21 Lessons for the 21st Century

by Yuval Noah Harari

Already today, computers have made the financial system so complicated that few humans can understand it. As AI improves, we might soon reach a point when no human can make sense of finance any more. What will that do to the political process? Can you imagine a government that waits humbly for an algorithm to approve its budget or its new tax reform? Meanwhile peer-to-peer blockchain networks and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin might completely revamp the monetary system, so that radical tax reforms will be inevitable. For example, it might become impossible or irrelevant to tax dollars, because most transactions will involve only the exchange of information, without a clear-cut transfer of national currency, or any currency at all. Governments might therefore need to invent entirely new taxes – perhaps an information tax, paid on information and in information rather than in dollars. Will the political system manage to deal with the crisis before it runs out of money?