Economic Consequences of Moore's Law

Abstract

This paper considers the potential consequences if Moore’s Law, an empirical law about exponentially increasing computing power, continues to hold into the foreseeable future. Areas considered include: a generalized version of Moore’s Law (GML), likely new social classes in a GML world, likely changes in the distribution of income and wealth, potential effects on existing political systems and the spread of political systems, national and international taxation, optimal currencies, country numbers and sizes, demographics and potential leveling then shrinking plus aging of the global population, potential long term dominance of machine intelligence, and the potential timing and number of human generations for such effects to occur.

Keywords: Moore's Law, demographics, computing, computation, exponential growth, exponential contraction

JEL Classification: C53, E37, F47, H21, H53, H87, J11, J21, J22, J31, J44, O11, O12