2.5 KiB
2.5 KiB
| type | title | author | url | date_published | date_archived | domain | secondary_domains | status | processed_by | tags | sourced_via | twitter_id | processed_by | processed_date | enrichments_applied | extraction_model | ||||||||
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| source | Coasean Bargaining at Scale: Decentralization, coordination, and co-existence with AGI | Seb Krier (Frontier Policy Development, Google DeepMind; personal capacity) | https://blog.cosmos-institute.org/p/coasean-bargaining-at-scale | 2025-09-26 | 2026-03-16 | ai-alignment |
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enrichment | theseus |
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Alex Obadia (@ObadiaAlex) tweet, ARIA Research Scaling Trust programme | 712705562191011841 | theseus | 2026-03-19 |
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anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5 |
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"
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