Age of Abundance

Money/Intelligence/Energy/Humanity

077.

September 4, 2026

Is Gen Z Cooked? (with Julian Figueroa)

Also on YouTube.

A conversation on the puzzle of translating sound money into a language a young, disenfranchised generation can actually hear. The episode surfaces the tension between depth and reach – how much economic context a message requires before it lands – and lands in a register that treats content creation itself as an act of sovereignty. Threads on off-grid building, AI, and the shape of Gen Z discontent frame the broader question.

Takeaways

  1. 01

    People almost never learn sound money first and then buy Bitcoin – the ownership tends to come first, and the curiosity about the money system follows.

  2. 02

    The credentialed middle career path has quietly become the highest-risk option for young people, because it demands debt and time against a future that keeps failing to arrive on schedule.

  3. 03

    New audiences are reached through relatable messengers, not through more depth or more data – more voices matter more than deeper explanations.

  4. 04

    Physical craft rebuilds a form of confidence that purely digital work erodes, and this matters independently of any economic argument.

  5. 05

    Vitriol toward AI in the West and enthusiasm for it in China are the same underlying problem rendered differently: technology's deflationary gift can only flow to people if the monetary system does not sit downstream of it.

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