162 Days of Insight

Day 141: The Economics of Being vs. Doing

Value from Presence, Not Production

When AI handles all the doing, what economic value remains in human being?

 

Note: This article is for educational and informational purposes only. See full disclaimer at the end.

We’ve built an economy that measures everything except what might matter most. 

Your worth calculated in output per hour. Your dignity weighed against quarterly earnings. Your existence justified by what you produce rather than who you are. But something fundamental is shifting in this equation—not through philosophy or idealism, but through the cold logic of automation itself. 

When machines can do virtually everything, the economics of pure productivity collapse into absurdity. What emerges in its wake isn’t a crisis of value but a revelation: we’ve been measuring the wrong things all along.

The question isn’t whether AI will replace human doing—it already is [8]. The question is what we discover about value itself when productivity decouples entirely from human labor.

The Productivity Paradox

Classical economics treats human value through a brutally simple lens: you’re worth what you produce. The value of a statistical life gets calculated at around $7.5 million in 2020, determined primarily by economic output and willingness-to-pay measurements [1]. This framework made sense when human labor was the primary driver of economic activity. It makes no sense whatsoever when AI can generate more value per second than entire teams of knowledge workers.

The traditional economic calculus breaks down completely. 

If your value equals your productivity, and AI becomes infinitely more productive, does human value approach zero? 

The absurdity of this conclusion reveals the absurdity of the premise. We’ve confused economic measurement with economic reality, mistaking what we can easily quantify (output) for what actually matters (human flourishing) [2].

Consider the emerging concept of a “happiness economy”—frameworks where nations measure progress through well-being and life satisfaction rather than GDP alone [2]. This isn’t soft-minded idealism; it’s pragmatic economics catching up to what automation has already made clear. When productivity becomes essentially free through AI, optimizing for production makes as much sense as optimizing for oxygen abundance. The constrained resource isn’t output anymore—it’s conscious human experience.

The Consciousness Economy Emerges

Here’s where being-value reveals itself as the foundation that doing-value always rested upon. Every economic transaction, every moment of commerce, every exchange of goods or services ultimately serves one purpose: enabling or enhancing conscious human experience [11]. We never really wanted the report, the presentation, or the product—we wanted what they enabled us to experience, to become, to feel [12].

The consciousness economy was always there, hidden beneath layers of productivity metrics. Automation doesn’t create it; it merely makes it visible by removing the doing-layer that obscured it. When AI handles execution, what remains is pure value-in-consciousness: presence, awareness, choice, creativity, connection, meaning [13].

This shift manifests in concrete economic trends already underway. The happiness economy framework prioritizes subjective well-being over traditional indicators, recognizing that beyond a certain income level, additional wealth generates diminishing returns on human flourishing [8]. Research shows that once basic needs are met, people value autonomy, mastery, purpose, and connection far more than marginal increases in consumption [12].

Where Being Creates Value AI Cannot

Emotional labor offers the clearest window into being-value economics. Care workers, nurses, teachers, therapists—roles where human presence itself constitutes the core value—reveal what matters when doing becomes automated [3].

A nurse doesn’t just execute medical tasks; her conscious presence in the room changes patient outcomes. A teacher doesn’t merely transfer information; his being-with-students shapes their development in ways no AI lecture ever could. These roles demonstrate that the most valuable human contribution isn’t what we do but how our consciousness shows up in relationship to others [14].

The paradox: these being-intensive roles remain among the lowest paid in our economy precisely because we haven’t learned to value consciousness itself [4]. Emotional labor is systematically undervalued and inadequately compensated, even as it enables all other work to function [3]. Care work constitutes the foundation of economic activity—reproducing the workforce, maintaining wellbeing, enabling relationships—yet remains largely uncompensated when performed in homes and underpaid when performed professionally [14].

This systematic undervaluation persists because our economic frameworks can’t measure consciousness-value. 

We can quantify tasks completed, patients processed, students graduated—but we can’t easily measure presence quality, relational depth, or the transformative impact of genuine human attention. So we default to productivity metrics that capture everything except what matters most [15].

The Universal Basic Income Conversation

The UBI debate becomes clearer through a being-versus-doing lens. Critics worry that unconditional income will reduce labor participation—a productivity concern. But experiments consistently show the opposite: when freed from survival-mode doing, people engage in more meaningful work, not less [5].

Finland’s nationwide UBI trial found recipients more likely to be in work than the control group, while reporting better wellbeing [9]. The key insight: UBI doesn’t pay people to stop doing; it enables them to stop doing meaningless tasks and start doing meaningful work. It recognizes being-value—your worth as a conscious entity—as independent from your economic productivity [10].

The philosophical foundation here parallels Amartya Sen’s capability approach: economic wellbeing should be assessed by what people are capable of doing and being, given their circumstances, not just their income [12]. UBI creates a floor that enables capabilities—the freedom to pursue education, care for family, create art, build community, or simply exist without justifying your existence through productivity [16].

This matters more as AI handles an estimated 40% of jobs globally [13]. When productivity becomes AI’s domain, human value must find other foundations. UBI isn’t just a policy response to technological unemployment—it’s an economic recognition that consciousness itself has intrinsic worth, independent of what it produces [8].

Rethinking Value Itself

What if economic value always flowed from consciousness, and productivity was just one limited expression of it? This reframe changes everything. Your value isn’t what you do—your doing serves as one channel through which your consciousness expresses and experiences itself. When AI can handle the doing more efficiently, your consciousness doesn’t lose value; it gains freedom to express through channels that matter more.

The intrinsic value perspective offers grounding here. Philosophers argue that ecosystems have intrinsic value—worth in their own right, independent of human use [6]. If nature has intrinsic value, surely conscious human experience does too. Your being matters not because of what it produces but because consciousness itself is the foundation of all value [15].

This isn’t abstract philosophy—it has immediate economic implications. When we recognize being-value, care work becomes properly compensated. Parenting gets acknowledged as economic contribution, not economic absence. Creative exploration matters regardless of commercial viability. Community building counts as valuable activity even when it generates no profit. The entire economy reorients around enabling rich conscious experience rather than maximizing productive output.

The Practical Transition

How do we actually make this shift? Three movements are already underway, quietly rebuilding economic foundations:

Recognition work: Making visible the being-intensive labor that sustains everything else. Home care workers, researchers note, need organizations that recognize, acknowledge, and value their full scope of work, including the emotional labor that defines quality care [4]. This means incorporating emotional labor into training, job descriptions, care plans, and—crucially—payment systems [4].

Alternative metrics: Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness framework, though imperfect, represents the direction. Measuring wellbeing, life satisfaction, environmental health, and social capital alongside economic output creates accountability for what actually improves human life [12]. 

As automation makes productivity metrics less meaningful, consciousness-based metrics become more essential.

Decoupling income from labor: UBI experiments, degrowth movements, and unconditional autonomy allowances all explore how to maintain human dignity and enable flourishing when productive labor no longer drives economic value [7]. These aren’t radical departures—they’re pragmatic adaptations to an economy where AI handles doing and consciousness becomes the primary economic substrate.

The Question That Remains

Perhaps the deepest challenge isn’t economic but existential. We’ve spent centuries conditioning ourselves to measure worth through productivity. The Protestant work ethic, industrial discipline, and capitalist values all taught the same lesson: you matter because of what you produce. Unlearning that programming might be harder than building AGI.

But automation gives us no choice. When machines can do everything, pretending human value derives from doing becomes impossible to sustain. We’re forced to confront the question we’ve avoided through millennia of busy-ness: 

What is the inherent worth of conscious experience itself?

The economy is already answering. Not through policy declarations or philosophical treatises, but through the quiet mathematics of value shift. As AI handles more doing, being-intensive work becomes proportionally more valuable. Care, presence, creativity, consciousness—the things that can’t be automated—reveal themselves as the economy’s true foundation.

You were never worth what you produced. You were always worth the consciousness that drove the production, experienced its fruits, and chose what meaning it would serve. The economics of being vs. doing isn’t a future debate—it’s the present reality that automation makes impossible to ignore.

The question isn’t whether this shift is coming. It’s whether we recognize it in time to build economic systems that serve consciousness rather than extracting it, that enable flourishing rather than merely optimizing productivity, that acknowledge your worth as inherent rather than earned.

Your value was never doing. It was always being. The economy is just starting to catch up.

See you in the next insight.

 

Comprehensive Medical Disclaimer: The insights, frameworks, and recommendations shared in this article are for educational and informational purposes only. They represent a synthesis of research, technology applications, and personal optimization strategies, not medical advice. Individual health needs vary significantly, and what works for one person may not be appropriate for another. Always consult with qualified healthcare professionals before making any significant changes to your lifestyle, nutrition, exercise routine, supplement regimen, or medical treatments. This content does not replace professional medical diagnosis, treatment, or care. If you have specific health concerns or conditions, seek guidance from licensed healthcare practitioners familiar with your individual circumstances.

References

The references below are organized by study type. Peer-reviewed research provides the primary evidence base, while systematic reviews synthesize findings.

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