Can capital constrain untethered AI agents?

In this essay, Tyler Cowen examines whether untethered AI agents should be required to hold capital that can be seized when they cause harm. The argument maps the prerequisites for such a regime—persistent identity, a reason to value money, legal legibility, reachable assets, and credible enforcement—then tests its limits. Cowen argues that capital might restrain mostly aligned agents but is unlikely to contain malicious ones, and could introduce new governance and power-concentration risks. It matters because proposals to give autonomous systems legal and economic agency are moving from abstraction toward policy debates.