5 signals about the future of money.
Decoupling time from money, the millionaire-or-broke economy, and why scarcity mindset costs you 13 IQ points.
Replacing our usual Weekly Brief format today with a deeper look at the future of money.
The October Deep Dive for paid subs will go even deeper into all this… but with last Monday’s AWS outage costing businesses millions, I realized it’s time to talk money at a high-level now.
So today, five signals on the future of money.
“Time is money” has expired.
We’ve been conditioned to believe time spent = value produced = money earned.
Go to school. Get a job. Work 40 hours a week. Earn fixed paycheck. Work overtime. Earn more.
This equation is breaking down.
The creator economy demonstrates this. Today, you can call yourself a content creator, work 12-hour days for 30 days straight, put out 50 pieces of content, launch a group program because #scale, and still make $0 if the work isn’t considered valuable by others.
Meanwhile, someone else posts one thing that resonates and earns $50K.
AI only widens the gap between average and excellent work. Average blends in with the slop and makes nothing. But excellence compounds faster than ever in human history.
AI agents are a value multiplier for those who know how to deploy them. Today, you can automate the 20 manual steps that used to take hours (ie: research, comparison, execution) and compress them into seconds.
Book the trip. Find the job. Launch the store.
One person with the right AI stack can deliver what used to require a team of ten.
Money has decoupled from time.
But it’s still anchored to value.
Value provided in the free market. With the internet serving as the town square where that value gets measured.
In 2025, value = outcomes.
It’s never been easier to become a millionaire or broke.
Today, approximately 1 in 10 American adults are millionaires.
The internet has become the easiest path to self-made millionaire status in recent years (though AI is disrupting that).