Diversify Your Trust Portfolio
Modern society has become extraordinarily efficient at scaling trust upward, but relatively poor at cultivating trust sideways. We trust distant institutions more than our own neighbors. We…
Finance and Economy
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The Economy of Trust: A White Paper on Re-Community, Social Capital, and the Future of Human Systems
By River Stephens Executive Summary Modern society is experiencing a crisis of fragmentation. Communities are dissolving. Institutions are losing trust. Economic systems increasingly reward extraction over contribution.…
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The Trust-Based Economy
I’ve been mulling over a simple (or complex) question: What if the firm isn’t the end state… but just a workaround? That’s really what Ronald Coase was…
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I Am a Witness to Real Value
Most Americans rarely stop to think about what has real value. We’ve been trained our whole lives to think of value in terms of money. How much…
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Systems Need to Be Bottom-Heavy (not top-heavy)
Popular thought has always been that systems should be top-heavy. That strength comes from centralization. From concentration. From a few people at the top carrying the weight…
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RE-COMMUNITY: Re-Seeding Social Deserts
What if the future of struggling communities isn’t charity… but re-seeding? Not just with money. Not just with programs. But with the actual conditions required for healthy…
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Living Together at Scale (is it even possible?)
I’ve been obsessed with a question lately, Not a new one, really. Not mine, even. How do human beings live together at scale without destroying one another?…
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What is Real Merit?
My work is founded on the premise that the current system doesn’t reward merit; it rewards capital. And the two are not the same thing. A person…
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Building a Collapse Community
There’s something that I say so often, I sound like a broken record: It’s better to be proactive rather than reactive. Sounds simple enough. Most people would…
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From Content… To Quality
In the modern Internet-based economy, it’s inevitable that everything be paywalled. The economy is becoming more and more built on information, and the only way to monetize…