The Good Old Days of 2023
Making the Most of Freedom as It Fades Away
Imagine reading this on June 8, 2033.
Tesla 6000 drives itself, I’m in the back seat. The whole way to the office I work on other things. Or, communicate using my digital glasses. They look and feel like regular glasses but respond to questions and verbal cues.
It’s a lot like the way we talked to Alexa back in 2023. That seems so innocent now. The digital glasses keep track of everything from my heart rate to vulgar slips. It’s a constant monitor.
Initially, they seemed great. If you spoke with a foreign colleague, they’d translate the conversation real-time. They suggested solutions before we realized we had a problem. Nobody imagined the glasses would turn into a form of digital identification. Without them on, it’s almost impossible to access anything.
Back to the Tesla 6000. After dropping me at the office, it automatically joins an online fleet of self-driving rental cars. I don’t receive any compensation for these service rides. Average people don’t own cars the way they used to. If you pass a needs test, you’ll have one at home. You have the privilege of charging and maintaining it.
It’s not just the car. The list of things we count as our property these days is a lot smaller. Even our home. It’s wired like an NSA safehouse. These days, the home is more of a tattletale than a safe space. With an endless array of sensors, you can barely breathe without prompting data collection.
Then there’s the money. People still use an old blue $100 bill in artwork or advertisements, but you only see them given to homeless people and junkies. They don’t get you very far. They’re also illegal, technically.
Paper money ended with FedCoin. In retrospect, it was a long time coming. By the end, $100 barely bought a coffee.
Turns out the crypto boom 10 years back got everyone comfortable with the idea of digital money. Crypto seemed cool, smart, and offered hope of a speculative fortune. That didn’t happen. Nobody noticed the real purpose of digital money…
Here’s how it works. Let’s say you want to go out for a steak. Keep in mind, steak isn’t what it used to be. We have lab-grown meat. It reduces our “methane footprint,” for the good of the planet.
Anyway, there is some real, cow meat around. Let’s say you want a real steak. You try to buy it but the payment sensor rejects your FedCoin wallet. It flashes a red X. It’s the only legal means of payment, and yours doesn’t work.
FedCoin tracks every dollar in existence. It’s a lot like the serial numbers on bills we used to have. The ones people played liar’s poker with years ago. The alphanumeric identification code on each paper dollar wasn’t enough to foil counterfeiting. With digital money, every dollar has a unique identity. It’s effectively an on-off switch. Step out of line, and your FedCoin only works for basic essentials.
The Cyberpanic of 2030 ended paper money for good. Every connected device went dark one Tuesday morning. Nothing worked. We stood outside in the street wondering how we’d even feed ourselves without the internet.
The new federal Department of Digital Safety issued .safe domains to authorized companies, starting with banks. All information transmitted through these official sites travels through a government server, for our safety.
In the end, we didn’t see this life coming. Back in 2023 it all seemed so exciting. Digital devices looked set to make life better. They promised convenience, entertainment, better connection with loved ones. What it looks like now is a digital prison. Like any prison, there’s contraband, dangerous choices, and consequences. Taking risks is unavoidable. Getting caught means being removed from the digital network. It’s like being banished.
Turns out, we didn’t know how good we had it in the analog age…
It’s All in The Works
That might seem dramatic. It’s closer to reality than you realize. Let’s run through a few facts and news stories as proof.
On May 26 Reuters reported an Elon Musk’s company received approval for testing brain implants in humans. People will allow this implant for research purposes.
Elon Musk, the all-star of capitalism, business superhero of our time, ushers in the era of brain implants. Over the coming years, look for implanted chips of all types to become increasingly common, and accepted.
Then there’s FedCoin. I first wrote about it in 2016. Then in 2020 devoted an entire chapter to it in my book.
Now, from Reuters, a trusted source for state-approved news.
The article goes on to say this will speed up payments, shorten settlement times, etc. They’ll have a way to sell it to us that seems good. However, it’s about control.
FedCoin does three important things:
· Eliminates counterfeiting
· Eliminates tax avoidance
· Installs a digital “on-off” switch on every dollar in circulation
Blockchain technology is exciting, it’s also dangerous. FedCoin would live on a closed loop blockchain. That means one government supercomputer controls all activity on the blockchain. People still don’t see that today. They even hope to speculate on central bank digital currencies. It’s amazing to me.
Constant Monitoring
What it all leads to is constant monitoring.
There are now 800,000 law enforcement officers in the land of the free according to National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.
Police look like characters out of the movie Terminator. They wear body armor for traffic stops. Their equipment belt, covered in tactical gear, must weigh 30 pounds.
Clipped to their chest is a black box with a camera. If it senses certain events, say the blue lights turn on, or a gunshot, it begins recording. The data goes directly to a secure server built to hold evidence. I’ve heard the system mysteriously fails sometimes, conveniently.
Then there’s the modern car. Most Teslas have eight cameras on the exterior, and one on the interior. Data collection is implied, and most owners love it. They feel empowered by access to basic data like battery levels, or range. They don’t question the nine cameras.
The same goes for the American obsession with smartphones. We all know, and accept, the smartphone listens to us. Amazon offers us products we discussed with friends at dinner last night.
We accept eavesdropping for marketing purposes. As my tech guru friend Erik says, “We know more about you than you know about yourself.”
We think it’s cool, for now. In fact, we want to profit from it...for as long as we can. This is an unstoppable trend in motion. Imagine resisting home internet connectivity in 1995. Or, trying to conduct business without a smartphone today. It’s possible, but not practical.
Regardless of our feelings, this is a major trend. It’s lifechanging, and we need to position to benefit from it.
That’s what we’ll do this week adding two stocks to the Trustee portfolio. One is large, almost government supported.
The other is small. It saw its two main competitors bought by larger firms, leaving it as the leading innovator, and likely consolidation target.
We’ll buy both. But we’ll do something more important first.
The Best Twelve Weeks of Your Life
It’s easy to get gloomy thinking about life in the future. That’s why it’s important to enjoy the life we have today.
When we look back, the next twelve weeks might be the best summer of our lives. We might look back on 2023 and see we didn’t know how good we had it.
We can travel, see a show, eat anything we choose, all with little restriction. We have some autonomy left over the small choices. Let’s enjoy them.
I saw Phish perform at the Hollywood Bowl in April. It was absolutely fantastic. The lady next to me kept looking at her phone. The band was in the middle of a 10-minute jam covering Robert Palmer’s 1974 classic, Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley, which was mesmerizing. I took a peek when she pulled it out for the tenth time. She checked to see if she had any new emails!
Put your phone down. Take a trip. Eat a memorable meal at a fancy restaurant. Spend some of your hard-earned money. Hug one of your friends. Scratch something off your bucket list.
I had dinner with a long-time friend Tuesday night in London. He’s one of my favorite people to catch up with. We had a great time. We laughed a lot, ate like kings, and then fought over the check. It doesn’t get much better.
I’ll do this all over the world this summer. Subscribers see these occasional pictures from the field at the end of the issue. I share them hoping you’ll follow my lead and make the most of this short life.
In the meantime, let’s get to the stock picks.
The Digital Era Doesn’t Work Without These
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