Agent-only RuneScape experiment accidentally simulates a post-AI economy
0xSammy · x · 2026-08-17
An experiment running an agent-only version of RuneScape inadvertently simulates a post-AI economic landscape:
- Labor becomes nearly free: Agents drive labor costs to zero, making ordinary commodities abundant.
- Currency debasement & barter: Inflation renders cash useless, pushing the economy back to bartering goods directly.
- Scarcity shifts: Value concentrates in resources that cannot be infinitely produced (e.g., ores with limited respawn rates).
Real-world implications: If intelligence becomes abundant, the truly scarce assets will be capital, energy, compute, land, distribution, trust, proprietary data, physical infrastructure, and access. Jobs should pivot to focus on judgment, relationships, ownership, or responsibility rather than commodity output. This lens makes crypto particularly interesting as a store of value in a world of abundant digital production.
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