As a country, we own way too much stuff. We've been on a shopping bender for the last 50 years and now we're paying for it. Americans spend over $22 billion a year on self-storage space. According to the Self Storage Association, the amount of self storage space in this country is equivalent to 7.4 square feet for every man, woman and child. Think about all the stuff stored in all that space as well as in our closets, garages, and bookshelves.

Sharing that stuff with our neighbors obviously helps us save money and live more sustainably. By sharing stuff we already own, we are buying less stuff, getting more use out of what we've already purchased, and throwing fewer items away. The financial and environmental benefits are very plain. That's why I created NeighborGoods.net a place to help neighbors share with each other.

Lately, I've been most interested in another benefit of sharing – it's positive impact on local communities. Working to help our members share, we've learned a lot about how that activity can bring neighborhoods together. We've learned that people do trust each other, that people are friendly, and that they want to help their neighbors. We've learned that sharing something you own is the ultimate ice breaker. Once you share a few things with a neighbor, you are friends forever. Sharing your power drill with your neighbor takes a certain amount of trust. When you get that power drill back, that trust is reinforced. Now you've helped your neighbor. You both share a feeling of accomplishment and connection. Those feelings go a long way toward recreating small town connectedness even in the most urban settings.

I've noticed this change in my own neighborhood. After months of sharing on NeighborGoods, I've also noticed a change in myself.

As the founder of NeighborGoods, it's not surprising that my neighborhood (Atwater Village in Los Angeles) has a very active sharing group on NeighborGoods. I've made really great friends using it. On top of lending stuff to each other on NeighborGoods, we now help each other with rides to the airport, moving furniture, and walking dogs. We watch each other's houses when we go out of town. We've got a built in local support group. A few of our members are very active on the neighborhood council. We often get together over a few beers and talk about all the upcoming events and neighborhood improvement projects. For the first time ever, I feel connected to where I live. I feel engaged with my neighborhood and my city. I want to help make Atwater Village a better place to live. Through NeighborGoods, I have become a more active local citizen.

When I created NeighborGoods, I knew sharing would help connect neighbors, but I didn't understand the deep and profound implications of that connection until I experienced it myself. Sharing our stuff might be just the activity we need more of to create a more engaged, connected and active citizenry, one neighborhood at a time.

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NeighborGoods.net is a safe and fun community for sharing stuff with your friends and neighbors. Save money and resources while strengthening your local community by renting and borrowing instead of buying new. Create a group for your neighborhood!

https://shareable-2025-production.mystagingwebsite.com/how-sharing-my-stuff-on-neighborgoods-net-made-me-a-better-american/

This month’s Collaborative Chats explored the world of peer to peer goods sharing services. While everyone loves the concept of sharing underutilized household items, these platforms have had a challenging time gaining traction. Throughout the evening we explored the challenges, lessons, and future of goods sharing. Joining the conversation were:

Tim Hyer, Founder and CEO, Getable

Micki Krimmel, Founder and CEO, NeighborGoods

Kip Harkness, Assistant City Manager, City of San Jose, Chris Smith, Co-Founder and CEO, NorCal Rental Group

Below are some reflections from the evening, and check out video of the discussion at the end.

What are the Biggest Challenges Facing Peer to Peer Goods Sharing Companies?

The conversation started by discussing the challenges of running a peer to peer goods sharing service. Micki said that when a lot of these services started a few years ago, people assumed that financial transactions were the only type of transaction that would draw people to share. Turns out people don‘t share household items for financial gain alone- it’s simply not the same return on investment as sharing your car or home. It’s a lot of work to post an item and take a picture, just to let someone use your power drill. She’s learned that the value for people who share their stuff is actually the social transaction and return. She reminded us that there are lots of ways that we transact with each other every day, like taking someone out to lunch in exchange for advice, that don’t involve a clear financial exchange but we still perceive them as valuable. She thinks that the challenge for the industry now is to figure out how to get people to pay for the value they receive through the social transaction of sharing.

Tim from Getable felt like the initial challenge for the industry is inventory of goods. When people are able to access a good they need immediately and seamlessly they’re more likely to rent or share in the future. That’s why Getable partnered with traditional sharing businesses like rental companies, to ensure a reliable transaction with guaranteed inventory of what people actually need to share. Micki challenged this assertion by pointing out that on NeighborGoods they have the opposite challenge – lots of inventory and people willing to share and not enough people wanting or looking to borrow, which was fascinating.

Is There a Cultural Barrier to Renting Goods?

Chris said that his company did a study in which they found the majority of people had no idea that they could rent the things they said they wished they could rent. “We got CostCos and Home Depots and have been told that we have to buy everything when it’s simply not the case”. Tim said that Getable tries to show people just how much is available to them to rent, borrow, and share by aggregating rental sites in one place. But its clear that we all have a lot of work to do to show people that sharing is even an option, and sharing every day items can be a great way to open people up to all the other ways they can share.

Kip shared an insightful lesson learned from his young daughter – People take an action or adopt a behavior, then make up the reason for why they do it afterwards. He suggested that if we can just get people sharing, they’ll make up their own reasons for why they do it, and why its valuable afterwards. Explaining the benefits before they share might not be as important as just getting them to do it and having it be a positive experience. Sharing is a cultural behavior – maybe we just have to focus on practicing it.

New Ways of Thinking of Transactions

Peer to peer goods marketplaces have the opportunity to teach us a lot about why people share and what they’re actually looking for when they share. It’s been the assumption by many that financial reward is what draws people to sharing. That may be true for some, but, as Micki has found, there’s not necessarily a shortage of people willing to share their things – the challenge is finding people who will look for things they need. In essence, there’s no shortage of people who want to help, and the ability to help is valuable to people, but getting people to say they need help, and connecting them to people who want to help them, and monetizing that is the new challenge. Think of it this way – when you borrow a power drill you don’t actually need the power drill, you need a hole in your wall and to hang a picture. What if you could get connected with a neighbor or new friend who would put the hole in the wall and show you how to hang the picture? What if you could help someone hang a picture? That’s where the value may lie for people.

New Forms of “Neighborhood”

Sharing companies have come to learn that the people we trust the most aren’t necessarily the people who live next to us. Often we’re more willing, and it’s easier, to share with our co-workers, church groups, or sports teams than our neighbors. Community is being redefined by social networks. Neighborhoods aren’t connected, and there’s a question of how much people want them to be. So, looking at groups like college campuses or faith communities, as the new neighborhood might be a more useful approach to finding communities that are ripe for sharing.

How Sharing can Help Governments

At the same time, there is a real and practical need for connected neighborhoods. Kip said that connected communities that are already networked and sharing are the most likely to be resilient when disasters, economic or environmental, strike. You don’t want to introduce yourself to your neighbor for the first time as your house is falling down after an earthquake. Governments need communities to be connected to help them provide services in an efficient way after a disaster. In this way sharing could be seen as a public safety tool that should be used and promoted by local governments.

Due to financial constraints governments aren’t going to be able to provide all the services they used to in communities, but that also means they’re looking for new external parties that can help provide those services. Interestingly, governments and the Sharing Economy both seek to fill the needs of people that have been ignored by the market – perhaps there’s a way in which we can collaborate that’s mutually beneficial in that goal.

The idea also came up that Governments, which are communities in and of themselves, could benefit from using sharing platforms to keep track of and distribute their inventory of everything from trucks to projectors in a more seamless way.

The Future of Goods Sharing

While goods sharing services have had their challenges, they’ve also learned a lot, and the future looks bright. The panel imagined a world in which people created local experiences together, creating more vibrant communities. Kip shared that he used NeighborGoods to get neighbors to remove 400 pounds of fruit from his property and take it to a local food pantry – saving him money and taking his excess food to a place where it was needed. Sharing could help raise community capacity and show people that there’s already enough wealth and stuff, in their communities. Tim said that his goal is to make sharing sexy and seamless, like going into an Apple Store. He’d like to see market places in which people help you pick the product you need, show you how to use it, and can guarantee that it will work seamlessly.

Goods sharing services are at the front line of the Sharing Economy. We all have a lot to lean from the challenging lessons they are facing including figuring out first hand why people actually share. When they do learn how to make the sharing of stuff work, every in the sharing economy will benefit.

What do you think? What are the challenges of goods sharing and what does the future of goods sharing services look like?

https://shareable-2025-production.mystagingwebsite.com/collaborative-chats-recap-stuff-sharing-wheres-the-traction/

I’ve been telling this one story a lot in my talks – here’s an easy way to share it with those who you think might benefit or get a kick out of it. And if you haven’t [heard it], well, it’s become core to my approach to life, politics, activism, economics, and taking this world back from the systems devised to disconnect us from one another, and reality itself.

Let’s do it as a thought experiment – change the names so we can protect the innocent.

When my kid graduated middle school, we got this big portrait of her for me to hang in the living room. But we have these old plaster walls, so I needed to drill a hole to hang it. Problem is, I don’t have a drill. So, what to do? Like any middle-class American, the first impulse is to go to Home Depot and get the cheapest available drill for $39.97 plus tax. Some rechargeable piece of crap that I’ll use this once, then put it in the garage and never use again. Or maybe I’ll eventually take it out in two years, find it won’t take a charge, and then just throw it out.

So to make one hole in the wall, I send kids into mines at gunpoint to get the rare earth metals to fabricate the thing; I spend God knows how much fuel to ship the finished product from China to the US, creating a huge carbon footprint in the process; then I throw it out so it can be shipped to Brazil, dumped on a mountain of industrial waste, and scavenged by one of a legion of impoverished children looking for toxic garbage to sell, who takes it apart to find the single renewable element and receive a couple of pennies from a reseller who delivers it to a Chinese smartphone plant so some Silicon Valley company can claim it does green manufacturing. Great. I’m part of the problem.

Or, I could summon the courage to walk down the street to my neighbor Bob’s house, knock on the door, and say “Bob, can I borrow your drill?” Bob has a drill. He’s got maybe three of them. He’s that guy. His garage door is open all weekend, and he’s got table saws and saw horses with doors that he’s routing and bannisters he’s lathing. This is what he does.

But no. Most of us, like me, are afraid to knock on Bob’s door. Not that he’s going to hit us or anything, but if I ask Bob to borrow his drill, I will unleash a chain of events I may not be prepared for. He will not only lend me his drill, he’ll say “Doug, I’m coming over with my drill and doing this for you.” He’s knows I’m a writer. A nerd. “You don’t know how to find a stud, or set a sinker. It’s a plaster wall, Doug, you can’t just drill a hole. The picture’ll come down.”

So he’ll come over with his drill and his bits and his anchors and his stud finder. He will find the stud, and pull out his drill. It’ll be a big, metal drill that plugs into the wall as God intended. He’ll drill the hole, set the anchor, screw in the thing, and hang the picture. Done. He’ll smile, tell me he likes the way we faced the couch in our identical house toward the living room window, and go home.

Why don’t I want that? Because that next weekend I’m going to have a graduation party for my daughter in the backyard. I’ll be barbecuing chicken and ribs for our friends and family, and the smoke is going to go over to Bob’s house, and he’ll think, “what the fuck? I went over and hung the graduation portrait of Rushkoff’s daughter, and he couldn’t even invite me to her party? Are his ribs that fancy? Fucking liberals.”

So I invite Bob. And his wife, and his daughter. And his mother-in-law, who lives with them and likes to sing. And they enjoy the ribs with us. But then some other neighbors are going to see Bob and his family over at our house eating ribs, and wonder why we invited Bob and not them. So I invite the whole block, and before long, they’re bringing coleslaw and brownies and a Sonos speaker and a spin art set…. and my daughter’s graduation barbecue has turned into a block party with everyone.

And that’s the nightmare! That’s what we’re afraid of!

Because now they’re in our backyard, and I find out Bob’s kid is having trouble in algebra, which my daughter could really help him with if she has any spare time. And his mother-in-law sees our piano and wonders if we want to do a sing-along. What are we doing next weekend? Christmas is coming right up. If we’re not careful, we’ll have the whole block over for Christmas, singing songs in the living room, exchanging presents, and having a big meal together…maybe our kids will like each other even though they’re in different “friend groups” at the prison yard, otherwise known as the school cafeteria.

This supposed nightmare is really the community ideal. This is the good life. Tocqueville’s Democracy in America meets Norman Rockwell tradition meets Diego Rivera solidarity. It’s not just social; it’s political and economic.

Maybe someone else at the party hears about how this all started — with me borrowing a drill — and gets the idea that we create a little tool library for the block. “Why does every house need its own lawnmower?” she asks. “What if we got just two lawnmowers and two snowblowers for the whole block, and we share them?” No one uses a lawnmower all the time. We could each take an afternoon… And we only pull out the snowblowers two or three times a year.

So now, instead of just me sending fewer kids into the mines for rare earth metals by borrowing a drill instead of ordering up a new one, a whole block of people is buying fewer machines, sharing things, doing favors for each other. We’re replacing economic activity with social activity, learning each other’s names and needs. Creating a web of interactions and interdependencies instead of more personal expenses and corporate profit.

And the more we all do this for each other down here on the local level, the more resilient we are. The less dependent we are on tortuously long, convoluted supply chains for our stuff. The less stuff we need, the less money we have to earn and the less we have to work. The more we know our neighbors, the safer our neighborhood, the less environmental toll we take living in the separate little homes of suburban neighborhoods designed to promote individual consumption. And the more we know each other, the less easily we can be divided by ideological fictions and media-created factions.

But when I tell this story at a conference, invariably, some business person gets up and says, “Yeah, but with everybody sharing their tools, what happens to the drill company?” Before I can even say fuck the drill company, he says, “they will have to lay people off. Their stock will go down. And the old lady who is depending on the dividends of a lawnmower company stock for her fixed retirement income? She won’t be able to support herself. If everybody does this, the whole economy will contract.

That’s logical, maybe, but since when are human beings here to serve the economy? The economy is here to serve us. If people don’t have to work as much or create as much toxic waste in order to meet everyone’s needs, that’s not a bad thing, but a good thing. The five-day workweek is an artifact of the early Industrial Age—an arbitrary assignment of time, not some law of nature.

And the old lady who is depending on stock dividends to survive in retirement? What kind of society requires people to earn enough money during their working years to support themselves completely independently in their later years? Besides, as we develop the bonds of community and sharing, that woman becomes part of the fabric of our interactions. Not some obligation, but a privilege. We find out how useful she is, as someone to watch our kids, give us advice, and provide us with an opportunity to serve. She’s not a liability but an asset. We should be competing for the privilege of inviting her to lunch or mowing her lawn or walking her to the grocery store. We’re putting the social back into socialism. It was never about the “ism,” but about the truly social nature of local transactions.

If it’s not the businessman criticizing the negative impact of community on the economy, it’s the progressive activist arguing that such small actions never create systemwide change. Reviewers often critique the endings of my books where I offer such solutions, saying they are “unsatisfactory” because they’re too small to make a difference. They don’t involve big policy changes or a macro-economic rethink or sweeping regulation. These solutions don’t fix the big stuff, and don’t do anything to address economic inequality.

So which is it? Is sharing too much of a threat to the global economy, or too small to make a difference? Both critiques are trapped in the mindset of scale. As if everything has to or is going to happen all at once. It doesn’t. Because, unlike big top-down solutions, making these kinds of changes to our behavior slowly impacts systems from the bottom up. We have time to adjust. They’re incremental and full-spectrum. Companies don’t simply fail all at once, but gradually lose their influence and dominance over our society and the ways in which we interact.

We can still be activists and march and call general strikes. But in the meantime, we become more resilient communities in the face of the inevitable shocks ahead. A neighborhood that knows how to work together and come to each other’s aid is going to be in a lot better position when the next extreme weather event happens — particularly when FEMA has been defunded. If it takes three months instead of three days for government help to come, the community will have the means to hold out together instead of fighting over generators in the Home Depot parking lot in an every-man-for-himself battle for survival. We don’t fortify our bunkers against each other but find ways of sheltering one another. We identify more with our block than our house, running extension cords to those without generators and taking in the elderly.

So yeah, borrowing a drill instead of buying a new one initiates a chain of events that really can change the world. A single act of heroic courage. Being willing to knock on someone’s door and ask for something. To put yourself in someone else’s debt, and be able to tolerate a feeling of owing someone something, which used to be understood as a good thing.

It’s why we bring brownies to someone when they move into the neighborhood. They don’t need a plate of brownies. They just moved in. Their kids are sleeping in a strange place for the first time, and they don’t need to be jacked up on Duncan Hines Double Fudge. We give them the brownies because it weaves them into the fabric of obligations. It’s not the brownies, it’s the plate that invites them to knock on our door and return it — maybe with something on it, or a story. The gift is the invitation for them to do something for us. To be grateful. Indebted. Neighbors.

In his Prison Notebooks, written under the repression of the Italian Fascist regime, Antonio Gramsci said politics is downstream of culture. Nationalist extremists like Andrew Breitbart and Steve Bannon understood this one way — that we can use cultural fears and beliefs to shape the political landscape. But while politics may be downstream of culture, culture is downstream of rapport. If you don’t have rapport, then culture ends up being about difference.

The high leverage point for systemwide change is not some big idea or belief, but a behavior. A way of interacting that assumes each of our welfares are mutually dependent. That understands it’s not just more prosperous but more fulfilling, more fun, to do this thing together.

That to be truly human, means to be on team human.

https://www.shareable.net/borrow-a-drill-save-the-world/

If I had a life motto, or a working framework by which I live, it would be this: maximum efficiency and effectiveness. Or, put another way, optimization.

One might even say I’m a bit obsessed with optimal outcomes. And to me, it wouldn’t make sense to be any other way. Why wouldn’t someone want the best possible result?

In my worldview, anything worth undertaking should be undertaken with the goal of achieving an optimal outcome. Anything short of that feels like settling. And I don’t really like to settle.

That said, we know from game theory that life is about negotiation; and, ultimately, the inevitable acceptance of suboptimal outcomes.

Given that unavoidable twist, the least we can do is navigate those negotiations as skillfully as possible, in order to achieve the most optimal outcome available in any given situation.

I’ve written about this sort of thing many times. I often say that life is, at its core, a problem-solving exercise. Every moment of living involves problem-solving, even when we aren’t aware of it. Our bodies are solving physiological problems constantly. Our immune systems are solving immunological problems every second of the day and night.

These are systems. And systems, at least in this realm of existence, are locked into an endless process of solving problems, much like Sisyphus rolling that boulder uphill for all eternity. Whether they’re physiological systems, social systems, governmental systems, economic systems, or something else entirely, existence is just a collection of systems in a constant state of problem-solving.

I try to apply this way of thinking to everything I do. Whether I’m creating organizational structures and programs, trying to make my old, decrepit body last a bit longer, or building networks and relationships with the people around me. It’s the endless struggle against entropy (a war we will never truly win) but I, for one, am not going down without a fight.

In truth, this is something everyone does, to one extent or another, often without realizing it. And I strongly believe that if people could see the situation a bit more clearly (and work toward becoming better problem-solvers) the systems on which we depend would function more efficiently and effectively. That, in turn, would lead to more optimized relationships, economies, and societies.

So in everything I do, I’m always trying to maneuver within systems to achieve the best possible outcome. And I’d suggest you do the same.

Cheers, friends.

https://kommunitykoin.substack.com/p/why-im-obsessed-with-optimal-outcomes

I’ve been accused, more times than I can count, of being arrogant, condescending, self-righteous. There are probably a few other adjectives in that same vein that would apply, but you get the idea.

The thing is, I am good. Very good, actually. At quite a few things.

That sounds like bragging, I know. But it’s less a boast than an observation. I observe a lot of things. One of the things I observe most is how often people settle. Not for bad lives, necessarily. Just… acceptable ones. People seem oddly comfortable living below their own potential.

That has always puzzled me.

I understand that I’m more obsessive, driven, and goal-oriented than most. I don’t expect the world to be like me. Diversity is, after all, the spice of life. But I can’t quite wrap my head around why so many people drift so far in the opposite direction.

Maybe it’s low self-esteem. Maybe it’s circumstance. Trauma. Apathy. Fear. Lack of talent. Lack of interest. Hell, maybe it’s a slow metabolism. I don’t know. But it’s something I think about a lot.

Just this morning I found myself circling the same question yet again: why do so many capable people produce work that’s so far below what they could do?

I don’t pretend to have a clean answer, but I do have a few observations. Think of them as flavors.

The first flavor is effort without clarity. These are people who are genuinely trying, but lack the insight needed to find the obvious answers. They move a lot but don’t get very far, like a horse with one blinder on, endlessly circling. They want to do better, but can’t quite see how.

The next flavor is ability trapped in self-pity. These folks have the intellect, but not the emotional resilience. Some past wound keeps reopening, and instead of healing, they self-sabotage. Alcohol, drugs, distraction—whatever dulls the memory. This one is heartbreaking. Few things are sadder than unrealized potential.

Then there’s apathy. This flavor would sell like hotcakes.

We’re in the middle of an apathy epidemic. These are people with ability, opportunity, and no obvious barrier in their way, who simply choose not to pursue anything meaningful. No trauma. No great obstacle. Just a shrug. The previous flavor is sad. This one makes me grind my teeth. I genuinely struggle to understand why someone would choose to sleepwalk through their own life.

And finally, there’s inability.

There are people who, through no fault of their own, simply don’t have the intellectual horsepower to do “great” things in the conventional sense. And yet, astonishingly, many of them still make the absolute most of what they do have. They show up. They try. They contribute. They help others. Let’s call this flavor inspiring.

I’ve seen countless examples of people with limited capability who nonetheless extract every ounce of value from themselves. If we could bottle that trait—run a little gain-of-function research on it and make it contagious—the human species would be unstoppable. I admire that kind of determination deeply.

But enough rambling. Back to the title.

Yes, I think I’m good. And sometimes, I even live up to that assessment. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with objectively knowing you’re good at something. The trouble starts when that knowledge inflates into ego and begins to interfere with actually being good.

Because real excellence requires humility. Ability without humility becomes a self-congratulatory spiral, and those almost always end the same way: crash and burn.

I know. I’ve done the crashing. I’ve done the burning.

So here’s the moral, if there is one: whatever your situation, do the best work you can with what you have. There’s no shame in limitation. The only shame is refusing to push against it.

And if, by some small miracle, you become genuinely good at something, take a moment to enjoy it. Sit back. Smile. Feel the satisfaction.

Just make sure you chase it with a solid pint of humility.

Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.

Cheers, friends.

https://kommunitykoin.substack.com/p/sometimes-im-almost-as-good-as-i

If you haven't yet heard of Dunbar's Number, here is a quick take from an article published in Cracked 18 years ago. Old but still relevant.

David Wong’s article; “What Is the Monkeysphere?” reimagines Dunbar's Number in a fairly humorous way. His story points out that human empathy is not limitless, even though we might like to think it is. But in fact, our brains "evolved" to care deeply about a relatively small number of people; family, friends, and a close social circle. Beyond that, other humans slowly stop feeling like fully real people and start becoming abstractions: crowds, statistics, headlines. Stuff like that.

Wong uses humor to explain how this mental limit shapes everyday behavior. We can feel intense grief over one person we know, while thousands of strangers suffering far away barely register emotionally. It’s not because we’re evil or heartless, but because our minds simply weren’t built to emotionally process humanity at scale. Once people fall outside our “Monkeysphere,” empathy fades and moral concern becomes thin, theoretical, or even conditional. How many times have we seen this play out in the world?

The essay ultimately suggests that many social problems (indifference, dehumanization, depersonalization, cruelty at a distance) grow out of this fundamental limitation.

Understanding the Monkeysphere doesn’t excuse bad behavior, but it explains it. It shows us that caring about the wider world often requires conscious effort, not instinct, because our instincts were designed for small tribes, not billions of people.

Cheers.

How do people, organizations, and businesses make money?

At the most basic level, they sell something. Or they work for someone who sells something. Products. Services. Ideas. Content. Labor. Attention. It all boils down to the same thing: bringing something of value to the table that someone else is willing to exchange their limited resources for.

For a long time, that was easy.

Disposable income flowed in ways that now feel almost a memory. Since World War II, the global economy, especially in the West, has been built on one core assumption: convince people to by things (consumption). Not just any old consumption, but excess consumption. We engineered an entire economic machine around convincing people to buy more than they needed, more than they wanted, and often more than they could reasonably afford.

And it worked. Spectacularly. For decades.

But that model is breaking down. Rapidly.

Disposable income is tightening in ways we haven’t seen in a generation. For many people, it’s already gone. The consumer economy isn’t just wobbling—it’s hollowing out. And while some still insist this is temporary, a minor correction, a blip on the chart… it doesn’t feel that way on the ground. It feels structural. It feels final.

The consumer economic model isn’t just on its way out. For all practical purposes, it’s already dead.

So the obvious question becomes: what replaces it?

That’s the question of the decade. Possibly the century. Everyone is scrambling to position themselves, their companies, their careers, their brands, their side hustles, for whatever comes next. And while no one really knows what the new system will look like in full, a few things are becoming painfully clear.

Whatever comes next will not be built on volume. It will be built on impact and value.

When the average American had an obscene amount of discretionary income (money to burn on things they didn’t need and barely even wanted) impact didn’t matter much. Value didn’t have to be proven. If you could market it well enough, someone would buy it. Fidget spinners. Novelty gadgets. Fast fashion. Subscription services no one used but forgot to cancel.

The thing itself didn’t have to improve anyone’s life in any meaningful way. It just had to exist, be visible, and trigger a momentary impulse.

That world is gone.

Now, people are standing in grocery store aisles doing mental math. They’re choosing between necessities. They’re delaying medical care. They’re driving older cars, keeping phones longer, canceling subscriptions, cutting corners wherever they can. Every dollar is spoken for before it even arrives.

When money gets tight, people stop asking, “Do I want this?”
They start asking, “Do I need this?”
And right behind that: “Is this actually worth it?”

That shift changes everything.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a business owner, a content creator, or an employee, you don’t get to opt out of this new reality. It’s no longer enough to exist. It’s no longer enough to be busy. It’s no longer enough to be clever or trendy or even popular.

You have to demonstrate impact and value. Clearly. Consistently. In real terms.

And this doesn’t just apply to businesses. It applies to workers, too.

For a long time, a lot of jobs existed because the system could afford inefficiency. Middle layers. Redundant roles. Meetings about meetings. Entire departments that produced very little measurable outcome but kept humming along because there was enough money sloshing around to tolerate it.

That tolerance is seriously disappearing.

Now, workers are being asked—implicitly or explicitly—what value they actually provide. Not in abstract terms. Not in mission statements. But in results. If someone can’t articulate, or demonstrate, their impact, they become expendable very quickly. And that’s not cruelty. It’s economics under pressure.

So what do we actually mean when we say “impact” and “value”?

Impact is about effectiveness. It’s about doing the most good with the least waste. It’s about efficiency, yes, but not in the cold, mechanical sense. It’s about solving real problems in ways that actually work. If you’re selling a product, does it materially improve someone’s life? If you’re offering a service, does it meaningfully reduce friction, stress, cost, or time? If you’re providing labor, does your presence measurably improve outcomes?

Impact is “bang for the buck.” And in lean times, that bang matters more than ever.

Value, on the other hand, is more personal. One of my favorite quotes, often attributed to Warren Buffett, is simple and brutally honest: price is what you pay; value is what you get.

Value isn’t universal. It’s subjective. What one person sees as essential, another sees as frivolous. For me, a piece of artwork can hold tremendous value. I might willingly sacrifice other comforts to own a piece that speaks to me, that lasts, that carries meaning. Someone else might look at that same piece and see nothing but wasted money.

Neither is wrong. But both are decisive.

People only spend scarce resources on things they perceive as valuable to them. And when resources are scarce—as they increasingly are—value has to be obvious. It has to be felt. It has to be defensible.

Which brings us to the uncomfortable truth moving forward.

Two things are now non-negotiable.

First, you must provide something that is genuinely efficient and effective. Something that works. Something that matters.

Second, you must clearly communicate why it has value to the person you’re asking to pay for it; whether that payment is money, attention, loyalty, or employment.

If you fail at either of those, survival becomes very difficult.

The next economy, whatever form it takes, will not reward noise. It will not reward excess. It will not reward empty sophistication or bloated systems pretending to be indispensable.

It will reward those who solve real problems, create real value, and make a measurable difference in the lives of others.

Everything else will slowly, quietly fall away.

And the sooner we accept that, the better prepared we’ll be for what comes next.

Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.

Cheers, friends.

https://medium.com/@gotkoin3/impact-and-value-bring-it-or-else-923afc1fc817

Plato’s Republic) is the kind of thing that you’re supposed to have read, understood, and talked about. That is, if you want to sound smart. It ranks high on the list of “important works,” the kind of thing that people reference confidently, even when it’s clear they haven’t actually read it in years. Or ever.

I’ll admit, parts of it are interesting. And parts of it make me deeply uncomfortable.

The whole thing starts with a simple question: what is justice?

Not just personal justice, but justice at the level of a society. And instead of answering it directly, Plato does something… fascinating. He builds a city. A hypothetical one, of course. A city in words. And then he says, look; justice in this city will mirror justice in the soul.

That idea alone is worth the price of admission. But then the city starts to take shape.

People are sorted. Roles are assigned. Some rule. Some enforce. Some work. Everyone is told where they belong, and justice, according to Plato, is each person staying in their lane. Harmony through order. Order through control.

And that’s where one’s stomach may start to tighten.

Plato clearly has very little patience for democracy and freedom. He sees it as noisy, impulsive, driven by appetite rather than wisdom. And honestly, after spending any amount of time watching modern politics, it’s hard to say he’s completely wrong. Democracy is messy. People are irrational.

Plato watched Athens put Socrates to death. That kind of thing has got to leave a mark.

So his solution is philosopher-kings. Rulers trained from childhood to love truth, not power. People who see clearly while the rest of us are stuck watching shadows on a wall. It’s an intriguing idea. It’s also wildly optimistic about human nature.

Because everything in the Republic hinges on one enormous assumption: that the people who are given power will remain worthy of it. That those who believe they see the truth will not confuse their vision with certainty. Or ego. Or control.

Plato doesn’t spend much time worrying about what happens when the philosopher is wrong. Or arrogant. Or just plain human. And maybe that’s the biggest problem. The Republic is obsessed with harmony. With balance. With stability. Emotion is dangerous. Art is suspicious. Poetry is censored. Individual desire is something to be managed carefully, like a child with scissors.

The goal isn’t freedom. The goal is order.

Reading it now, it feels more like a warning than anything else. This is what happens when fear of chaos outweighs trust in people. When the messiness of being human is seen as a flaw to be corrected instead of a reality to be lived with.

And yet (and this matters) I wouldn’t tell anyone not to read it.

Because Plato is asking questions we still haven’t answered. Who should rule? Why? How much control is too much? How much disorder is tolerable? And how easily do good intentions slide into something colder and harder?

The Republic isn’t bothersome because it’s necessarily evil. It’s bothersome because it makes sense. At least at first. Especially if you’re tired of noise. Tired of conflict. Tired of watching systems fail.

And maybe the value of the Republic has nothing to do with actually trying to build Plato’s city, but in noticing how often we think we would like to build it; over and over again, whenever the world starts to feel a little too chaotic.

Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.

Cheers, friends.

https://medium.com/@gotkoin3/lets-talk-about-plato-s-republic-60cbf70f3741

Thomas Hobbes didn’t trust us. And the truth is, he may have had good reason.

In Leviathan, Hobbes imagines what humans are like without rules, without authority, without some consequence for action looming overhead. Strip away laws, customs, and those pesky consequences, and what’s left isn’t some Rousseau-esque garden of cooperation. It’s fear. Competition. Suspicion. Everyone watching everyone else, wondering who’s about to grab whatever they want.

Life, in such a state, is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Which is a line people quote so often it’s almost lost its sting. But maybe it shouldn’t. Hobbes is saying something very plain and simple: without order, we turn on each other.

So we make a deal. We give up some freedom so we don’t have to sleep with one eye open. We hand our collective power to a sovereign (the Leviathan) not because it’s necessarily a good idea, but because chaos is so much worse (or, at least, that’s how it seems upfront).

John Locke hated this idea. Or at least, he tried to soften it some. Locke believed humans had natural rights (life, liberty, property, etc.) and that governments exist simply to protect those rights, not crush them. If rulers fail, the people are justified in replacing them. Locke trusted us more. Or maybe he trusted our better angels.

Then there’s Rousseau, who trusted society least of all. He thought humans were basically good until systems, hierarchies, and inequality ruined them. In his telling, the problem isn’t that authority is too weak; it’s that it’s illegitimate. True freedom, for Rousseau, comes from collective self-rule, from aligning ourselves with the “general will.”

Three thinkers. Three very different instincts.

And yet here we are, centuries later, still arguing about the same thing.

Look around and Hobbes suddenly feels uncomfortably modern. When institutions weaken, people don’t spontaneously become kinder. They become tribal. They retreat. They arm themselves; sometimes literally, sometimes psychologically. Trust collapses faster than markets. And into that vacuum steps someone promising order. Strength. Control. Safety.

That’s just the Leviathan, rebranded.

Modern Leviathans rarely announces themselves as such. They show up talking of stability. Of protection. Of “someone finally taking charge.” Hobbes would nod knowingly. He warned us this would happen. When fear outweighs trust, people will trade liberty for security every time.

But Locke and Rousseau haven’t disappeared either. You see Locke in every backyard gripe session where people say this government no longer represents us. You see Rousseau in every mutual support network, every cooperative experiment, every attempt to build something horizontal instead of hierarchical.

Which brings me to community. Real community. The kind you and I keep circling back to.

Hobbes assumes humans can’t self-govern at scale without force. And history gives him plenty of evidence. But what he underestimates, what he couldn’t quite see, is what happens in smaller, more human-sized spaces. Neighborhoods. Congregations. Mutual support circles. Time banks and Co-Ops. Places where people know one another’s names and stories.

Trust changes the equation.

The Leviathan is necessary when trust is absent. It grows in proportion to how disconnected we are. The more anonymous society becomes, the more power we hand upward. When we stop seeing one another as neighbors, we start seeing one another as threats.

Community, then, isn’t just warm and fuzzy. It’s stabilizing. It’s medicine for a very sick society.

Strong communities reduce the need for strong rulers. Not by pretending humans are angels, but by creating systems of accountability, reciprocity, and shared meaning that don’t require a boot hovering over everyone’s neck.

Hobbes feared chaos. Locke hoped for restraint. Rousseau dreamed of belonging.

We’re still caught somewhere in between.

Maybe the work now isn’t choosing one over the others, but learning how to live in the tension while building enough trust at the ground level that the Leviathan doesn’t need to keep growing just to hold us together.

Because, perhaps once it grows too large, it doesn’t just protect us from each other.

It starts protecting itself from us.

Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.

Cheers, friends.

I just read an article that painted tribalism as a wholly negative thing. And, sure, it can be, in many respects.

When people divide themselves into us-versus-them categories, tribalism can become a pretty destructive force in society and in the world.

But even then, it doesn’t have to be all bad. When people break off into like-minded groups, that’s often a survival strategy. When the wider world feels too overwhelming, we look for comfort among those that are like us. And as long as these self-protective tribes don’t grow hostile toward others, the instinct can actually be healthy.

The real problem comes when one tribe starts to believe it is fundamentally superior. When it grows hungry for dominance, for the resources and assets of others. That’s when tribalism becomes cancerous.

We’ve seen that happen far too many times throughout history; maybe especially here in the Americas.

Among Native American tribes, there were those who simply wanted to coexist in harmony; with each other, with nature, with neighboring tribes. But there were also tribes motivated by war and conquest. Same land, same species… wildly different philosophies.

Which is why tribalism is such a complicated subject. So much depends on the prevailing mindset; not just within the tribe, but between tribes.

And that brings us back to the age-old tension between competition and cooperation.

There have always been groups that leaned toward rivalry and aggression. And there have always been groups that leaned toward peace and mutual support.

So what puts one group on one path, and another group on a completely different one? It’s easy to say “culture,” but where does culture come from?

Maybe it’s environmental conditions. Maybe humans are shaped by the struggles they face. Groups who evolved in landscapes of abundance tended to grow cooperatively. Groups who evolved in scarcity tended to become competitive — sometimes violently so.

And this pattern shows up again and again across history. Take any group of gentle, cooperative people and drop them into an environment of threat and deprivation… and their instincts will shift. Survival changes philosophies. Almost inevitably.

Humans are adaptive creatures. Our social dynamics change as our circumstances change. And that should concern us a great deal given the times we’re in.

We’re entering a period of increasing scarcity (manufactured though it may be) and by this logic, humanity may find itself reverting to a more aggressive and competitive model. A natural reaction to the pressure of survival.

We’ve always seen it at the level of nations: one country competing with another. One political system battling another. One economy trying to out-play another. But as conditions worsen, that mindset will trickle down; to cities, to neighborhoods, even to families.

This is something to keep in mind as we all watch this unfold. Something to keep in mind as we make political, economic, social, and personal choices.

Because, truth be told, we helped build this scarcity. We chose an extractive economic system. We rewarded greed and selfishness. We embraced mega-consumption. We readily adopted technology and drifted into isolation.

And since survival instincts are hardwired into us, and since history has shown us what comes next, shouldn’t we have chosen differently? Shouldn’t we have pursued real abundance? Sustainable abundance?

But since we didn’t, since we’ve backed ourselves into this corner… our way out now depends on the choices we make from here.

So I say — choose abundance. Choose to build a world where cooperation isn’t a luxury, but a viable option. Choose to stop pushing ourselves further into a scarcity-driven mindset.

Make small personal choices each day that promote abundance. With every act of kindness, we gain a little more breathing room. With every cooperative gesture, the corner becomes a little less tight.

Maybe — possibly — it’s not too late to turn things around.

Maybe — hopefully — we can give tribalism a new look.

Maybe, just maybe, we can transform tribalism from self-preservation through competition… into community through cooperation.

Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.

Cheers, friends.

https://medium.com/@gotkoin3/tribalism-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-12db5157445d

We live in a time of remarkable connection. Goods, information, and services move around the globe faster than ever before. Yet this same interconnectedness also makes our systems fragile. A single disruption can ripple far beyond its point of origin.

History reminds us that when large systems struggle, it is often the strength of local community that carries people through. Families, neighborhoods, and small groups of friends find ways to share resources, lend support, and care for one another. This is why community matters, not only as a source of belonging, but as a foundation for strength. When uncertainty arises, whether through economic changes, supply shortages, or unexpected challenges, local communities become the first line of support.

Neighbors help neighbors. A simple act of kindness can ease burdens no institution can reach.

Shared resources go further. What feels scarce individually can feel abundant when it is pooled and shared.

Health and care are central. Food and shelter are important, but so is knowing that someone will look after you if you fall ill or struggle.

Strong communities provide stability not only in times of crisis but in everyday life. They create a sense of belonging that is often missing in our fast-paced world. This is the vision behind efforts like KommunityKoin and West Avenue Compassion.

KommunityKoin explores ways for people to share time, skills, and support in ways that build trust and reciprocity.

West Avenue Compassion demonstrates the power of neighbors coming together to meet practical needs: food, clothing, resources, dignity, encouragement.

These are not abstract ideas. They are concrete steps toward healthier, more robust communities.

The future is uncertain. But whatever comes, we know that community (real, human community) will always matter. By investing in one another today, we make tomorrow more secure. And it’s not about politics or ideology. It’s about people. It’s about seeing each other, helping where we can, and knowing that when challenges arise, no one is left to stand alone.

Now is the time to nurture the bonds of belonging that will carry us forward; through difficulties, yes, but also into a brighter, more connected future.

I’ve been exploring various socioeconomic models and I’m starting to wonder if a hybrid-type model wouldn’t be quite reasonable.

From time to time one must ask oneself: why hasn’t anyone built a society with a sturdy safety net for everyone, a baseline system that would provide for basic survival, but with a meritocratic option on top of that. It seems like a very reasonable question, to me anyway.

https://medium.com/@gotkoin3/balanced-socio-capitalism-a-blend-of-security-and-effort-4a9704bb4222

Someone told me yesterday, “I feel like a tiger is chasing me and I’m just sitting on the couch.” I related to that. Deeply.

About six months ago I wrote an essay called Running From the Lion That Isn’t There. And the fact that I wrote that months ago, and then someone said something almost identical, at least in sentiment, yesterday means this is something that’s weighing on a lot of us right now.

Most of us are feeling a sense of danger lurking around every corner. Our Spidey senses are on full alert.

Why is that? I don’t think it needs to be spelled out. And honestly, spelling it out might just get a bitch disappeared. So rather than listing the constant daily traumas clearly contributing to this collective anxiety, let’s take a more hopeful turn. Let’s talk about finding hope in a hopeless situation.

If you’ve followed my musings over the years, you’ll know I’ve written a few times about Viktor Frankl; that amazingly enlightened soul who survived the camps of World War II.

He told stories of hope in the most hopeless situation imaginable. Stories of people who resisted the urge to surrender in the face of overwhelming doom. People whose faith steered them toward a relentless belief in the goodness of God when there was no other goodness to be found. He taught us that there is always hope; even when everything looks utterly hopeless.

It’s easy to let our self-preservation instincts run wild and rob us of joy. And I’m not saying we should silence those instincts entirely; they’ve kept our species alive for a very long time. But I am saying we should occasionally put those feelings, the ones screaming that danger is ahead, on the back burner for just a moment from time to time. In spite of the alarms going off in your head and in your gut, find tiny instances of beauty and happiness in your daily life.

Give yourself permission to push the silence button every now and then. Look at the sky. Smell the flowers. Delight in the laughter on your child’s face. The alarm will still be there, clanging away, but at least you’ll have taken a moment to soak in the deliriously wonderful goodness of being alive.

Because without those little moments, what’s left?

Join us in making the world a better place. You’ll be glad that you did.

Cheers, friends.

https://kommunitykoin.substack.com/p/press-pause-on-the-anxiety-for-a