many lies over the years, and seeing the truth is often painful, but ultimately for the best.
In the book Emad helps us understand Economy from a new perspective. One of the things that I enjoyed the most was how smooth the transition from foundational truths of reality to their application in our lives was. Simply brilliant!
Don’t take my word for it—just read it! Do go in with an open mind. We’ve all been fed many lies over the years, and seeing the truth is often painful, but ultimately for the best.
February 6, 2026
Emad Mostaque’s "The Last Economy" does something rare: it addresses the real elephant in the room.
Most conversations about AI collapse into extremes, either hype, fear, or shallow narratives that don’t help the people actually building these systems. Emad goes beyond that. He speaks directly to what it means to be a creator in this moment: not overwhelmed by the technology we’ve unleashed, but responsible for shaping it with clarity, ownership, and vision.
This book is a call toward the next stage: a global renaissance led not by passive consumption of intelligence, but by deliberate participation in what comes next.
If you’re tired of the unhelpful AI discourse and looking for a framework grounded in vision, responsibility, and future-building, Emad’s work is worth engaging early.
Most conversations about AI collapse into extremes, either hype, fear, or shallow narratives that don’t help the people actually building these systems. Emad goes beyond that. He speaks directly to what it means to be a creator in this moment: not overwhelmed by the technology we’ve unleashed, but responsible for shaping it with clarity, ownership, and vision.
This book is a call toward the next stage: a global renaissance led not by passive consumption of intelligence, but by deliberate participation in what comes next.
If you’re tired of the unhelpful AI discourse and looking for a framework grounded in vision, responsibility, and future-building, Emad’s work is worth engaging early.
September 4, 2025
Вы знаете, пусть это будет приветствие отзыв от Русскоговорящей части цивилизации.
Спасибо за этот труд, мне еще предстоить освоить весь новый фундамент этой книги. Но это очень впечатляющий и прорывной труд посвященный искусственному интелекту, эконномике и эпохе изобилия в которой нам предстоят совершенно новые вызовы.
You know, let this be a greeting — a review from the Russian-speaking part of civilization.
Thank you for this work. I still have a long way to go to fully grasp the new foundation of this book. But this is an incredibly impressive and groundbreaking work dedicated to artificial intelligence, economics, and the age of abundance — an era in which we face entirely new challenges.
Letomore
Спасибо за этот труд, мне еще предстоить освоить весь новый фундамент этой книги. Но это очень впечатляющий и прорывной труд посвященный искусственному интелекту, эконномике и эпохе изобилия в которой нам предстоят совершенно новые вызовы.
You know, let this be a greeting — a review from the Russian-speaking part of civilization.
Thank you for this work. I still have a long way to go to fully grasp the new foundation of this book. But this is an incredibly impressive and groundbreaking work dedicated to artificial intelligence, economics, and the age of abundance — an era in which we face entirely new challenges.
Letomore
September 15, 2025
As someone who is interested in history, finance but is not from the AI or tech world, also of an older generation, I wondered whether I would find value & meaning in the book. The tech bit was difficult to wrap my head around, however it started making sense once the financial cycles, its history became clearer. Then from page 145, the mission, the vision for all humans including the older generation becomes clearer and how AI and humans can create together to benefit mankind. But there is also a very stark, scary possibility if we all do not wake up to what is here already. A book that must be read by everyone invested in their future
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