Predatory and Industrial Habits

In the AI Story

Veblen traced these habits to evolutionary conditions. Industrial habits emerged during the long 'savage' period when survival depended on productive cooperation — making tools, gathering food, building shelter. Predatory habits emerged later in the 'barbarian' period when accumulated surplus made it possible for some to subsist on others' productive effort, captured through force or cunning. The distinction is not between good and bad people but between orientations that coexist in varying proportions within every individual and institution. The same person may exercise industrial habits in her workshop and predatory habits in business negotiations. The same corporation may produce genuine value through engineering while extracting unearned rent through licensing.

The AI economy creates institutional conditions cultivating predatory habits with particular intensity. When a twenty-fold productivity multiplier is achieved, the gain can be distributed two ways: expanding production (more output, serving more people, creating more value) or reducing labor costs while maintaining output. The first exercises industrial habits, the second predatory habits. The structure of the economy — quarterly reporting, investor expectations, competitive pressure — makes the industrial choice a continuous act of resistance against a current flowing naturally toward extraction. The AI tools themselves, by design and economic architecture, cultivate predatory habits in users by rewarding speed and volume while not rewarding care, depth, or slow refinement of quality.

The opposition manifests observably. Builders want to release models when ready — when alignment work is adequate, safety testing thorough, capability robust. Owners want to release when market timing is favorable — when competitive windows open, quarterly calls need catalysts, valuation narratives demand product announcements. Builders want to invest in fundamental research driven by idle curiosity. Owners want applied development producing deployable products on predictable timelines. The tension isn't always resolved in owners' favor — many AI companies genuinely value technical excellence. But structural pressure is relentless, always toward subordinating builders' industrial orientation to owners' pecuniary orientation.

The historical pattern is consistent. Veblen documented this across the industrial economy: the appropriation of community technical inheritance by private interests, conversion of commons into property, extraction of rent from resources the rent-collector didn't produce. The mechanism isn't new; the scale is unprecedented. The AI economy's large language models concentrate the state of the industrial arts in instruments controlled by corporations whose market positions are reinforced by extraordinary capital requirements. The community contributed the input (training data, scientific knowledge, engineering infrastructure). Companies own the output. The value added by processing is genuine but not the whole value. The training data's contribution is uncompensated because existing frameworks don't recognize collective intellectual output as property requiring compensation when appropriated.

Origin

Veblen developed the predatory-industrial distinction across his career, with its fullest treatment in The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and The Instinct of Workmanship (1914). The concept emerged from his observation that classical economics couldn't explain why workers often cared about work quality beyond what payment required, or why business owners often restricted production below technical capacity. The distinction allowed Veblen to analyze economic behavior as the product of evolved dispositions rather than rational calculation.

The framework challenged both Marxist and neoclassical economics. Where Marx located conflict in class positions (owners vs. workers), Veblen located it in orientations (making vs. taking) that cut across class boundaries. Where neoclassical theory assumed utility maximization, Veblen identified instinctual drives that operated independently of market incentives. The predatory-industrial distinction became foundational for institutional economics, influencing John Kenneth Galbraith, Robert Heilbroner, and contemporary critics of financialization.

Key Ideas

Not personality but orientation. Industrial and predatory habits are cultivated dispositions, not fixed character types — the same person exercises both depending on institutional context and incentive structures.

Structurally opposed objectives. Industrial orientation maximizes output, quality, efficiency of production; predatory orientation maximizes capture, position, financial returns — often requiring restriction of output.

Institutional cultivation. Environments reward one orientation and punish the other through metrics, career incentives, cultural norms, and organizational design — training participants in specific habits of thought.

The price system vs. production. Business enterprises organized around profit systematically subordinate productive potential to pecuniary returns, using productive process as instrument for profit generation.

AI amplifies both. Tools can amplify industrial habits (capability expansion, broad distribution) or predatory habits (headcount reduction, market capture) — the amplifier carries whatever signal is fed into it.