Circular Cumulative Causation

Cumulative causation is Gunnar Myrdal's direct challenge to the equilibrium assumption at the heart of mainstream economics. Where orthodox theory held that market forces tend toward self-correction, Myrdal's empirical work across three continents demonstrated the opposite: initial advantages create further advantages, initial disadvantages create further disadvantages, and the spirals compound rather than converge. The principle operates through multiple reinforcing channels simultaneously — economic, educational, institutional, psychological, cultural — each feeding the others. Applied to AI, the framework predicts that the gains of the transition will concentrate among those who already possess the infrastructure, talent, capital, and institutional capacity to use the tools, while the costs fall on those who do not. The concentration is not accidental; it is structural, and it reverses only through deliberate institutional intervention.