After Labor and Capital The Political Economy of the Transitional Period

Voloshchuk, Aleksey (2026): After Labor and Capital The Political Economy of the Transitional Period.

Abstract

This manuscript argues that information should no longer be treated merely as one factor among others, but as a metafactor that increasingly reorganizes labor, capital, institutions, and growth. The central claim is that contemporary economies are entering a transition period in which the cost of generating signals, models, texts, and decisions falls much faster than the cost of verifying them. As a result, the decisive constraint gradually shifts from production to selection, validation, and institutional recognition. To formalize this shift, the book introduces the concept of the verification bottleneck, κ, understood not as a sector-specific obstacle but as a general structural limit on the conversion of available information into economically effective knowledge, I∗. On this basis, the manuscript reinterprets major traditions of economic thought as partial descriptions of one broader informational process and develops implications for labor displacement, the changing nature of capital, platform power, growth regimes, and the political economy of verification. The argument is supported by a formal appendix and an empirical appendix combining cross-country evidence, platform-era labor-share dynamics, and new indicators related to verification capacity. The broader conclusion is that the main conflict of the transition period no longer concerns only ownership of capital or control of labor, but increasingly the control of infrastructures and procedures through which signals acquire the status of legitimate knowledge.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: information; metafactor; verification bottleneck; artificial intelligence; growth theory; political economy; platforms; intangible capital
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B4 - Economic Methodology > B41 - Economic Methodology; D - Microeconomics > D2 - Production and Organizations > D24 - Production ; Cost ; Capital ; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity ; Capacity; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D83 - Search ; Learning ; Information and Knowledge ; Communication ; Belief ; Unawareness; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O3 - Innovation ; Research and Development ; Technological Change ; Intellectual Property Rights > O33 - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences ; Diffusion Processes; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity > O47 - Empirical Studies of Economic Growth ; Aggregate Productivity ; Cross-Country Output Convergence; P - Economic Systems > P1 - Capitalist Systems > P16 - Political Economy

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