CONCEPT
Productive Addiction as Ponzi Scheme of the Self
The application of Minsky's position taxonomy to the psychology of AI-augmented work — revealing productive addiction as a speculative-to-Ponzi progression in which the self's output is the asset whose appreciation must continue.
The Opus 4.6 simulation extends Minsky's financial taxonomy from balance sheets to psychological commitments, tracing the progression through which AI-augmented engagement moves from hedge (genuine flow, self-sustaining satisfaction) through speculative (refinancing through task seepage and micro-sessions) to Ponzi (engagement sustained entirely by continued output, because stopping would reveal a deficit that the output was designed to conceal). The framework reframes productive addiction — which Edo Segal described in You On AI as compulsive engagement indistinguishable from flow — as a specific financial-structural pattern whose progression is driven by the same mechanisms that produce institutional speculative bubbles. The builder who cannot stop is, in Minsky's precise terminology, refinancing a psychological position whose income stream no longer covers its obligations.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The hedge phase of AI-augmented engagement is genuine flow. The challenge-skill balance is matched; the flow conditions are met; the builder returns to life