In our last conversation, we ended on a cliffhanger that has been gnawing at me: How is it possible to create local, neutral interdependence that binds the mechanisms of exploitation?
Basically, how do we design a social operating system where greed isn’t the feature, but the bug?
In this new episode, Jim and I stop hovering at the theoretical level and start drawing the blueprints. We dig into the “architectural” changes required to move from our current game of status competition where billionaires stack chips just to say they have more than the other guy to a model of genuine, resilient flourishing.
Here are a few of the deep currents we explore in this session.
The Shared Purse vs. The Blight
We start with a radical but historically grounded idea: shifting the nexus of wealth from the individual to the “membrane”, a community of roughly 150 people (a Dunbar number group).
Imagine a “Shared Purse” economy, similar to the early Israeli Kibbutzim. When assets are pooled, the incentive to exploit your neighbor dissolves because their loss is your loss. But we aren’t naive. We know that wherever power gathers, “The Blight” (corruption) follows. We discuss why absolute, world-readable transparency in financial ledgers isn’t just a nice-to-have it’s the only immune system capable of keeping the Blight in check.
The Pruning Rules of Innovation
Why does our current society produce incredibly sophisticated sports betting apps designed to addict young men, but fail to build a resilient electrical grid?
It comes down to what Jim calls “Pruning Rules.”
Every time humanity jumps to the “adjacent possible” (the next stage of innovation), we filter our choices through a pruning rule. Right now, that rule is almost exclusively Money-on-Money Return. If it’s profitable, it survives. If it’s merely “good for civilization,” it often dies. We discuss how to change these rules so that we stop optimizing for addiction and extraction.
Viscosity, Voice, and Exit
We also tackle the hard problem of governance. A free society cannot be a prison. We discuss the non-negotiable principles of Voice (having a say) and Exit (the ability to leave on fair terms).
But perhaps the most provocative part of the conversation was about Death.
Nature understands that for new life to emerge, old things must die. Our institutions, however, try to live forever. We talk about the concept of “Sunsetting”: the idea that every law, institution, and corporation should have a built-in expiration date.
The Thought Experiment: A Terminal Value for Tech Giants
This led us to a wild thought experiment.
Imagine if companies like Google or Facebook couldn’t be sold to private equity or inherited by a dynasty. Imagine if, after 25 or 50 years, they had to be sold to the public commons.
Here’s the kicker: The price the public pays wouldn’t be based on projected profits, but on the company’s Net Contribution to the Planet.
If your company extracted value, destroyed attention spans, and polluted the ecosystem, the price is zero (or you owe us). If you added genuine value to the biosphere and humanity, you get a handsome reward. It’s a mechanism that would change the incentives of a founder from Day 1.
We even toyed with the idea of writing this up and sending it to Larry Page and Sergey Brin to ask: Does your 25-year-old self agree with this? Does your current self? (so, @Sergey if you happen to read this, let’s chat :))
This conversation was a journey from the mechanics of local farming to the governance of Mars colonies. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
