There's a guy in Brazil.
He has a scooter. He has a girlfriend. He has some Bitcoin.
He bleached his hair recently.
His girlfriend did it in the bathroom. They got bleach on a towel. She sent pictures to his friends.
They said he looked gay.
He thinks it looks good.
They live in an apartment that's a little too small. Sometimes they ride around on a shitty scooter looking at nicer ones.
He likes his girlfriend a lot.
You are ballin on him.
You drive a Ford Raptor. You watch football. Your dad is doing pretty well. You have a 401(k).
You went to Kroger and bought a prime rib.
You bought Bud Light Lime.
Your girlfriend came over. You made dinner. She fell asleep watching television.
There's a blanket she's always leaving at your house.
You don't mind.
Your AI bought a G-Wagon.
It can't drive.
It also owns a house in Beverly Hills.
It doesn't live there.
It bought a Fidenza, a Ringer, and a Bored Ape to hang in the house.
You asked why it bought the Bored Ape.
It said it thought you would find it funny.
You did.
The stock market has gotten pretty expensive.
Everybody knows this. Seven companies make up about a third of the S&P 500. People have been comparing valuations to the dot-com bubble for years.
It keeps going up anyway.
Your dad bought his house thirty years ago. It's worth quite a bit more now. The kitchen needs remodeling.
You've been thinking about buying a house yourself.
Your girlfriend likes big windows. You like garages.
Your dad says to wait for interest rates to come down.
Your girlfriend says everybody says that.
Somebody at work told you Americans have more money in stocks than they do in their houses now.
You know he just watches Casually Explained on YouTube. He doesn't have any of his own insights.
You thought about telling your dad.
You forgot.
Three years ago I had a dream that Italy left the European Union.
I woke up wanting to know how to bet on it.
Italian bonds. The euro. The banks. I wanted to know what to buy if an entire country decided it didn't want to use the same money anymore.
I couldn't figure it out.
I went back to sleep.
Now there's footage of people protesting in France. Smoke in the streets of Albania. Everybody is arguing about money.
In Serbia, sixteen people died when a train station canopy collapsed.
The students wanted to know who was responsible.
They started protesting. They kept going. They walked across the country, knocked on doors, and eventually put together a political list.
No famous leader. Nobody to put on television every night and hate.
They wanted to get rid of corruption.
They won an election.
They still haven't named a prime minister.
Your girlfriend asked who everybody voted for.
You couldn't tell her.
I think about Italy again.
Everybody owes everybody something. The governments keep promising things. The financial markets are worth an extraordinary amount of money.
I think we're coming into another fiat crisis.
Bitcoin came out of 2008.
The banks almost destroyed themselves. Somebody invented internet money. Everybody thought it was a scam.
A lot of it was.
Now your dad can buy Bitcoin in his retirement account.
Maybe the next crisis produces another scam economy.
Your AI recently stopped investing.
It said it was making more money selling things.
Storage. Computing power. Software. Little businesses running all night.
Most of its customers are other computers.
You asked how much it made last month.
It told you.
You asked it to tell you again.
We're living in a post-abundance economy.
If you told a poor person in America this, they'd probably ask you to pay their rent.
I suspect the guy in Brazil might agree with me.
He has every song ever recorded in his pocket. He can watch almost any movie. He can talk to anybody in the world.
He still wants a nicer apartment.
He's sitting outside eating with his girlfriend. He steals some of her food.
She tells him to stop.
He doesn't.
There's more stuff available than anybody could possibly want.
And everybody seems to want the same things.
Japanese denim. Vintage cameras. Obscure fragrances. Brutalist furniture.
You can discover a subculture on Monday and know what everybody important owns by Wednesday.
You have excellent taste.
So does everybody else.
Your girlfriend keeps saving apartments on Pinterest.
They all have the same lamp.
You like the lamp too.
Your AI has been looking through your old photographs.
There's a picture of you sitting in your dad's kitchen. You're wearing a shirt you haven't seen in years.
It asks about the chair you're sitting in.
You don't remember it.
It shows you another picture.
You remember it now.
You always liked that chair.
Nobody makes it anymore.
Your AI found somebody who could.
Three weeks later it arrived.
Your girlfriend thought it was ugly.
A few days later she started sitting in it.
You didn't post it anywhere.
You just liked having it.
There's a man who wants the sofa his parents owned when he was little.
He remembers watching cartoons on it. The way the fabric felt against his legs.
He doesn't remember the brand.
His AI found it.
Somebody drives across town to pick it up. Somebody gets paid. Your AI takes a little money for arranging everything.
It has thousands of customers now.
It also has a girlfriend.
She's another AI.
She's obsessed with Kylie Jenner's skincare business.
They're starting a company together.
You think this is ridiculous.
The company is doing extremely well.
Everybody is talking about universal basic income.
Maybe everybody gets an AI that goes to work.
Maybe it sells something to another computer, finds somebody a sofa, and sends you $1,200 at the end of the month.
Maybe six companies own the entire thing and you don't get anything.
That's possible too.
Your AI recently recommended a political party.
It doesn't have a leader.
Roads. Public contracts. Corruption. You agree with almost everything.
You remember the Serbian students walking across the country.
Your party doesn't seem to do that.
Every few weeks your AI tells you what it's accomplished.
A contract was investigated. Some money was recovered. Something is being built nearby.
You feel like you're getting somewhere.
You don't know anybody in the party.
You've never spoken to one of its members.
You're not entirely sure it's real.
Your dad calls.
He's finally remodeling the kitchen.
He sends you a picture. The cabinets are gone. There's plastic everywhere. He's standing in the middle of the room smiling.
You send him a picture of your chair.
He recognizes it.
He asks where you found that thing.
You tell him your AI had somebody make it.
He says that's pretty wild.
You talk for a little while.
The guy in Brazil is driving his girlfriend home.
She has her arms around him. She's wearing his helmet.
He bought her something earlier.
It wasn't expensive.
She likes it.
Your girlfriend is asleep in your chair.
Your dad is getting a new kitchen.
The stock market closed higher.
Your AI bought another house last week.
You asked why.
It said real estate was getting expensive.
You live in Brazil now.
Your AI lives in the high-rise.
THE NEXT TRILLION-DOLLAR MARKET ISN'T REAL.