Back to Source
Maybe I'm a dreamer.
I'm okay with that.
Somebody has to dream bigger.
We spend so much time discussing what is realistic that we forget something obvious.
Everything around us was unrealistic once.
Countries.
Currencies.
Constitutions.
Banks.
Corporations.
The internet.
Airplanes.
Going to the moon.
Artificial intelligence.
Somebody imagined the thing before the thing existed.
Then somebody else said:
That's impossible.
Until it wasn't.
So maybe some of the ideas in this book are wrong.
Good.
Find the mistake.
Maybe Good Money doesn't work exactly as I imagined it.
Good.
Build the better version.
Maybe America 2.0 looks completely different.
Fine.
Show me.
The point of this book was never:
I have solved civilization.
Come on.
The point was:
We are not stuck.
That changes everything.
Back to Reality
Remember where we started.
Reality doesn't care.
Not about capitalism.
Not socialism.
Not Democrats.
Not Republicans.
Not America.
Not my ideas.
Not yours.
We are humans.
Living on a rock.
Flying through a universe we barely understand.
Trying to survive long enough to love people.
Raise children.
Build things.
Understand something.
Leave something behind.
Everything else is architecture.
Money is architecture.
Government is architecture.
Markets are architecture.
Corporations are architecture.
Borders are architecture.
Software is architecture.
Stories layered on top of reality to help humans coordinate.
Useful stories.
Powerful stories.
Sometimes beautiful stories.
But still stories.
Never confuse the map with the world underneath it.
The Source
Before money...
human.
Before economy...
earth.
Before corporation...
people.
Before government...
people.
Before ideology...
people.
Before the argument...
people.
That's source.
And when our systems become so complicated that we forget why they exist...
go back.
Does this make humans stronger?
Freer?
Healthier?
More capable?
Does it help us survive?
Does it protect the future?
Does it preserve enough freedom for the next generation to change what we got wrong?
If not...
why are we defending it?
Most People Are Still Good
After writing a book called Good Money, I should probably tell you something.
I don't think most people are bad.
I don't.
Look around.
Most people are not trying to conquer the planet.
They're trying to get their kid to school on time.
Pay rent.
Get through work.
Make dinner.
Help a friend.
Fall in love.
Take care of their mom.
Start something.
Fix something.
Get some sleep.
Most people will return your wallet.
Hold the door.
Help after an accident.
Cry when somebody they love dies.
Laugh at stupid jokes.
Give more than they can afford to somebody they care about.
Humanity can be brutal.
Of course.
But humanity can also be unbelievably good.
Maybe sometimes too good.
Too trusting.
Too polite.
Too willing to assume:
someone smarter is handling it.
Someone in government knows.
Someone at the bank knows.
Someone on television knows.
Someone in charge must have a plan.
We are the people in charge now.
We Are the Adults in the Room
That's a strange realization.
As children, adults looked like they understood the world.
Then you become one.
And eventually you realize:
Oh.
Everybody is improvising.
The president is a human.
The billionaire is a human.
The professor.
The general.
The banker.
The CEO.
The programmer building the artificial intelligence.
Human.
Limited senses.
Limited information.
Biases.
Fear.
Ambition.
Ego.
Love.
Confusion.
Just like the rest of us.
There is no secret species of adult coming to take responsibility for civilization.
It's us.
We are the adults in the room now.
Act like it.
Ball Up
At some point we have to stop being afraid.
Afraid of technology.
Afraid of politics.
Afraid of banks.
Afraid of corporations.
Afraid of AI.
Afraid of losing a job that shouldn't need to exist forever.
Afraid of questioning authority.
Afraid of being wrong.
Afraid of what people will call us.
Afraid to dream because somebody might laugh.
Ball up.
Learn.
Read.
Question.
Build.
Take responsibility.
Not recklessly.
Not violently.
Not with the confidence of someone who thinks they know everything.
With the courage of someone willing to find out.
Stop Waiting
Stop waiting for:
the right president.
The right billionaire.
The right technology company.
The right party.
The right economist.
The right generation.
Stop waiting for someone else to announce that the future has officially started.
It started.
You're in it.
The phone in your hand is more powerful than communications systems entire governments once possessed.
AI can help you learn things that once required enormous institutional access.
You can publish.
Organize.
Create software.
Make music.
Start a business.
Teach.
Research.
Connect with people across Earth.
Use it.
Start Small Enough to Start
You do not need to redesign the Federal Reserve tomorrow morning.
Relax.
Fix one thing.
Learn one thing.
Find one person.
Build one tool.
Start one group.
Help one neighbor.
Move one dollar.
Teach one kid.
Read one law.
Ask one better question.
One mission.
Then another.
That's how this started for me.
One question.
Then another.
Why does money work this way?
Why do humans behave like this?
Why is valuable work sometimes invisible?
Why do we treat our systems like nature?
Why can't we change them?
Eventually the questions became this book.
Questions compound too.
Version 1
And this book?
This is Version 1.
That's important.
It is not finished.
I don't know if it will ever be finished.
There are ideas I haven't explained well enough yet.
Systems I still want to design.
Experiments I want to run.
People I need to meet.
Experts I need to argue with.
Things I am wrong about and don't know I'm wrong about yet.
Good.
That means the project is alive.
This book is a snapshot.
The beginning.
Not the full vision.
Come Find Me
If something in these pages bothered you...
good.
If something made you think...
good.
If you think I'm completely wrong...
even better.
Come find the project.
Find Bad Money.
Find the website.
Find the music.
Find the shows.
Find the conversations.
Find the experiments that come after this book.
I don't want this idea trapped between two covers.
I want it tested in public.
Argued about.
Remixed.
Improved.
Turned into:
music,
software,
research,
conversation,
experiments,
maybe eventually institutions.
The book is only one doorway.
There is more coming.
A lot more.
Bring Your Hammer
Don't come because you agree with me.
Come because you have something useful.
Programmer?
I need you.
Economist who thinks Good Money will cause inflation?
Definitely need you.
Banker?
Come explain what I got wrong.
Teacher?
Help redesign education.
Constitutional lawyer?
Please prevent us from accidentally creating a dictatorship.
Engineer?
Tell us what reality allows.
Artist?
Make people feel the idea.
Musician?
Turn it into something people remember.
Parent?
Tell us what world your children actually need.
Young person?
You're going to live in this future longer than I am.
Take the wheel.
We need disagreement.
We need builders.
Maybe I Run
And who knows.
Maybe one day I run for president myself.
That sounds insane even writing it.
Maybe I never do.
Maybe someone much better appears.
I hope they do.
But if enough people believe this work deserves a real-world test...
if enough builders show up...
if enough Americans decide they want a political experiment built around transparency, decentralization, peace, institutional updating and giving power back...
maybe I have to put my own name on the line too.
Not because I want to be president.
That's exactly the problem.
Maybe the job would be to become something stranger:
the Last President of the old game.
Not a dictator abolishing the presidency.
Not one man rewriting the Constitution.
A president whose mission would be helping America lawfully build a system that needs presidents less.
Give me power so I can help give it back.
Maybe that's ridiculous.
Maybe not.
We'll see.
I Don't Want Followers
Actually...
that's not quite right.
Follow the work.
Sure.
But don't become a follower in the deeper sense.
I don't need disciples.
Neither does this movement.
Question me.
Catch me contradicting myself.
Make me prove things.
Change my mind.
Take an idea and build it better without asking permission.
If Bad Money ever becomes another organization telling people:
Trust us. We know.
Burn the metaphorical rulebook and start asking questions again.
No God Mode.
Remember?
That includes us.
Dream Bigger
We have become intellectually timid.
We debate:
slightly higher tax.
Slightly lower tax.
This candidate.
That candidate.
This interest rate.
That regulation.
Meanwhile:
AI is arriving.
Robots are arriving.
Cryptography exists.
Billions of humans are connected.
We can communicate across the planet instantly.
We have landed machines on other worlds.
Decoded genomes.
Split atoms.
Built telescopes capable of looking backward through cosmic time.
And our political imagination is:
Which seventy-year-old should run the bureaucracy?
Come on.
Dream bigger.
Imagine Alternatives
That may be the most important thing I hope this book gives you.
Not agreement.
Permission.
Permission to imagine alternatives.
When someone tells you:
That's just how money works.
Ask:
Why?
That's how politics works.
Why?
That's how employment works.
Why?
That's how education works.
Why?
That's how government works.
Why?
Sometimes the answer will be excellent.
Good.
Keep it.
Sometimes the answer will be:
history.
Inertia.
Power.
Nobody thought about it recently.
Then perhaps we found something worth updating.
We Don't Have to Know the Final Destination
People want the blueprint.
Fine.
I understand.
But humans didn't invent democracy by possessing the final diagram of every democracy that would ever exist.
We experimented.
We failed.
We learned.
The same will be true now.
Good Money may be one stepping stone.
Crypto another.
AI another.
New voting systems.
New ownership systems.
Open-source government.
New communities.
Things none of us have imagined yet.
The destination isn't one perfect system.
The destination is a civilization capable of updating itself.
Demand Better
Being peaceful does not require being weak.
Being kind does not require being passive.
Being tolerant does not mean tolerating corruption forever.
Most decent people want to avoid conflict.
Good.
But sometimes that instinct becomes:
don't make trouble.
Don't ask that.
Don't challenge them.
Don't upset anyone.
Be reasonable.
There is a difference between being reasonable...
and being domesticated.
Demand better.
From government.
From companies.
From banks.
From media.
From technology.
From leaders.
From this project.
From yourself.
Build Better
And then do the harder thing.
Offer an alternative.
Anybody can complain about YouTube.
Build something.
Anybody can complain about banks.
Build something.
Anybody can complain about politicians.
Run someone.
Anybody can complain about education.
Teach.
Anybody can complain about media.
Publish.
Anybody can complain about loneliness.
Invite somebody over.
The replacement doesn't have to begin large.
It has to begin.
There Are More of Us
The systems look enormous.
They are.
But look around.
There are more nurses than hospital CEOs.
More workers than executives.
More customers than corporations.
More voters than politicians.
More students than university presidents.
More users than platform owners.
More citizens than lobbyists.
More people trying to live decent lives than people trying to control everyone else's.
Our weakness is not numbers.
It is disconnection.
Technology can change that.
The Revolution Fits in Your Pocket
Your phone can make you:
angrier,
lonelier,
more manipulated,
more addicted,
more divided.
We have already proven that.
Now prove the opposite.
Use it to:
learn,
organize,
build,
verify,
teach,
coordinate,
invest,
create,
help,
vote,
connect.
Same machine.
Different future.
Maybe the revolution was never about capturing the palace.
Maybe it was about realizing billions of humans no longer need the palace to find one another.
Back to Source
After all these pages...
after money,
banking,
government,
politics,
AI,
crypto,
capitalism,
socialism,
power...
we arrive back where we started.
Human beings.
Earth.
Reality.
Life.
That's what all of this was supposed to serve.
Not the number.
Not the institution.
Not the ideology.
Us.
And whatever comes after us.
The Question I Leave You With
We inherited this civilization.
We did not choose the starting position.
But now the turn is ours.
What will we protect?
What will we change?
What will we build?
What will we refuse to pass down?
And when our children eventually ask:
You knew the system had problems. You had AI. You had the internet. You could communicate with almost everyone on Earth. What did you do?
I want us to have a better answer than:
We argued online.
We waited.
We were scared.
No.
We tried.
We built.
We got things wrong.
We corrected them.
We refused to accept that history had already reached its final version.
Maybe I'm a dreamer.
I hope so.
We need more of them.
The future is not finished.
Neither is this book.
Neither are we.
Ball up.
We've got work to do.