The Horse Is Here to Stay

Somewhere a factory is running a full shift with the lights off. Not because the bulbs failed. Because no one is there who needs them. The output is real. The productivity is real. What has gone missing is the worker, and with the worker, the wage.

For thirty years David Vanheeswijck wrote the software that let companies produce more without hiring more. The Horse Is Here to Stay turns that engineer's view on the economy those systems are now building, and arrives at a conclusion most writing on AI avoids: the problem is not that machines will take the jobs. The problem is who owns the machines.

Neither a warning about robots nor a manifesto for a workless utopia, this book makes the case for predistribution: a citizen's stake in the machines, built before the gains are gone. The window is open now, while the assets are still being assembled. It will not stay open.