New Zealand Is Not the Answer

I've noticed something about the people closest to AI. Get past the excitement, past the fear, past the debate about what it all means, and the conversation ends in the same place: escape plans.

For a striking number of them, it's New Zealand. For others it's a second passport in Portugal, land in Canada, a bunker. Nobody buys a house thirteen hours away, or thirteen feet underground, for the view. They're buying a way out.

I don't have an escape plan and I don't want one. I like the weather in LA and I think America is pretty great. Just as colonizing Mars isn't the answer to Earth's problems, an escape hatch isn't the answer to America's. So instead of pricing out a reset plan, I wrote something. It was a lot cheaper, and surprisingly more controversial.

The Information published my op-ed arguing that Americans deserve an ownership stake in AI. The piece is paywalled, but I also did a video interview with them on the same subject, and that one is free.

The problem is straightforward. For two centuries, labor was the engine of the economy. You worked, you earned, and that paycheck was your stake in the system that carried you through retirement. That arrangement is ending, or at least changing fast.

Assets are the engine now. The data centers going up in cornfields across the country produce enormous output with very few jobs attached. And our entire safety net was designed for the old model. Social Security is, at its core, a tax on labor. It's already projected to run dry. A post-labor economy pulls that date closer.

So I asked the question: how do we maintain economic and social stability?

Most answers on the table are variations of Robin Hood, forcibly rebalancing wealth by taking from one side and handing to the other. Call it socialism, call it redistribution, I call it lazy. This country was built on the unarguable power of capitalism, and I have zero interest in abandoning its principles. So I set out to find a tool capitalism already owns.

Equity is where I landed, as it's the world I know best. I’ll take dilution all day long if it grows the pie. Same trade here. Structure it as a stick and owners fight it to the death. Structure it as a carrot and everybody wins. The government has plenty to offer: trade access, export licenses, visas for talent, expedited zoning and permitting. Exchange market-expanding incentives for a stake, and the market a company sells into grows by more than the value of the equity it gave up. You're not demanding anything. You're offering a deal.

Notice what's missing: a loser. Nobody's wealth gets seized, no program writes checks it can't cash. That's not a handout. That's a cap table.

And like any earned equity stake, it should vest. Not a lump sum for existing, a stake that builds over time: years worked, taxes paid, service given, kids raised, a life contributed to the country. Every startup in America runs on this logic. You earn your ownership by being a positive contributor.

Before anyone reaches for the Black Mirror comparison: vesting is not a social credit score. A score surveils behavior and punishes deviation. A vesting schedule rewards time and contribution, the same way your 401(k) match does. One is Beijing. The other is your employment agreement.

Equity is a means, not an end.

Readers’ reaction to my Op-Ed taught me more than writing the piece.

People went straight to ideology. Is this socialism? Does this deviate from pure capitalism? Is it redistribution in a new suit? These are bright people engaging in good faith, and it's a worthy debate.

It's also the wrong first question.

For what it's worth, we haven’t had pure capitalism for some time and we already have an example of a common dividend. Alaska takes a stake in its oil wealth and pays every resident a dividend. Deep red state. Nobody calls it socialism. They call it a check.

Capitalism has been modern society’s best system, and I’m open to continuing to evolve it precisely to keep it that way. We get there by staying anchored to the principles this country was built on, not the special interests pulling at them.

This is a math problem before it's an ideological one.

You don't need to be a capitalist or a socialist to do the arithmetic. If a meaningful share of jobs disappears, and there's a real chance they will, the labor tax funding our safety net collapses years ahead of schedule. That isn't a worldview. It's a number, and it doesn't care what you believe about it.

Here's the tell. The same conversation that opens with "isn't this socialism?" tends to close, once everyone's being honest, with New Zealand. The instinct makes sense. If you've concluded the system might not hold, buying your way out to safety is rational. It's also an admission that we've stopped trying to fix it while there's still time.

We're sitting on the biggest wealth-creation event ever recorded. It would be a strange tragedy if the most durable thing we built with it was a set of exit plans.

I could be wrong about the scale and pace of job losses. I hope I am. But more Americans owning a piece of what they build is a good thing no matter what. If the shift comes, we're ready. If it doesn’t, we’re still better off, because our existing system is already tilted.

The philosophical questions are real, and I welcome them. I just don't want them to be where we claim victory. We can debate socioeconomic theory all the way to the tarmac. The arithmetic is still waiting back home.

What I'm aspiring for is simple and narrow: stability. A society stable enough that nobody needs the escape hatch. The system we've enjoyed for two centuries runs on an unspoken agreement that gives people agency, identity, and support. Take that away, and the pitchforks come out of the sheds.

I don't have the full answer. Nobody does yet, because the ground is rapidly shifting under us and the conversation keeps ending before it really starts. We reach for ideology, then for either the exit or the extremes, and skip the part in between where we sit with the math and creatively build something.

So no, I'm not writing policy and I have zero aspirations for public office. People far smarter than me on the system and mechanics need to build the real answers. I write these newsletter posts on Sunday mornings because it's the one quiet stretch of the week long enough for the big questions. The rest of the week I'm doing what I've done my whole career: backing amazing tech founders building the very transformation I write about.

Before we look elsewhere for the answer, let's find out whether it's still here. Put down the ideology. Come to the table. We can play golf in New Zealand after we solve this solvable equation.