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Thirty Some Years Ago

By: James Allen Homyak

When I was a much younger man than I am now, I had several serious dreams for the future. I turned those dreams into a phrase, which I coined -- Household Dynamics. I then turned that phrase into a company name on Minnesota beginning in 1990. The new company struggled in one area -- that of being decades ahead of its time.

Back in the day, the visions and concepts I had written extensively about, had also been created to include the development and use of software technology. For those who knew me then, I didn't have power-tools such as what I now have today. I began with a large language model, some Lotus spreadsheets and the Minneapolis Public Library.

Even then, I had wondered, whether or not anyone had taken the phrase "household dynamics" and fashioned this into anything which a private family can use to self-govern their household in the full gamut of American life; such that reliance on external governance may be reduced carefully in their dynamic household planning at the outset.

While not formalized under the specific term "household dynamics," concepts of family self-governance are nowadays a well-established practice, primarily among wealthy families and family businesses who formalize their internal rules and processes to guide decision-making and manage assets across generations. Moreover, these frameworks have components that can be adapted and used by any private family to reduce reliance on external guidance and navigate the "full gamut" of American life.

These models aim to create internal, structured systems for key areas of family life, shifting the focus from external rules and conflict resolution to internal education, preparedness, commitments, agreements and accountability. This is particularly relevant in areas where families already have constitutional privacy protections from government interference.

How families apply self-governance

Components of established family governance models can be scaled down for any private family. This typically involves establishing a family mission, values, and vision, and creating structures for communication, decision-making, and conflict resolution.

Establish a Family Mission and Values: Similar to how a family foundation defines its purpose, a private family can define its own values and long-term vision. This serves as a "guiding light" for decision-making on issues from finances to education.
- Example: A family might draft a mission statement to be financially independent and value strong community ties, which then guides decisions on career paths, home location, and charitable giving.
Create a Family Assembly or Council: For large or multi-generational families, this can be a formal body for discussing major issues. For a smaller family, this can be simplified into regular, structured family meetings.
- Example: Family meetings can be used to discuss shared goals, assign chores, plan budgets, and resolve disputes, shifting enforcement from parental authority to a collective family agreement.
Develop a "Family Constitution": This is a formal, written document used by wealthy families to outline principles and policies on shared assets, succession, and responsibilities. A private family can create a less formal "constitution" to codify their agreed-upon values and operating procedures.
- Example: The document could cover a code of conduct for respectful communication, standards for household maintenance, and protocols for managing shared expenses or family technology use.
Implement Conflict Resolution Mechanisms: Instead of relying on outside intervention for disputes, families can establish their own internal systems. This teaches members how to resolve disagreements constructively.
- Example: A family might create a specific protocol for how members should air grievances respectfully during a family meeting, potentially with a neutral family member acting as a facilitator.

Developing A Family Glossary of Terms: Besides the uptake of standard everyday words and word usage in English, we also have LEGAL meanings of words; we have Commercial meanings of words; we have lawful meanings, and so forth. That is why, with the use of various software, we can now somewhat quickly establish all the words we will use and their meaning and application to distinguish words between public and private, household and external and so forth. Examples include such words as Parent and Child. In law, there is a father and a mother who together create their son or daughter. But in LEGAL parlance, the system creates duality in meanings to interpose a LEGAL MANUVER over the lives of a Dad/Father or a Mom/Mother as a PARENT or GUARDIAN.

Legal and practical limitations in the American context

While a family can take steps to self-govern, American life still exists within a framework of external governance—namely, federal, state, and local laws, statutes, ordinances and policies.

A private family's "self-governance" is expectedly one which voluntarily operates within, not outside, this system of what we call laws. Neighboring whistle-blowers would be quick to intrude if a family were witnessed doing anything that could be perceived as running against these established societal norms.

Legal Jurisdiction: Families cannot create rules that override local, state, or federal laws. For instance, mandatory school attendance laws supersede any family rule allowing children not to attend. But yet, a Corporation such as the local restaurant or retail store can employ its own Employee Manual, Security Department and Operational Policy that requires certain strict adherence to all PERSONS who are on its property.
Child Protection: U.S. laws and institutions, such as Child Protective Services (CPS), protect the rights and safety of children. Family self-governance cannot include practices that would be legally considered abusive or neglectful. CPS assumes the ability to "take away" a "child" in light of the fact that a "Parent" has already given up "its child" to a "state" via a BIRTH REGISTRATION.
Criminal and Civil Law: Serious disputes involving domestic violence, criminal acts, or civil torts fall under the jurisdiction of state and federal courts, regardless of any internal family agreement.
Property and Contracts: Legal documents for property, business, and financial matters—such as wills, trusts, or business contracts—must be drafted and executed in accordance with state and federal laws to be enforceable.

In summary, while families can, and do, create frameworks for internal governance, this practice serves to strengthen family unity and reduce the need for external intervention. While such an in-house framework may lawfully guide the family, It does not provide a legal basis to operate outside the laws of American society. For a deeper look into this, one can delve into the difference between LEGAL and LAWFUL.

Very recently an author named Jason Wootten wrote an article:

Family Governance 101: Keeping Wealth in the Family

In his article he wrote the following:

Family governance is the structured process of guiding decisions, values, and responsibilities across generations to protect both wealth and relationships over time.

When you implement clear governance, you’re not just preserving assets—you’re creating a playbook for continuity, collaboration, and legacy.

His article walks you through what governance entails, why it matters, and how to put it in motion within your own family structure.

What Is Family Governance and What Does It Include?

Family governance is a set of rules, practices, and communication tools that families use to make shared decisions, manage wealth, and define roles across generations. It includes structures like charters, councils, and regular meetings.

At its core, governance is about alignment. You’re taking shared values and converting them into policies, roles, and behavior that support multigenerational success. Without structure, misunderstandings and misaligned expectations can erode wealth and fracture relationships. But when you define decision-making processes—how investment choices are made, how education funding is approved, who manages the family business—you create continuity that outlives the founding generation.

Family governance is often formalized through three primary tools:

A Family Charter that outlines mission, vision, and values
A Family Council responsible for major decision-making
A Family Assembly for inclusive communication and education

These tools don’t replace estate plans or legal documents. They work alongside them to ensure your intentions are understood and executed with unity.

Why Do Families Lose Control and Wealth Across Generations?

The adage “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” isn’t folklore—it’s supported by data. Roughly 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and 90% by the third. The cause isn’t investment failure—it’s communication failure.

When the next generation isn’t included in decisions, or when heirs inherit wealth without the skills to manage it, chaos follows. Governance provides a platform to educate, mentor, and involve heirs long before transitions occur. You minimize risk by ensuring they understand not just what they’re inheriting, but why—and how to manage it responsibly.

More often than not, the breakdown isn’t financial—it’s relational. Families without governance structures tend to default to reactive conflict management, rather than proactive decision-making. Regular meetings, documented agreements, and a clear process for resolving disputes are your defense against that drift.

How Do You Build a Family Governance Structure?

Start with a meeting—not with your attorney, but with your family. Identify what unites you, what goals you share, and where the potential friction points are. From there, document your Family Mission Statement and draft a Family Charter that reflects your values, vision, and operating rules.

Then, set up a Family Council—a small group (often your elders and older siblings) tasked with making decisions on behalf of the broader family. This council typically meets quarterly and oversees things like philanthropic goals, education funding, and business governance.

You’ll also want to define:

Voting rights (who gets a vote and on what issues)
Succession planning (how leadership roles shift over time)
Conflict resolution mechanisms
Financial education milestones for heirs

Every structure should be customized to fit your family. For some, that means involving three generations and advisors. For others, it starts small—with a mission statement and an annual retreat. The point is not perfection, but process.

What Role Does the Family Office Play in Private Household Self-Governance?

If your family uses a family office for its autonomy—whether single or multi-family—it plays a critical role in facilitating governance. The family office, such as the dining room table, becomes the operational hub for financial reporting, legal coordination, and long-term strategy execution. The family strategy needs to include every imaginable topic such as spending, meals, education, health, fitness, social times, friends, goals, reports, outcomes, reflection and so forth. Make this your A to Z opportunity to defend your family against chaos.

Many families outsource governance coordination to their family office team. This may include scheduling meetings, preparing family reports, running next-gen mentorship programs, and coordinating with estate attorneys and CPAs. A well-run family office acts as a neutral third party, ensuring objectivity and continuity across generational leadership changes. Professionals can be consulted by the family which has a well-created plan so that the professional isn't tasked with telling the family what to do, but instead specifically charged with making sure the family has all of their bases covered to become well aware of potential pitfalls and potential rewards.

Where family offices become most valuable is in transitions—when an elder passes away, when business ownership changes, or when new family members come of age. In those moments, the office can anchor governance and help you avoid emotional decisions that derail long-term plans. Using a hastily prepared "WILL" for telling your family's heirs to "Share and share alike!" is the fastest way and quickest recipe for a disaster.

How Do You Prevent Conflict Through Governance?

Without a process, conflict is inevitable. With a process, it becomes manageable. Conflict in families often stems from unclear roles, unequal distributions, or unmet expectations. That’s where governance shines.

A good governance system includes a Code of Conduct that outlines respectful behavior, confidentiality, and appropriate communication. It also includes a defined dispute-resolution protocol—sometimes with the involvement of a mediator or legal advisor.

If you set expectations early—who will lead the family business, how the children are raised, where to live, what clothing to wear, how decisions are made, how heirs access funds—you replace guesswork with clarity. This doesn’t eliminate disagreement, but it prevents surprise, which is usually what triggers resentment.

Families that commit to consistent, agenda-driven meetings—whether weekly, monthly or quarterly—see higher engagement and fewer misunderstandings. Transparency and communication don’t just preserve wealth and honor; they preserve relationships and help keep the love alive.

How Does Governance Engage and Educate the Next Generation?

If the next generation doesn’t understand the values that built the family’s vision, direction and wealth, they won’t sustain it. Governance isn’t just about structure—it’s about leadership development.

You engage the next generation by involving them early in their lives. Start by including them in Family Assemblies, where you cover topics like investment basics, estate structure, charitable giving, how to self-govern, self-reliance, being prepared and tax implications. Assign leadership roles in smaller projects or committees. You might have a Camping Committee. You might have a Remodeling The Kitchen committee. Let them co-lead a philanthropic effort or present a family investment idea.

Introduce education milestones:

Age 13–18: Financial literacy and understanding of family mission beyond the ages of accountability
Age 18–25: Mentorship from current leaders, shadowing council meetings
Age 25–35: Voting rights, committee participation, succession planning

This phased exposure builds confidence, alignment, and leadership capacity. Families that treat heirs as passive recipients of wealth often end up with passive results. But if you mentor them into leadership, you build stewards—not dependents.

What Happens If You Don’t Formalize Governance?

Without formal governance, decisions become reactive, inconsistent, and emotionally charged. Over time, this erodes both capital and trust. Families can quickly lose control due to many societal pressures designed to erode nuclear family cohesion.

Common outcomes include:

Sibling disputes over business succession
Unequal distributions sparking resentment
Lack of preparedness for financial transitions
Disengaged or entitled heirs
Long legal battles that fracture families

Governance doesn’t solve everything—but it gives you a plan. It lets you define rules, assign responsibilities, and revisit agreements annually. When the unexpected happens—a health crisis, a divorce, a business sale—you have a structure to rely on.

Why Governance Matters for Multigenerational Families

Prevents wealth and trust erosion across generations
Builds clarity around roles, decisions, and expectations which a family can preset for everyone in the household
Educates and empowers the next generations based on the family design and intent
Provides tools to manage conflict and succession
Aligns values with real-world actions

In our modern times, I am still searching to see if there are now some AI generators which can help in the planning, design and build of a new house long before actually spending money on all the above?

Yes, AI tools and generators are available for the early stages of house planning and design, well before any money is spent on construction.

These platforms help generate floor plans, create 3D models and visualizations, and analyze feasibility and cost. They are intended for use by both professionals and individuals to streamline the creative and technical aspects of design.

How AI tools can help anyone before actually building a new home

Concept and Visualization: Tools like Midjourney, Adobe Firefly, and Veras can generate visual concepts from text prompts or convert simple 2D sketches into detailed 3D models. This helps in brainstorming and creating high-quality, photorealistic renders for presentations.

Floor Plan Automation: AI generators such as Maket.ai and ARCHITEChTURES can produce code-compliant and optimized floor plans and layouts based on user inputs like room count, site data, and zoning rules. This accelerates the iteration process and helps meet regulatory requirements.

Feasibility and Cost Estimation: Platforms like Archistar and Ark Design AI can analyze a project's feasibility by generating multiple design options for a site and providing automated cost estimations. Other tools, such as Downtobid, focus specifically on generating cost estimates for contractors.

Environmental Analysis: AI tools like Autodesk's Forma can analyze and simulate environmental factors such as sunlight, wind, and energy consumption for a proposed design. This allows for more informed and sustainable design choices early in the process.

Collaboration: Some AI-powered platforms, including Snaptrude, enable multiple stakeholders, like designers, clients, and contractors, to collaborate on and review designs in real-time.

What can one innovative Minnesotan man do today to set-off in a better direction against the plight of abused people and to innovate new ways to self-govern at or within our households?

As an innovative Minnesotan, I can contribute to new models of household self-governance by shifting focus from domestic violence to domestic peace. This reframing centers upon prevention and equity by promoting healthy family dynamics and challenging the cultural norms that enable abuse in the first place. Abuse at the hands of rogue foreign entanglements of bastardized fake governments. Practical steps can range from personal action to technological and community-based solutions at the local level.

Personal and household actions

Model healthy relationships and communication. Abusive behavior is often learned by people who're propelled by greed and fraud. By modeling respectful communication, consent, and partnership within your own household, you can challenge the attitudes that enable violence, grift and oppression. This provides a positive example, particularly for children and young adults, and can create a new cycle of healthy behavior.
Create household accountability protocols. Develop a family-wide or household accountability plan that is separate from abusive dynamics. Instead of a single authority figure making decisions, establish an agreed-upon process for conflict resolution and shared governance. This could involve regular, moderated family meetings, clear and non-punitive rules, and a commitment to restorative practices for addressing harm.
Implement tech-based safety and empowerment tools. With a background in innovation, you can develop simple, non-intrusive technologies to empower household members. This could include a shared, confidential digital hub for family members to check in, or apps that provide discreet access to safety plans, resources, and communication tools for those more prone to unsafe situations.

Innovative community-based initiatives

Pioneer a "Domestic Peace Project." Partner with local organizations like the non-secular St. Paul & Ramsey County Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (SPIP) to expand the focus from intervention to prevention. This could involve developing educational programs for Minnesotan home schoolers and for communities that teach skills for healthy relationships, conflict resolution, and mutual respect, starting at a young age.
Facilitate restorative justice circles. Adapt and apply restorative justice principles—which focus on repairing harm rather than punishment—for household conflict. By working with community advocates, you can help develop and facilitate "restorative circles" for families dealing with abuse. This could provide an alternative pathway for accountability and healing outside of the traditional legal system, which can sometimes be complex for survivors to navigate. Imagine that, having lived this way for years, would have potentially saved Minneapolis over 2 billion dollars in losses during the 2020 civil disobedience in that one city alone.
Organize bystander intervention training. Collaborate with secular NGO taking the place more effectively than that of the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault (MNCASA) to host or promote "active bystander" trainings in your community. These workshops would hope to equip people to intervene safely when they witness suspicious or unsafe situations, expanding the network of support beyond a single household. Not being a bunch of snitches, but instead fostering an attitude of pleasant community and society relationships.

Supportive policy and advocacy

Advocate for survivor-centered policy reform. Use your innovative perspective to propose policy changes that center the needs of survivors and improve access to justice. This could mean advocating for fairer legal processes, supporting culturally specific services, and pushing for policies that empower survivors with choices in how accountability is pursued.
Support local anti-violence organizations. Directly support and partner with Minnesota-based organizations that are doing this work, such as Cornerstone and Alexandra House, by using your innovative skills to help with their programming. These groups offer shelter, legal advocacy, and crisis support for adults and youth experiencing violence.
Increase financial autonomy for at-risk households. Innovate solutions that address the financial control often used in all areas of psychological abuse brought to bear against ordinary people by out-of-control government agencies, those living upon massive over-reach. For example, you could support or develop financial literacy programs and matched savings projects, similar to Family Assets for Independence in Minnesota (FAIM), to help vulnerable individuals gain economic independence.

In Conclusion

With lots of elbow grease, a little bit more time in the day, and some great new AI or Super AI or Generative AI software applications, I can clearly see the day where somebody will be looking back on the Unruly States of Affairs, and then saying the phrase, "Some Thirty Years Ago" Household Dynamics was always about and will always be about family governance. Becoming prepared with training and methods that I have produced over the past thirty-five years can be the difference between preserving wealth and losing it to conflict or inaction.

When we define our values, document our processes, and educate the next generations of our family, we build more than a financial legacy—we build a leadership pipeline. Don’t wait for a crisis to start. Start now, structure smart, and let improved governance support your family for generations.

Details: Category: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people; Hits: 168

THE ABUNDANCE PARADIGM: WHY AI FORCES A RETHINKING OF MONEY ITSELF — PART 1

By Ellen Brown on May 11, 2026

A Universal Basic Income (UBI) has long been proposed as a way to cushion the blow of jobs lost to automation. Under that model, everyone receives a modest monthly payment – enough to cover basic needs and prevent extreme poverty.

But Elon Musk has gone further. On April 16, he posted on X:

Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.

Rather than a subsistence stipend, Universal High Income (UHI) would be a level of income allowing ordinary people to live well in a world where machines do most of the work. Musk has also said that AI and robotics are the only things that can solve the massive U.S. debt crisis.

That sounds promising, but where will the government get the money to pay the UHI? Critics say any government that tried it would go bankrupt. There are also other concerns, which will be addressed in Part 2 of this article. Here we will look at the financial underpinnings: why UHI is even thinkable, why AI forces a reexamination of how money enters the economy, why the current system cannot scale to meet what is coming, and the implicit transition needed to meet that challenge.

Why the Current Money System Cannot Scale

The national debt of the U.S. government just topped $39 trillion. China’s is $18.7 trillion. Japan’s is $8.6 trillion. Those of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain are each in the multi-trillion-dollar range. Collective global debt now stands at $353 trillion, 305% of the world’s annual economic output. So even if, hypothetically, everything produced in the world in a year were applied toward liquidating the debt, it still would not be enough to pay it all off.

In fact the debt can never be repaid, because of the way money currently enters the system. Nearly all of the money supply today is created by banks when they make loans. Banks do not lend their existing capital. The loan itself creates the money. The bank adds the loan amount to the asset side of its balance sheet and balances that sum with the same amount on the liability side. When the borrower withdraws or transfers the funds, either the bank takes them from its reserves in “vault cash” or the Federal Reserve debits the bank’s digital reserve account at the central bank. But the lending bank typically has funds coming into its reserve account at about the same rate as they are going out, so its reserves are continually replenished. Thus a very small reserve account can support a much larger money creation engine. For decades before the Fed discontinued the reserve requirement in 2020, it hovered at around 10%.

The chief problem with this debt-based system is the interest, which the bank does not create in its original loan. For a typical long-term loan, interest can double the total tab or more. Where is the money to come from to pay this added liability? Across the system as a whole, it must either come from more borrowing or from existing funds. In the case of governments, that means issuing interest-bearing bonds or tapping taxes and other revenues. The interest on the debt compounds, meaning the government is paying interest on interest. This makes the debt increase exponentially, until it is mathematically unsustainable. Then bankruptcies occur, of banks or even whole governments. Booms turn into busts, and the cycle begins again.

Today, interest on the federal debt is the second largest budget line item after Social Security, exceeding $1 trillion. Meanwhile, workers are losing jobs to AI/robotics, shrinking the income tax base. The system is clearly unsustainable.

How to Raise Demand to Scale to the Upcoming Supply

A Universal High Income would replenish the shrinking tax base by replacing the lost wages of unemployed workers. But where will the money come from to pay the UHI? The only sustainable solution is for the government to issue it interest-free. That does not mean through the Federal Reserve, which creates money in the same way banks do: it buys federal interest-bearing securities with accounting entries. The Fed collects the interest, which it is supposed to return to the Treasury after deducting its costs. But since 2008, its costs include paying interest on the reserves of its participating banks, which consumes its profits. (See my earlier article here.)

The only interest-free, debt-free solution that will actually increase the money supply sufficiently to match the projected productivity of AI/robotics is for the money to be issued directly by the Treasury.

This is not a radical new idea. It is authorized in the U.S. Constitution, which provides in Article 1, Sec. 8, that “The Congress shall have Power To … coin Money [and] regulate the Value thereof .…” Abraham Lincoln used government-issued “Greenbacks” to avoid a crippling debt to British-backed bankers. Debt-free government-issued money was also the funding mechanism by which the American colonists succeeded in creating a thriving economy and liberating themselves from the oppressive yoke of the British Empire.

In his 1729 pamphlet “A Modest Inquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency,” Benjamin Franklin argued that a lack of currency was a tax on industrious farmers and producers, and that a reliable, locally issued paper currency was the “oil” for the gears of trade. The “Nature and Necessity” of this currency was to facilitate the movement of goods between neighbors. Franklin observed that the British strategy of keeping the colonies short of cash was a method of economic suppression. By forcing the colonies to use gold and silver, which were constantly drained back to London to pay for imports, the Crown kept the colonies in a state of permanent debt and low productivity. When the money supply matched the productive capacity of the people, universal prosperity resulted without inflation.

This logic evolved into the “American System of Political Economy” championed by Henry Carey, economic advisor to Abraham Lincoln. He wrote:

Two systems are before the world… One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. … One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system, for it is the only one ever devised the tendency of which was that of elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.

In the context of the 21st century, the “oil” that best lowers the friction of trade is debt-free government-issued money similar to Lincoln’s Greenbacks and colonial scrip. Rather than implementing a radical financial innovation, we would be returning to our roots.

Inflation or Deflation?

The chief objection to the colonies’ paper “scrip” was that they tended to over-print, so that “demand” (money) outstripped supply. Too much money chasing too few goods produced price inflation. But in the 21^st century, we will soon have the opposite problem: too little money chasing too many goods. Machines don’t need food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medical treatment or other services. So who will buy those goods and services?

Money needs to be issued to human consumers, and not just to a few wealthy human consumers serving as debt brokers thriving on interest. To create sufficient demand for the voluminous output of AI/robotics, it needs to go to the whole national population, evenly distributed. Not only can UHI work in that sort of abundant supply without producing price inflation; it is actually essential to prevent deflation.

In a conversation on X, Musk wrote:

In a normal economy, issuing more money simply increases the dollar price of the existing output of goods & services, meaning people do NOT get more stuff. If AI/robotics massively increase goods & services output, then you actually MUST issue dollars to people or there will be massive disinflation.

As paraphrased on Yahoo Finance (reposted from Benzinga), Musk wrote that handing out more dollars becomes a problem only when the economy’s supply of goods and services fails to surge alongside the money supply. His claim is that AI and robotics could lift production so sharply that the bigger risk would be falling prices, not rising ones.

But aren’t falling prices a good thing? In this case, no. Prices would be falling due to a lack of demand, meaning producers can’t find customers for their products. They wind up laying off workers and eventually going bankrupt. When spread across the whole economy, the result is a deflationary spiral: prices fall, businesses lose revenue, and the economy contracts, not because production is inadequate but because purchasing power is insufficient. The result is recession or depression. In the Great Depression of the 1930s, food was rotting in the fields while people were starving, because they were out of work and had no money to spend.

Job cuts from AI are already happening. According to the same Benzinga article:

Evidence of near-term strain is showing up in corporate announcements: employers disclosed more than 27,000 job cuts linked to AI in the first quarter of 2026, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The outplacement firm said that figure was up 40% from the same period a year earlier.

Robert Reich reports that wages are around two-thirds of the typical corporation’s total cost, and that in the first four months of 2026, big U.S. corporations cut over 128,000 jobs.

How Soon Will All This Happen?

Another Benzinga article, reposted on Yahoo Finance on March 16, detailed Musk’s projected time frame:

Speaking remotely to the Abundance Summit last week, Musk told XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis that the global economy is on the verge of an explosion so massive it defies historical precedent.

“I’d say the economy is 10 times its current size in 10 years,” Musk said, before quickly clarifying that the growth could be even more explosive. “Greater than,” he added, framing the projected shift in economic output as a “fairly comfortable prediction.” …

Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity Is Near, sees AI reaching Artificial General Intelligence (human-level intelligence across virtually all domains) by 2029, and full transformative abundance by 2045.

Other experts question these time projections, but a radical transformation of traditional manufacturing and trade is likely to happen sometime in the reasonably near future. The question is, will the money system transition soon enough to rescue all the laid-off workers from homelessness and famine?

The Sovereign Wealth Fund Alternative

There is another model for distributing the gains of automation, one that can be phased in gradually as the AI workforce expands. It comes from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. In an ironic twist, Altman and Musk, who jointly founded OpenAI in 2015, are now locked in a high-profile legal battle over whether Altman diverted Musk’s $44 million investment to transform what was conceived as a nonprofit “for the benefit of humanity” into a highly lucrative for-profit enterprise.

That dispute aside, Altman’s alternative model for sharing AI-generated wealth is a national sovereign wealth fund seeded by the profits of AI and robotics. His proposed American Equity Fund would take public stakes in the companies and technologies driving automation, capture a portion of the resulting productivity gains, and distribute them as universal dividends. The Fund would not replace a Universal High Income but would complement it.

This approach has several advantages. It ties payments directly to real output, scales automatically with productivity, and can be introduced gradually, avoiding the shock of issuing large payments before the supply side has fully expanded. It would resemble the Alaska Permanent Fund, which distributes oil revenues to residents, except that here the resource would be the most powerful general-purpose technology since electricity.

Conclusion: A New Monetary Logic for a New Productive Era

For centuries, money has been issued as a claim against the future productivity of human labor, repaid from the income that labor generates. The logic of this debt-based system collapses when machines become the primary producers of goods and services. Then the limiting factor becomes purchasing power — the ability of human beings to access the abundance their own technologies create. That requires a monetary architecture that expands with output rather than debt, and distributes income not through wages alone but through mechanisms tied to the productive capacity of the whole system.

Universal High Income and a sovereign wealth fund are two ways of doing that. One ensures a stable floor of demand; the other ensures that the public shares in the gains of automation. Both would be grounded in real production. But for the public to have access to those gains, the money supply needs to expand in proportion to the expanding pool of goods and services. This can be done by restoring the innovation our forefathers baked into the Constitution: debt-free money issued by the government itself.

How to fund a UHI without triggering inflation or driving the government into bankruptcy is the first objection critics raise, but there are others. They argue that people would stop working or stop learning, that society would collapse into idleness or chaos, that life would lose meaning without jobs, that the government would have the power to control how people spend their money. Will a UHI ring in the promised utopia or lock us into a state-controlled digital prison? Part 2 of this article will address those concerns.

_______________

This article was first posted as an original to ScheerPost.com. Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of thirteen books including Web of Debt, The Public Bank Solution, and Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age. Her 400+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com.tom of Form

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