Sam Altman Should Put His Money Where His Mouth Is

First of all, Sam Altman should put his money where his mouth is.  

In 2019, OpenAI transitioned from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit, albeit capped, business model. What an opportunity to beta test American Equity! 

Instead, Altman voted to have the profit that OpenAI generates accrue to the very group of high-net-worth individuals2 that he voices concerns about in his article on HackerNoon. Rather than distributing those proceeds to every person in the United States, as Altman suggests ought be done with the national gross domestic product, OpenAI LP funnels them into the same wealth-inequality enhancing feedback loop that has historically led to economic strife and civil dissolution. 

So, if Altman himself doesn’t feel obliged to unilaterally redistribute returns on the factors of production, who does he expect to do so? Someone else, clearly. 

Obviously, at this stage in human evolution, every individual on Earth should receive a share of the returns generated from the utilization of planetary natural resources and environmental services. The natural environment is a common trust, and its use should be managed as such, with the benefits of that use accruing equally among its stakeholders, of which every living being is one. But rather than stakeholders, our current economic system is built around shareholders. Which begs the question: how do you become one? 

In Altman’s vision, the principal requirement is to be an American. But this model denies the fact that much of the raw materials, substantial amounts of labor, and a majority of the environmental services that Americans leverage in creating the massive gross domestic product they enjoy are secured outside their national borders. The new social contract to which Alman alludes requires not only a paradigm shift from private shareholder to common stakeholder, but also a movement away from the nation-state and toward a global community. 

The notion of a global equity trust is not a novel one; Peter Barnes outlined his vision for it at Google in 20073. The challenge isn’t with the theory of change. It’s in its implementation. 

This is because, for any redistributive policy to come into effect, the Sam Altmans, Sergay Brins, and Reid Hoffmans of the world will have to give up their shares, something they have thus far proven unwilling to do. Which is why Altman’s plan, as benevolent as it might sound, is not as altruistic as it appears. 

Sam Altman is one of an exceedingly small number of people in the world who had the opportunity to actually put the American Equity model into effect, and yet he demonstrably chose not to do so. Instead of prototyping American Equity at OpenAI, employing an agile iterative approach in the best Silicon Valley tradition, Altman proposes that the gross domestic product be distributed, rather than his own, and, in doing so, turns an easy implementation into a hard one. 

That Altman even uses GDP as a touchstone demonstrates he is not serious. Gross domestic product is simply a manner of accounting, not an actual accrual. There is no place to tap into it, because GDP is not physically connected to stocks and flows. It is merely an abstract representation of them. The only conduit for the actual equity transfer to which Altman refers is through corporate taxes or direct distributions. Corporations would have to either pay taxes that would then be distributed to Americans as universal basic income or make those distributions themselves. 

Wouldn’t a domestic equity scheme such as the one Altman suggests incentivize companies to move offshore? Of course, it does. Which is why the only truly viable solution is a global trust, claims to which are staked upstream of companies such as Altman’s, in the natural resources and environmental services of the entire planet. 

It is easy to, in Altman’s words, “imagine a world in which every American would have their basic needs guaranteed”. Relative to most people, we inhabit that world today. Where the challenge lies is in getting people like Sam Altman to relegate their private interests in order to extend that guarantee to the rest of Plant Earth.