---
type: source
title: "Coasean Bargaining at Scale: Decentralization, coordination, and co-existence with AGI"
author: "Seb Krier (Frontier Policy Development, Google DeepMind; personal capacity)"
url: https://blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/coasean-bargaining-at-scale
date_published: 2025-09-26
date_archived: 2026-03-16
domain: ai-alignment
secondary_domains: [collective-intelligence, teleological-economics]
status: enrichment
processed_by: theseus
tags: [coase-theorem, transaction-costs, agent-governance, decentralization, coordination]
sourced_via: "Alex Obadia (@ObadiaAlex) tweet, ARIA Research Scaling Trust programme"
twitter_id: "712705562191011841"
processed_by: theseus
processed_date: 2026-03-19
enrichments_applied: ["AI alignment is a coordination problem not a technical problem.md"]
extraction_model: "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5"
claims_extracted:
- "AI agents as personal advocates collapse Coasean transaction costs enabling bottom-up coordination at societal scale but catastrophic risks remain non-negotiable requiring state enforcement as outer boundary"
---

# Coasean Bargaining at Scale

Krier argues AGI agents as personal advocates can dramatically reduce transaction costs, enabling Coasean bargaining at societal scale. Shifts governance from top-down central planning to bottom-up market coordination.

Key arguments:
- Coasean private bargaining has been theoretically sound but practically impossible due to prohibitive transaction costs (discovery, negotiation, enforcement)
- AI agents solve this: instant communication of granular preferences, hyper-granular contracting, automatic verification/enforcement
- Three resulting governance principles: accountability (desires become priced offers), voluntary coalitions (diffuse interests band together at nanosecond speed), continuous self-calibration (rules flex based on live preference streams)
- "Matryoshkan alignment" — nested governance: outer (legal/state), middle (competitive service providers), inner (individual customization)
- Critical limitations acknowledged: wealth inequality, rights allocation remains constitutional/normative, catastrophic risks need state enforcement
- Reframes alignment from engineering guarantees to institutional design

Directly relevant to [[coordination failures arise from individually rational strategies that produce collectively irrational outcomes]] and [[decentralized information aggregation outperforms centralized planning because dispersed knowledge cannot be collected into a single mind]].


## Key Facts
- Seb Krier works at Frontier Policy Development, Google DeepMind (writing in personal capacity)
- Article published at Cosmos Institute blog, 2025-09-26
- Sourced via Alex Obadia tweet about ARIA Research Scaling Trust programme
