A Discussion on Political Economy of Post-Labor Valuation: From Technical Automation to the Institutional Organization of Power

Extensive artificial-intelligence delegation may transform the connections among productive necessity, material access, relational participation, and social power. This paper develops a generative–relational account of their institutional coupling, distinguishing technical substitution, enforceable entitlement, situated valuation, and the authority to convert classifications into consequential decisions. Post-labor production serves as a counterfactual limit for comparing societies with similar technical capabilities but different pathways of dependence and recognition. The analysis traces how judgments of reliability, empathy, aesthetic merit, or contribution can acquire consequences for access to resources and shared activities through authorized rules. Four historical trajectories compare the ordering of infrastructural control, material guarantees, reputation-based allocation, and plural commons. Evidence from AI-assisted customer support, platform labor management, and income-transfer policies anchors distinct mechanisms within their observed settings. A comparative research programme follows the interfaces between production and entitlement, classification and permission, and delegated execution and opportunities for feedback. The analysis locates post-labor possibilities in the historically variable arrangements through which societies connect technical abundance, social valuation, and participation.