With the rise of AI everyone has an opinion. That is the impression, at least, from roaming the interwebs. The latest absurdity: seven billion people, seven billion companies. AI makes it possible. That is nonsense. The idea that you are everything now, all by yourself, is the exact opposite of what we need to strive for, and it rests on a pile of misunderstandings. Let me take them in order.
I said it before, in income means fuck all: a craftsman carves the statue of David, others cut off their own fingers. AI is a tool. Not more, not less. It has no perspective. No overarching goal. No desires. No soul. It needs instruction and guidance from humans. From you. With better tooling you get more done. But there are limits, and becoming your own organisation is not one of the things a tool can do for you.
The rise of the solopreneur is one of the most damaging developments of the neoclassical mainstream. It divides and fractures the unity of workers a step further. Vereinzelung. Everyone in competition with everyone, everyone fed the lie that anyone can make it, everyone carrying the blame when they do not. It is not the system, stupid. It is you! The same trick losers keep losing describes, sold as freedom. But there is another layer of stupidity to dissect, and it starts with a simple question. What is an organisation?
A firm is an organisation that produces or sells goods and services, usually to create economic value and earn a profit. Why does anyone need one? Because inside a firm you get specialisation, lower transaction costs, coordination and economies of scale. Firms coordinate through authority, planning, pooled resources, shared knowledge and capability, and entrepreneurial direction. Organising an activity inside creates more value than buying it on the market. Heck, for half of what a firm needs there is no functional market at all. Nobody sells trust by the kilo.
Now AI everything else away. Leave yourself as CEO, founder and entrepreneur with an army of agents running every transaction and every business function. That is as bootless an idea as a management information system that controls every aspect of a company from one screen. Chile tried it in 1971. It failed then and it will fail spectacularly again.
The main reason is that most jobs inside a firm need a level of creativity and ingenuity that AI cannot reach. There is a fundamental gap, a gulf, that code alone will not cross. Humans will never be fully replaced and substituted. AI is capital said it: a mind without wants is a tool.
So the firm's advantages persist in a world of AI. They are not replaced. You can augment and supplement your specialists and make them better and faster. But the work still needs direction, intent and inspiration. AI is a tool, and a tool needs the hand of Michelangelo to guide it. Seven billion hands do not make seven billion Michelangelos.