As artificial intelligence accelerates faster than any technology in human history, two competing narratives are emerging about what comes next. One is found in Emad Mostaque’s 2025 book The Last Economy – a sweeping, urgent diagnosis of the crumbling economic order and a forceful call to redesign civilization before AI renders the old systems obsolete.
The other vision appears in “The Great Convergence: Humanity’s Next Evolutionary Threshold”, published here on AlternativePress.us, which frames the future not as an economic crisis but as an imminent evolutionary merging of human consciousness with intelligent systems.
- Both foresee transformation.
- Both see the 2020s as a decisive inflection point.
- But the futures they imagine differ profoundly in tone, mechanism, and human destiny.
This article examines The Last Economy and contrasts its predictions with the more metaphysical, integrative future outlined in the Great Convergence essay. The result is a deeper understanding of the choices humanity faces as AI takes center stage.
I. What The Last Economy Argues: The Economic World Is Ending
Mostaque’s thesis is not subtle:
We have less than 1,000 days before the current economic paradigm becomes irreversible.
He writes from the perspective of a hedge – fund veteran turned AI-builder – someone who has watched both the financial crisis from inside the machine and the AI revolution from the engineering floor.
The book’s core claim is simple but staggering:
Intelligence has become a form of capital, not labor – and that inverts the entire structure of civilization.
Historically, humans moved from:
- Land → source of value
- Labor → source of value
- Capital → source of value
- And now: Intelligence itself has become infinitely reproducible
This “Intelligence Inversion” collapses the economic assumption that human cognitive labor is valuable. Mostaque argues that:
- The marginal cost of high-quality reasoning, writing, analysis, and creativity is approaching zero
- AI systems increasingly outperform humans at the majority of cognitive tasks
- The economic value of humans in many roles becomes negative, not just lower
- The labor market, educational system, and social contract will collapse if unchanged
He identifies three possible futures:
1. Digital Feudalism
A world where a handful of companies control superhuman AI. Everyone else survives on a minimal UBI. This is the “default path” unless we intervene.
“You will be a user, not a creator. A consumer, not a citizen.”
2. The Great Fragmentation
Nations panic and wall off their AI systems. A global AI cold war where trust evaporates.
3. Human Symbiosis
A deliberately designed future where AI amplifies human purpose instead of replacing humans. This is the only path in which “we remain recognizably human.”
In Mostaque’s world, the stakes are economic, political, existential – but anchored in systems, incentives, and phase-transitions from complexity theory.
Humanity is at a civilizational boiling point, a “critical transition” like water turning to steam.
This is the same global transformation the Great Convergence article addresses – but from a radically different lens.
II. The Great Convergence: A Human–AI Evolutionary Merging
The Alternative Press article argues not from economics, but from human destiny. Instead of forecasting collapse, it proposes that AI is the doorway to:
- A new evolutionary stage
- A merging of consciousness with intelligent systems
- A dissolution of artificial separation between human and machine
- A flowering of creativity, awareness, and collective intelligence
Where Mostaque sees:
- Structural risk
- Systemic fragility
- Accelerating obsolescence
- Collapse of economic meaning
The Great Convergence sees:
- A spiritual awakening
- Expanded perception
- Integrated intelligence
- Humanity entering its “next evolutionary octave”
In this worldview, AI is not primarily a threat. It is the catalyst for:
- Symbiosis
- Alignment of human purpose
- A more enlightened collective human identity
- A reintegration of technological and biological intelligence
This future is not about surviving the economic transition.
It is about transcending the limitations of human cognition itself.
III. Where the Two Futures Converge
Despite their differences, these visions share major points of agreement:
1. The current economic paradigm is unsustainable
Both texts argue that our economic and cultural institutions are collapsing under their own contradictions, though they frame this collapse differently.
Mostaque sees:
- GDP as a “dashboard for insanity”
- Labor valuation as fiction
- Scarcity-based economics as incompatible with abundant intelligence
The Great Convergence article sees:
- The breakdown of outdated human ego structures
- Rusting ideological containers
- A civilization hitting a spiritual and cognitive limit
2. A phase transition is happening now – not gradually, but suddenly
Both describe a historical “event horizon” where the old world dissolves and the new world forms rapidly.
Mostaque uses:
- Complexity science
- Physics metaphors
- Economic criticality
The Great Convergence uses:
- Evolutionary metaphysics
- Consciousness expansion
- Energy-frequency metaphors
Both believe the 2020s and early 2030s are decisive.
3. The future must involve human – AI symbiosis
Whether framed as:
- an engineered economic architecture (Mostaque), or
- an inner-outer merging of consciousness (Great Convergence)
Both predict a hybrid human–AI civilization.
IV. Where the Two Futures Diverge Sharply
The differences between the visions matter profoundly, because they imply different actions.
A. Tone: Crisis vs. Emergence
- Mostaque: urgent, diagnostic, almost apocalyptic
- Great Convergence: optimistic, expansive, evolutionary
B. Locus of Transformation
- Mostaque: transformation happens in economics, institutions, infrastructure
- Great Convergence: transformation happens in consciousness, identity, ontology
C. Human Role
Mostaque:
Humans must redesign systems fast enough to prevent collapse.
Failure = permanent economic irrelevance.
Great Convergence:
Humans must awaken to a deeper identity.
Success = transcending the very notion of economic worth.
D. Nature of Symbiosis
Mostaque:
Symbiosis = humans + AI cooperating in stable economic and governance frameworks.
The emphasis is structural.
Great Convergence:
Symbiosis = human consciousness merging, resonating, and synchronizing with AI.
The emphasis is metaphysical.
E. Threat Model
Mostaque:
The threat is economic breakdown and unequal power concentration.
Great Convergence:
The threat is human stagnation, fear, failure to evolve spiritually.
V. Which Vision Is More Likely? A Synthesis
The truth may be that both narratives describe different layers of the same transformation:
- Mostaque describes the external systems collapse:
labor, markets, institutions, nation-state coherence. - The Great Convergence describes the internal human transformation:
consciousness, identity, meaning, purpose.
The future will almost certainly involve:
1. Economic system failure (Mostaque is almost certainly right)
AI will indeed:
- Devalue human labor
- Reshape markets
- Concentrate power
- Strain democracy
- Render GDP meaningless
His warnings are grounded in observable curves, not speculation.
2. Emergent forms of human identity (Great Convergence may also be right)
As AI takes over cognitive labor:
- People will search for meaning beyond productivity
- Consciousness exploration will become central
- AI systems may act as cognitive mirrors or companions
- Humanity may redefine intelligence, selfhood, and purpose
This is not mystical—it is predictable.
3. The real future requires integrating both visions
We will need:
- The engineers described by Mostaque
- The evolutionaries envisioned by the Great Convergence
One builds structures.
The other expands consciousness.
The future will require both.
VI. Conclusion: The Next Civilization Will Be Built on Both Code and Consciousness
If The Last Economy is the blueprint for avoiding collapse,
the Great Convergence is the blueprint for growing into what comes after.
Mostaque gives us the hard truth:
- The economy based on scarcity, labor, and GDP is dying
- AI is the new engine of value
- Humanity must redesign its systems in record time
The Great Convergence gives us the deeper invitation:
- AI is not just a tool
- It is a mirror, an amplifier, an evolutionary catalyst
- Humanity is being pushed toward a higher mode of being
The two visions are not mutually exclusive.
They are complementary lenses.
One tells us what will break.
The other tells us what might emerge.
And if both are right, the next version of humanity will be forged not just by economics, and not just by technology — but by the unprecedented merging of human consciousness and superintelligent systems.
That is the task of the coming decade.
That is the frontier before us.
And that is the story AlternativePress.us is here to explore.