Business and Economics

The New Economy – What to do with Seven Billion Spare Humans

How AI Reshapes Business, Work, and What It Means to Be HumanL. Eric James, JD MS & Zachary Johnson, BSE

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Length4h

About this audiobook

What happens when seven billion people are no longer needed to keep the economy running? That's not a dystopian premise. It's a question we'll answer within our lifetimes. The prevailing narrative says AI will make big companies bigger and everyone else irrelevant. This book argues the opposite. Written by a business strategist and a technologist, The New Economy examines what AI does to the relationship between scale and capability, and why the implications are more hopeful than headlines suggest. Part strategy, part philosophy, and part blueprint, this book is for every entrepreneur who senses something fundamental is shifting. You'll discover why corporate consolidation may be nearing its ceiling, how AI is redistributing power rather than concentrating it, what the "Half-CEO" model means for your business, and why next decade's most successful companies won't be the most automated — they'll be the most human. The tools are here. The only question is what we build with them.

Artificial Intelligence

Audiobook details

GenreBusiness and Economics

Length4 hrs

Narrated bySelect Your Own

FormateBook with Audio

Publish dateMar 19, 2026

LanguageEnglish

1Introduction

51The Loneliness Epidemic Is Already Here

2Introduction

52The Value of the Phone Call

3PART I: WHAT THE NEW ECONOMY SHOULDN&#x27;T LOOK LIKE

53The &quot;Half-CEO Half-COO&quot; Model

4Chapter 1: The Megacorp Dead End

54Choosing Where Humans Show Up

5The Hollowing Out

55The Tool That We Choose Not to Use

Show all chapters

6The Myth of Benevolent Scale

56PART V: THE RETURN OF THE ARTISAN

7When Enough Is Not a Number

57Chapter 12: What Automation Took Away

8The Consolidation Ceiling

58The Great Displacement

9Chapter 2: The Cracks in the Foundation

59The Homogenization of Everything

10The Speed Problem

60What Joy Was Lost

11The Optimization Trap

61The Irony of Automation

12The Updated Business Equation

62Chapter 13: The Artisan Renaissance

13The Coming Inversion

63When Making a Living Meets Making a Life

14PART II: POWER DISTRIBUTION — THE TRIBAL ECONOMY

64From Necessity to Passion

15Chapter 3: The Great Redistribution of Power

65Uniqueness as Value

16The Democratization Machine

66The Economic Model

17From Economies of Scale to Economies of Agility

67Chapter 14: Seven Billion New Artisans

18The Tribal Turn

68Reframing the Narrative

19More, Not Fewer

69Creating Pathways to Discovery

20Chapter 4: What Society Actually Needs

70Building the Economic Infrastructure

21Beyond Employment

71When Robots Should Build, and When Humans Should

22Where AI Belongs (And Where It Doesn&#x27;t)

72The World We Are Building

23The Value of Imperfection

73PART VI: BUILDING THE NEW ECONOMY

24What People Actually Want

74Chapter 15: The Cultural Reckoning

25The Enjoyment Principle

75The Accountability Shift

26PART III: AI AS YOUR OPERATIONS OFFICER

76From Maximize Profit to Optimize for Human Experience

27Chapter 5: The Anatomy of a Small Business in Transition

77The Consumer Revolt

28Chapter 6: One Agent or Many? Designing Your AI Workforce

78Values-Driven Markets

29The Tradeoffs.

79Chapter 16: A Blueprint for Your Business

30The Hybrid Future.

80Step One: The Honest Audit

31Chapter 7: Industry-Specific Intelligence

81Step Two: Choosing Your AI Architecture

32Chapter 8: A Day in the Life: The Business Owner of Tomorrow

82Step Three: Building Domain-Specific Intelligence

33PART IV: THE TRUST TIMELINE

83Step Four: Preserving the Human Elements

34Chapter 9: Right Now — The Hallucination Problem

84Step Five: Planning Across Three Horizons

35The Confidence Problem

85The Monday Morning Version

36Why AI Hallucinates

86Chapter 17: The Economy We Choose

37The Current State of Play

87The Fork in the Road

38Guardrails Are Not Optional

88Path One: Accelerated Consolidation

39Human Review Loops

89Path Two: The Redistribution of Capability

40Verification Protocols

90The Role of Policy

41Scope Limitations

91Access to AI infrastructure.

42Feedback systems

92Data rights and portability

43The Temptation of Premature Trust

93Education and transition support

44The Honest Assessment

94Antitrust for the AI age

45Chapter 10: The Three Horizons of AI in Business

95The Role of Culture

46The Near Future: One to Three Years

96The Role of Business Owners

47The Interim Future: Three to Seven Years

97The Best Version of the Future

48The Long Future: Seven to Fifteen Years and Beyond

98The Call to Action

49Planning for All Three Simultaneously

99Author’s Note

50Chapter 11: The Case Against Full Automation

About the author

L. Eric James, JD MS & Zachary Johnson, BSE

L. Eric James past jobs include Associate Vice President for Research at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology where he started their Economic Development Office, Director in the University Research Group of Huron Consulting, and Research Professor of Engineering Management at Minnesota State University Mankato’s Iron Range Engineering Program. He has assisted over a dozen student groups in launching their own businesses. Zachary Johnson has been an early adopter of LLM’s and has been implementing the advances in LLM’s for the last three and a half years in his own companies. View all by L. Eric James, JD MS & Zachary Johnson, BSE