The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy
Knowledge work, done in the Complicated domain, is no longer scarce—it’s getting more and more abundant. As global education standards, communication technology, and machines increase in supply, Archimedes’ lever is getting shorter and shorter. For macroeconomic reasons, jobs are getting more competitive and less profitable.
Taylor Pearson • The End of Jobs: Money, Meaning and Freedom Without the 9-to-5
I’ve come to believe that agency — the ability to start, decide, act, adapt, and follow through — is rising in importance as AI continues to spread. We’re used to seeing raw intelligence as the ultimate advantage, but something is shifting. Intelligence is now everywhere. It’s on tap. It’s no longer scarce. The rare thing now is the ability and wil... See more
Agency is the new superpower
It means a transition from a knowledge economy to an allocation economy. You won’t be judged on how much you know, but instead on how well you can allocate and manage the resources to get work done.
Dan Shipper • The Knowledge Economy Is Over. Welcome to the Allocation Economy
Assuming that everyone has equal access to the technology, you get what I call Syndrome Syndrome. Syndrome was the villain in Pixar’s 2004 movie The Incredibles whosesignature line was: “If everyone’s super, nobody is.” Syndrome Syndrome is what happens when everyone has access to the same technology at the same time. If everyone has an AI agent, n... See more
The One-person Billion-dollar Company
This shift has ushered in what Every’s Dan Shipper calls an allocation economy, where the value of work increasingly hinges not on traditional labor but on how we allocate scarce resources—time, attention, and focus. In this new paradigm, the question becomes less about what AI can do and more about how we choose to use it, what we allow it to repl... See more