In 1833 Britain paid the slave owners in full, up front — and borrowed to do it.
The enslaved received nothing. This clock shows what the same instrument, pointed the other way, could raise
from a levy on commercial AI.
≈ 40% of the government's total annual expenditure that year (HM Treasury, FOI2018-00186).
Awards paid out between October 1836 and February 1843 — inside the claimants' own lifetimes (Bank of England).
Britain borrowed to do it. HM Treasury: "Money borrowed to fund the Slavery Abolition Act (1835) was therefore fully repaid in 2015."
Paid to the enslaved
£0
Around 46,000 claims were heard (UCL Legacies of British Slavery). Not one was brought by a person who had been enslaved. They had no standing to appear.
The same instrument, pointed the other way
Not a trickle. The levy is ring-fenced in statute and borrowed against — Reparation Bonds raise the money
now, as one payment, and the levy pays the bonds off over decades. Exactly what Britain did after 1833.
Paper: 3–5%More could be asked
Raised up front · 3%
£0
50-year Reparation Bonds
Raised up front · 5%
£0
50-year Reparation Bonds
What a timid rate leaves on the table
£0
Drag it. The paper sets the levy at 3–5% of billed inference. The slider is a suggestion, not a ceiling:
the slave owners were not offered a cautious fraction, and nothing obliges this instrument to be timid. Above a flat few percent,
the honest way to ask for more is a graduated levy — light on cheap tokens, heavier on high-margin frontier tokens — so the base
is not shrunk by the price rising.
Figures are today's usage only, held flat. The paper's own central and agentic scenarios, which let the AI economy grow as the
industry forecasts, put the up-front figure between $150 billion and about $1 trillion (working paper v6, §6).
Not reduced by a penny of this. Every payment is an instalment against an outstanding balance —
and the balance stays on the books.
The whole plan
1
The levy
3–5% of what companies are billed for commercial AI inference — a printed line on the invoice, collected by the handful of firms that already meter every token. No direct levy on any household.
2
Paid up front
The stream is ring-fenced in statute and borrowed against. Reparation Bonds raise the money now, in one payment — as the slave owners were paid — and the levy services the bonds for decades.
3
It grows
The fund grows with the technology. As AI buys from AI, the base widens with no human in the loop. And any state can adopt the same instrument — the paper sets out the American record alongside the British one.
4
The debt stays open
Each instalment acknowledges the balance; none of it settles it. Who receives the money is decided by descendant communities and their commissions — CARICOM, the UK, H.R. 40 in the US — not by the debtor.
What would your own tokens pay?
Every token is a sliver of automated labour. See what the levy would raise on yours.
tokensa short chat ≈ 2ka long session ≈ 50kheavy user / month ≈ 5m
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