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Vitae per person (VPP): a new metric of civilizational resource

lydianottingham.substack.com · 508 words · saved by 2 readers

Each person needs to consume some fixed amount of resources each year — food, energy, water, earth metals, … — to live as well as your average American coastal elite. So I’d like to propose a new unit: 1 vita = {annual energy, clean water, protein, transport, m² climate-controlled indoor space, compute, communications bandwidth, consumer-durables flow}, each specified at 2025 “coastal-elite” service levels.1 I am very excited about AI increasing the vitae available to us. If we live in a world with 10 VPP, I’m not at all worried about whether I personally am employed or not, because I can rely on benevolence and altruism to spot me a vita and help me out.2 If we live in a world with 1-2 VPP, I’m a bit more concerned. You can probably buy significant marginal utility in the 1-2 vita range; I don’t think redistribution is automatic in this world. And if we live in a world with <1 VPP — which it’s my impression we currently do — my top priority is moving us towards a world with at least 8

A lot of people are preoccupied with unemployment resulting from AI-enabled automation. I’ve never been so concerned about this. What I’m far more concerned about is this: Do we have enough resources for every person on the planet? Each person needs to consume some fixed amount of resources each year — food, energy, water, earth metals, … — to live as well as your average American coastal elite. So I’d like to propose a new unit: 1 vita = {annual energy, clean water, protein, transport, m² climate-controlled indoor space, compute, communications bandwidth, consumer-durables flow}, each…

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