“Ghost in the machine” isn’t just an album by The Police. It’s a midcentury term, coined around 1949, to engage with an old philosophical debate that goes back hundreds of years: Is consciousness biological, driven by an organ called the brain? Or is there some kind of ghost in the machine that is our body, driving us on in almost supernatural fashion? The impact of artificial intelligence on the economy, having taken economics in philosophical directions by reviving the concept of the “superman,” is forcing analysts to grapple with its presence as a ghost in the machine of capitalism.
James Van Geelen, the top finance writer on Substack, is warning that the ghost has entered the machine, and we are not prepared for how dramatic the change will be as a result, and how quickly. Van Geelen, founder of analysis firm Citrini Research who recently claimed his real-world investment portfolio has surged more than 200% since May 2023, recently published a viral “thought exercise” detailing what the firm calls the “global intelligence crisis.” It has to do with “ghost GDP,” the death of the particular “friction” marked by human beings engaging in economics, and the displacement of the “scarce input” for all of economic history: human intelligence.
Van Geelen, a former Los Angeles paramedic with degrees in biology and psychology, has built his reputation on “second-order thinking,” looking past immediate headlines to anticipate what fundamentally must happen next. He’s been sounding the alarm on the coming white-collar recession for many months now, telling Demetri Kofinas of the Hidden Forces podcast in April 2025 that a “sword of Damocles” was hanging over the white-collar employee, referencing the famous Greek myth of a sword that could fall at any minute over a mythical leader. Citrini’s thesis for 2028 is plausible depending on how much “friction” you believe can be removed from daily economic life and how much of the economy actually reflects the fair price of what you pay for, every day.
Van Geelen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
