What’s keeping me up at night…
This is as summary of a deep conversation I had with an AI, where we explored data and mapped some of the biggest structural challenges facing the U.S. economy. It’s not all-encompassing, but it captures the root causes — with issues like housing, jobs, and wages emerging as downstream domino effects. Unless we solve these foundational fragilities, every other debate is surface-level.
On a related note: I don’t see why people frame UBI as the ultimate solution, when democratized capital participation operates at a higher level. UBI distributes income for consumption, but democratized capitalization unlocks wealth-building and long-term productivity… a far more powerful opportunity.
You're esentially telling me "I want money" and I'm saying "ok, do you want money, or do you want to be a bank?". I'd rather be the bank.
Four Big Fragilities of the Current Economy
Jobs are obviously an issue — the recent downward revision of 900k+ jobs, record-high consumer debt, and pullbacks at eateries like McDonald’s all raise red flags. I saw these ahead of everyone else. They are surface-level signals; the system itself is structurally much worse. Beneath the headlines are four deeper fragilities: Together, these fragilities form a catch-22 loop where solving one often worsens another.
1. Capital Lockup Problem
$7T+ is parked in MMFs, chasing 5% “risk-free.”
This is dead weight for productivity — it doesn’t build factories, housing, or R&D.
Root cause: high interest rates + no democratized channels for safe productive lending.
2. Participation Problem
Ordinary people = consumers first, investors second.
Their capital is underutilized (CDs, MMFs, savings).
They lack transparent, scalable ways to act as builders/lenders → excluded from structural growth, which means their own growth relies on leveraging credit.
Result: the economy is over-levered on debt-fueled consumption, not on citizen capital.
3. Fragile CRE Market
Commercial real estate is trapped.
If rates stay high → CRE bleeds out.
If rates drop → CRE survives, but other fragilities emerge (#4).
4. Fragile Debt-Buying Market
The U.S. (and many developed nations) rely on foreign buyers (China, Japan, oil states) to soak up Treasuries.
If rates stay high → debt service costs balloon, fiscal stress rises.:
If rates fall → foreign appetite weakens, risking sovereign funding gaps.
This is why the Fed is boxed in: any move risks breaking something.
5. The Catch-22
Lower rates → unleash capital (fix #1 & #2), rescue CRE (#3) → but risk losing foreign debt buyers (#4).
Higher rates → keep buyers happy (#4) → but worsen capital lock, block participation, and crush CRE.
Emerging Idea
Productivity slowdown isn’t just about lazy workers or AI adoption gaps.
It’s about capital misallocation: trillions locked in short-term havens instead of productive deployment.
The deeper issue: America has a capital participation problem → ordinary citizens aren’t mobilized as lenders/builders.
A democratized capital marketplace (“Uber for lending”) where households allocate capital into housing, energy, and factories (not micro-loans), think like community health insurance, everyone participates, but each individual can choose what projects to support.
AI + insurance + regulation provide safety and risk management.
This reframes citizens as sovereign co-investors in national resilience, not just consumers.
Fixes participation → unlocks capital → builds foundations → reduces fragility.
To make America boom again, it’s not enough to consume more or automate more — UBI won't solve anything, it's just a bandaid on a bad system. We need to explore "Democratized Capital Delivery" (DCD). We must unlock parked capital and empower citizens as builders and lenders.
To get to a full realization of Democratized Capital Delivery, several pieces need to be in place:
Regulatory structures that allow retail investors to safely and legally lend/invest in large infrastructure / capital projects.
AI / data / risk scoring tools to manage underwriting, monitor performance, detect fraud, etc., so that risk is not opaque.
Liquidity / exit mechanisms so that people aren’t locked in forever; parts of the capital deployment must be tradable or have defined return windows.
Scaled platforms that bundle many small contributions into big investments (so that individuals don’t need to commit huge sums).
Education & cultural framing to shift people from thinking “save or consume” → “build, lend, invest.”
Let's avoid WWIII
If we fail to use creativity and technology to unlock capital, find and fund solutions that actually generate impact, and broaden participation across sectors and demographics... the alternative path is grim. History shows that when structural imbalances persist too long, nations often stumble into full-scale war as a brute-force reset — capital is mobilized by decree, citizens are conscripted as both lenders and labor, and debt fragilities are erased in the fire of conflict, or settled in the aftermath. WWIII already feels as if it’s being put in motion. WWIII is the worst possible solution: it would achieve mobilization through destruction, not innovation. The true challenge — and opportunity — is to find mobilization through design, not devastation.
