Same but different

I didn’t know many people that had real wealth growing up. The type of wealth where they didn’t have to worry about doing much but money would pour in to their bank account. I thought that the best way for me to earn a lot of money would be either working long hours or trying to “crack it” playing sports. There was the odd person I met, who was living comfortably that didn’t trade much of their time or bodies but they didn’t look like me and also didn’t understand my desire to see more than myself do well.

These articles I’ve been writing on my substack have been centered around me sharing this idea of Living Intentionally. Living Intentionally is the practice of setting a direction and aligning one’s actions which naturally leads to fulfillment on a daily basis. This means, now and then, I assess my direction and ask, “What kind of life can I live that would allow me and the people around me, to live on our own terms?”

I thought I had it figured out but some experiences over the last week have helped me really define my direction. It was obvious but I wasn’t so clear on how to articulate it. The direction I want to continue pursuing in my life is helping myself and communities achieve economic self-determination.

What is Economic Self-Determination?

Keeping it simple, economic self-determination means having control over the money you earn, the assets you own and the decisions you make that no one else can easily pull the rug out from under you. I’m personally interested in it as an individual but also how I can create more opportunities at a community-level.

Where mainstream financial education usually stops at is “get a better job” or “invest in the share market”, economic self-determination zooms out and looks at: How do people have more ownership in the future economy, not just be consumers within it?

Ultimately, achieving full economic self-determination means people can survive wage losses, political changes and/or economic shocks.

Automation’s impending takeover

Automation such as AI and robotics are rapidly evolving. Five years ago, automation looked like a distant future. Today, you can see it slowly infiltrating work. Along with its successors, it will only continue to evolve and spread. This leads to an uneasy truth that wage security is eroding fast, and it will be so fast that most governments will struggle to keep up. Even “safe” roles that were once untouchable are now carrying a warning that they are only here, until a cheaper, faster technology learns how to do the role.

The cross road that we are now at is. Do we:

Allow the gains of automation to widen the wealth gap or make sure people have the economic means to not only participate but decide their future?

That choice sits inside the frame of economic self-determination. Every person should be able to decide what future they want to be a part of but the truth is those who are already in a power or a financial position, will dictate what happens as they will have more freedom to think and do. For people who are not well off and are just getting by, waiting for the perfect government plan or even a retraining workforce package may be too late. People need strategies and need them yesterday.

We’ve already witnessed in our lifetime what happens to people who are financially vulnerable. During lockdowns, entire countries discovered how fragile wages were. Governments had to pump billions in emergency support just to keep households afloat. Supply chains broke, exposing the thin margins on which most families operate. If something that happened on the other side of the world can disrupt wages, imagine what happens when organisations lean more into automation. Eventually no one will be able to depend on wages. We must think about what future we are walking into, so we can best prepare.

So where does this all lead?

Economic Self-Determination is not about making more money. It is about making a shift from earning income through labour to income fueled by productive assets.

Asset ownership is not new. The difference is we have an impending epidemic with wage losses coming that if we don’t have more people making an income through ownership, not only will there be civil unrest but it will lead to more dependency on the government. It’s in the best interest of everyone, that we consider what economic self-determination looks like in a world with automation.

I believe there are 3 things we need to do to make sure, especially at community-level, that we are able to withstand not only the impact of automation but any economic shock. They are:

1. Measure vulnerability before disruption hits
   
   You can’t change what you can’t measure. In order to make the transition, we need to know the vulnerability of each community. This would be simply identifying at a community-level, how many people are earning from wages in comparison to other forms of income.
   
   Dave Shapiro has created the Economic Agency Index which measures households whose income comes from wages, property (assets) or transfers (government assistance). A clear picture of wage dependence highlights what communities are most vulnerable and provides a baseline for tracking progress as ownership patterns change.
   

2. Create vehicles that enables others to own without having to start
   
   Not everyone has the capital, time or risk-tolerance to launch a venture from scratch, yet ownership remains the surest defense against wage vulnerability. Many people simply can’t shoulder the upfront cost or uncertainty that comes with starting a business on their own.
   
   By building collective “vehicles”, legal and financial structures that enable partial ownership, we open the door for workers to hold income-producing stakes they might never assemble alone. Shared equity turns small contributions of money into meaningful assets, providing a pathway from wages to ownership.
   

3. Pair Asset literacy with AI literacy to thrive in the next era
   
   Understanding ownership has always separated those who earn from those who build wealth. Yet a share portfolio or rental property alone won’t guarantee resilience if the markets themselves are being reshaped by automation. To secure a future beyond wages, people need to grasp not only how assets grow and compound but also how AI is changing markets and what is consider a good investment.
   
   Blending workshops with budgeting, compounding and due-diligence with hands-on sessions in prompt engineering, agent workflows and responsible data use, equips everyday investors to recognise where value will emerge next. Learning how to evaluate assets, use digital tools to enhance ventures and maybe invest in opportunities that convert insight into income. In short, asset literacy explains what to own; AI literacy reveals where everything is moving.

My intent

The pathway I’ve laid out here is more than a thought-experiment, it’s where I’m concentrating my own energy, capital and creativity for the foreseeable future. By mapping our wage vulnerability, building inclusive ownership vehicles and lifting both Asset and AI literacy, we can hopefully soften the blow that will eventually take place.

The upside is enormous. When a family’s bills are covered by asset payouts rather than overtime, time itself is freed for activities that are of interest. Communities can then direct their lives towards activities they actually care about instead of scrambling for the next paycheck.

In other words, economic self-determination is not just a defensive strategy against wage collapse, it is an offensive strategy to help people do what excites them.

And that’s a future I believe is worth contributing my time towards.