• The accelerating rate of technological change, while previously a topic of interest only to futurists and related technophiles, is now at a stage where insufficient awareness has tangible costs to individuals.

• Economic growth, which has always been closely pegged to technological progress, has similarly been accelerating through centuries of data, and we are now entering a steep trajectory for the trendline, indeed the “knee of the curve.”

• The world economy has been underperforming for years, with growth rates continuing to register well below the aforementioned trendline rates. This is due to the silent suppressive effect of some outdated policies and macroeconomic assumptions.

• Technological deflation, while easily accepted when one is a shopper for a new computer, is almost entirely ignored by macroeconomists, even as effects of this deflation on economic data are pervasive and rising.

• Technological disruptions across disparate areas are all interconnected with each other, and mutually reinforcing. There is a fixed but rising amount of aggregate disruption that is underway at any given time, in accordance with the accelerating rate of technological change. These first five bullet points effectively describe what we define as the “ATOM.”

• Monetary expansion by central banks has served to merely offset the accelerating deflation that technology is generating across the economy. This deflation is international in nature, and so is most monetary expansion, no matter which country originates a particular expansion program.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be able to move many types
of productive output into tax-free locations, eroding the
tax base of high-tax locations. The borderless and untaxable nature of AI will effectively tighten the screws on nations and jurisdictions that tax productive output excessively.

• Excessive fear of inflation, and assuming that even 3% inflation is high, has led to a chronic decline in NGDP. This is a source of many types of malaise in the economies of wealthy countries that “Real” GDP will not detect, and is constricting the rate of technological progress and productivity gains.

• The ATOM will react to ensure technological progress reverts to the trendline rate, bypassing or toppling obstacles such as inadequate fiscal, monetary, and regulatory policies in the process. This will begin to happen in around 2017 or so, and may be at a speed far too rapid for many governments to react to.

• Barring the preemptive adoption of the technology-friendly monetary policies recommended here, another major financial crisis and deep recession will commence by around 2017. Existing methods of monetary expansion will prove ineffective, causing great fear and doom-centric commentary. In reality, the solution to the problem is elegant, simple, and ushers in a new era of rapid growth.

• Central bank monetary expansion has to be made permanent as a policy, and openly declared as such. There can no longer be one-off programs tied to an assumption that each one is the final round of Quantitative Easing (QE). Assets stored on central bank balance sheets can never be sold back into the market, so the balance sheets themselves are moot.

• Monetary expansion has to be of a direct, diffuse nature. Current methods of bond-buying used by the U.S. Federal Reserve are well into the point of diminishing returns, and end up concentrating the QE in very few hands. The only real discussion and analysis should be about the rate of annual increases. The U.S. Federal Reserve has not yet been granted this power by the U.S. Congress, which restricts the Fed’s ability to do what is necessary.

• Monetary expansion has to rise at a compounded rate of 16 to 24% a year, possibly higher, to offset technological deflation and keep the Wu-Xia shadow rate in step with the size of the deflationary force. Current patterns of monetary expansion and the absence of inflation already supply the data to support this conclusion.

• Since most government spending in the United States and similarly advanced nations constitutes direct payments to individuals, these payments should be formalized into a Direct Universal Exponential Stipend (DUES) that is paid equally to all citizens, and is funded by this central bank monetary expansion.

• This DUES constitutes a dynamic and rapidly strengthening safety net, as well as a catalyst for entrepreneurship. Unlike negative interest rates, this does not punish savers, and is more scalable in accordance with accelerating technological deflation.

• Federal income taxes can be phased out gradually and systematically, with all Federal government spending covered by monetary expansion, which itself is mostly the DUES.

• This sort of reform taking current levels of technological progress and the associated deflation into account to create tax, monetary, and regulatory policies far more favorable to entrepreneurship transcends both socialism and capitalism. It is also the only way to harness disruptive technologies, such as AI, into a vehicle of broadly increased human prosperity.

• The United States is not going to be the first nation to transition to such a new policy era, and certainly not before the next crisis. Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, and Switzerland are more suitable candidates to be the first countries to reform in favor of 21st century economic forces.

• Few individuals, even if they work in the technology industry, have trained themselves to think like an active part of the ATOM. This mindset can be very profitable once adopted, and will become one of the core skillsets that an adult needs to have in order to prosper.