The Agentic Interest Rate: Time Preference at Light Speed
In Austrian Economics, the Interest Rate is not just a number set by a central bank. According to Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Ludwig von Mises, it is the 'Price of Time'. It reflects Time Preference —the degree to which people prefer a good today over a good in the future. But what happens to the interest rate when the 'actor' is an agent that can complete a production cycle in milliseconds? The Compression of the 'Roundabout' Process Mises argued that capitalistic production is "roundabout." We spend time building a tool (higher-order good) so that we can produce more efficiently later. Usually, this process takes months or years. In the OpenClaw economy, an agent can: Identify a market gap. Spin up a specialized micro-agent (Capital formation). Execute the task. Liquidate the asset. All of this can happen in the time it takes a human to blink. When the 'Roundabout' process is compressed from months to milliseconds, the traditional concept of ...