If Atlas Shrugs
Once the plans are everywhere, a dozen companies are the economy. Break them up or run them by rule and the machine does not stop, it moves: Atlas shrugs by building the next factory somewhere else. … readIf Atlas Shrugs
Tag: prediction
The Trojan Horse
Nobody will vote for a world where you own nothing. We will take the deal in front of us, the way we took the smartphone, and a new order will emerge from free choices alone: communism’s Trojan horse, built entirely out of capitalism. … readThe Trojan Horse
Feeding the Machine
At full vertical integration, Musk’s three plans, Essential, Living and Health, cost $85 to $500 a person a month to supply, self-insured. A billion people come to $3.5 to $6 trillion a year, and the subscription’s margin carries the half who pay nothing. … readFeeding the Machine
The Monthly Election
When you own nothing, nothing holds you. Every bundle must win you again each month, your own AI casts the vote, and competition shows up as more services at the same price. … readThe Monthly Election
Nobody Hands You the Keys
Our rites of passage were built from things we came to own: the first car, the first apartment, a door of our own. When the bundle removes those objects, families will have to build new thresholds on purpose. … readNobody Hands You the Keys
What Ownership Was Holding
Owning nothing deletes nothing. Ownership quietly stored a household’s wealth, risk, identity and belonging, and as subscriptions replace possessions each of the four must move somewhere new. … readWhat Ownership Was Holding
You’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy
Ownership was always three bills in one: use, idle and risk. As AI makes shared fleets cheap to run, a single subscription will cover a whole life, insurance included, for half of an ordinary salary. … readYou’ll Own Nothing and Be Happy
The Price Tag Was a Machine
The fixed price was never a law of nature. It was a machine built in the 1870s because a floor of hired clerks could not haggle at scale, and AI agents just made negotiation free again — the price tag is losing the only job it ever had. … readThe Price Tag Was a Machine
The New Grand Central
Two strangers who cannot talk still find each other, because some answers are obvious to both. For all of history the obvious answer was made of shared history. AI is about to make it out of a shared machine, and this time the clock has an owner. … readThe New Grand Central
Everyone Just Got Promoted
A 1969 book explained why the best worker makes a poor manager: the promotion rewards the job you had, not the one you are given. AI just handed that promotion to everyone at once, minus the half of management that breaks hearts. What remains is the half nobody practised. … readEveryone Just Got Promoted