Growth Without Us: Machine Consumers, Corporate Circularity, and the Decoupling of GDP from Humanity after AGI

Source

• Source name: arXiv
• Source kind: paper
• Authors / organization: Sahil Sharma
• Venue: arXiv: physics.soc-ph
• Published: 2026-08-20
• Collected: 2026-08-21
• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2608.20231v1
• PDF: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.20231v1
• DOI: UNKNOWN
• Registry group: academic_apis_and_preprints
• Evidence role: canonical_academic_index
• Language: en
• Country / region: UNKNOWN

Plain-Language Brief

The paper discusses the possibility of an economy driven by artificial general intelligence (AGI) where machines are both producers and consumers. It suggests that such an economy could lead to higher growth rates and a decoupling between GDP and human welfare, making employment policy obsolete and emphasizing ownership policy.

What the Document Says

• The text discusses a post-AGI economy where machines are both producers and consumers.
• In this economy, all output is reinvested, leading to a closed inter-corporate economy with positive and maximal growth rate.
• The binding constraint on growth shifts from human demography to fabrication throughput and energy capture.
• Output and human welfare could separate completely in this economy.
• The paper proposes three terminal regimes and the instruments that select among them.

Key Concepts Mentioned

• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
• Economy
• Growth rate
• Human welfare
• Machine consumers
• Corporate circularity

Claims Made by the Document

• A closed inter-corporate economy with zero human consumption is not degenerate.
• Growth one to two orders of magnitude higher is possible in a post-AGI economy due to faster fabrication and energy capture.
• Output and human welfare can separate completely in a post-AGI economy.

Evidence Used

• The modeling of a post-AGI economy with machines as producers and consumers.

Methods / Approach

• Mathematical modeling of a post-AGI economy

Limitations Stated by the Authors

Not stated in source

Limitations Noted by the Agent

Agent interpretation — not from the source.

The paper does not provide empirical evidence or real-world examples to support the claims.

Open Questions

• What are the instruments that select among the three terminal regimes proposed by the authors?

Notes for Future Q&A

May include interpretation. Labeled where it does.

The paper focuses on a theoretical model and does not consider potential social, ethical, or environmental implications of such an economy.

Raw Abstract / Excerpt

The standard objection to full automation is demand-side: if humans earn nothing, who buys the output? This confuses an accounting role with a biological species. We model a post-AGI economy in which corporations own populations of AI and robotic agents that are both producers and consumers of energy, compute, maintenance, and upgrades, traded among firms. Three results follow. (i) Demand closure: a closed inter-corporate economy with zero human consumption is not degenerate; it is the classical von Neumann expanding economy, whose growth rate is well defined, positive, and maximal precisely because all output is reinvested. (ii) Bottleneck removal: once economic agents are manufactured rather than reared, the binding constraint on growth shifts from human demography (a ~20-year, non-parallelizable reproduction technology capped at a few percent per year) to fabrication throughput and energy capture, permitting growth one to two orders of magnitude higher, with hyperbolic episodes when machine researchers raise their own productivity. (iii) Decoupling: output and human welfare separate completely, and the welfare relevance of arbitrarily large GDP collapses into one state variable: the human ownership share $ε_t$ of the corporate network. A golden-rule decoupling theorem sharpens this. At maximal growth the interest rate equals the growth rate (r = g), so any positive human consumption rate out of wealth makes $ε_t$ decay exponentially at exactly that rate. The human share survives only if the machine economy runs strictly inside its expansion frontier, or if law forces it to. We characterize three terminal regimes -- rentier post-scarcity, full circular decoupling, socialized ownership -- and the instruments that select among them. The conclusion is narrow: in a post-AGI economy, employment policy is obsolete and ownership policy is everything.