---
type: "CreativeWork"
title: "The Discontinuity Thesis"
description: "A Sequence of Seven Essays on Why Postwar Capitalism Ends"
resource: "https://thesis.copecheck.com/"
tags: ["discontinuity-thesis", "ai", "labour-market", "postwar-capitalism"]
timestamp: "2026-06-03T09:57:19Z"
version: "v1.1.2 final"
author: "Ben Luong"
---

# The Discontinuity Thesis

A Sequence of Seven Essays on Why Postwar Capitalism Ends

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# Sections

* [The Discontinuity Thesis](sections/the-discontinuity-thesis.md) - Each essay closes one comfortable answer to the question of how the wage-demand circuit might be saved. They are designed to be read in order, but each is standalone. The.
* [1. Unit Cost Dominance](sections/1-unit-cost-dominance.md) - There is a specific point in the development of any general-purpose technology at which it stops being a tool and starts being a substitute. The point is not technological. It is.
* [2. Interface Collapse](sections/2-interface-collapse.md) - The previous essay established that AI plus verification has crossed cost-quality parity for a large class of professional cognitive tasks. The most respectable continuity.
* [3. The Multiplayer Prisoner’s Dilemma](sections/3-the-multiplayer-prisoner-s-dilemma.md) - The previous two essays established the technical and propagation conditions. Unit cost dominance has been crossed for a substantial fraction of professional cognitive tasks.
* [4. The Sorites Collapse Principle](sections/4-the-sorites-collapse-principle.md) - The ancient paradox of the heap goes like this. One grain of sand is not a heap. Two grains are not a heap. Adding a single grain to a non-heap cannot make it a heap. Therefore.
* [5. Categorical Recursion](sections/5-categorical-recursion.md) - There is a class of regulatory failure our existing names blur. It is not capture. It is not arbitrage in the ordinary sense. It is not lag. It is the specific failure mode that.
* [6. The Successor System](sections/6-the-successor-system.md) - The previous essay closed the regulatory route. Category-based instruments cannot defend the wage-demand circuit because the deployed object migrates between categories faster.
* [7. Drag Is Not Rescue](sections/7-drag-is-not-rescue.md) - The previous six essays established a structural argument. Unit cost dominance has been crossed for a substantial fraction of professional cognitive tasks. Interface collapse.
* [Appendix I: What Would Refute the Thesis](sections/appendix-i-what-would-refute-the-thesis.md) - The Discontinuity Thesis is not a single-point forecast. It is a structural argument with empirical premises. It can be refuted by showing that one of its load-bearing premises.
* [Appendix II: Common False Refutations](sections/appendix-ii-common-false-refutations.md) - The Discontinuity Thesis attracts a predictable class of rebuttals. Many sound sophisticated. Most do not touch the load-bearing mechanism. This appendix exists to separate.
* [Appendix III: Frontier Capability and Deployment Evidence](sections/appendix-iii-frontier-capability-and-deployment-evidence.md) - A documentary record as of May 2026 (version 1.1, comprehensive corpus stress-test) This appendix anchors the thesis in current evidence. The body essays make the structural.
* [End of Sequence](sections/end-of-sequence.md) - The Discontinuity Thesis closes with the question it has been building toward from the first essay. Not whether postwar capitalism can be saved, but what replaces it, who designs.

# Related Concepts

* [Live evidence register](evidence/index.md)
* [References](references/index.md)