Pax Machina

Pax Machina — proposals and debate, for institutions in a world with powerful AI

PROPOSALS AND DEBATE

FOR INSTITUTIONS IN A WORLD WITH POWERFUL AI

NO. 1 editorial

Pax Machina: New Institutions for Powerful AI

Powerful AI may be opening a new age of institutional invention. Pax Machina exists to make the design of institutions for a world of humans and powerful AI concrete, public, and cumulative.

7 minute read

NO. 2 proposal

AGI’s Bureaucratic Future

Markets and democracy still need settled categories, shared rules, and insulated expertise. The question is not whether bureaucracy survives AGI, but whether AI can make it more capable, accountable, and responsive.

14 minute read

NO. 3 proposal

Value Drift in Institutions

Institutions drift from their values not through ideology but through three mechanisms — inarticulacy, self-scoring, and capture — and are increasingly trapped by a fourth: value substitution loops that make reversal impossible.

8 minute read

NO. 4NO. 3.1 response

Freedom, Fairness, and Fidelity

Taking up the diagnosis in Value Drift in Institutions: the public values of freedom and fairness cannot litigate social media's value drift, democratic failure, or AI-driven job displacement. A proposal for a third public value — fidelity — and the institutions it would require.

27 minute read

NO. 5 proposal

Coasean Compression

Markets coordinate brilliantly for laptops and logistics, and fail at love, friendship, and belonging. A diagnosis of why markets at scale substitute thin proxies for the deeper wants they were meant to serve.

8 minute read

NO. 6NO. 5.1 response

The Buyer's Compression

The compression doesn't only happen on the supply side — it happens inside the buyer. An amendment to Coasean Compression: the four frictions live partly in the world and partly in us.

3 minute read