The Invisible Ledger
The invisible ledger. What happens to the financial architecture when the friction that sustained entire industries is removed. The friction merchants, the price of attention, the claim, the unearned. Four essays on value and its discontents.
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The Friction Merchants
The friction merchants built businesses at the gap between what people needed to do and what they could do alone. The tax preparer, the insurance broker, the travel agent. AI …
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The Price of Attention
Attention used to be free. You gave it to what interested you. Now it is the product, harvested and sold. AI does not change this. It perfects it, producing content calibrated to …
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The Claim
Every functioning society operates on claims. The pension, the insurance policy, the social security payment. Each claim rests on a theory of who owes what to whom and why. The …
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The Unearned
Some of what was earned turns out to have been a function of friction. The premium that existed because the service was hard to deliver disappears when the delivery becomes …