Nick Savides

If you shut out the programming that is meant to turn you into a failure, it becomes clear that we are entering a startling new age of plenty where your imagination and character will determine your fate. New technologies have fundamentally shrunk space and time while making knowledge accessible to everyone on an unprecedented scale. Our choices over the next decade or so will determine whether that technology will remain in our hands or be used against us. The more active and creative we are as individuals, the more likely it is that we will win. Self-reliance has been celebrated as an American virtue from Emerson on. But the price was always high. Professions and crafts were structured as guilds. Barriers to entry were real. Traveling to another part of the country was expensive and took months. You could easily die. Today, technology has shrunk those once-formidable barriers into nothingness. AI puts all human knowledge at your fingertips and will show you how to solve basic problems the way a lawyer or a plumber would. Airplane travel costs the equivalent of a bus ticket. You can lease a cheap car that doesn’t use gas for a pittance per month. You can solve problems and live where you want. Furthermore, there is no functional difference between a smart motivated 18 year old with no money and a Harvard graduate in terms of their access to knowledge and their ability to actualize that knowledge. None. The market recognizes this. The expensive credentials that once determined social status in America are increasingly meaningless. Some of the wealthiest men in the country are college drop-outs who built the foundations of the world we now inhabit. Welcome to the age of the builders. If you have an idea and the drive, go build something. A house. A business. A new product. A leisure-wear empire. Buy land and turn it into an orchard for your family. Whatever you choose, the odds have never been more in your favor than they are right now. Big institutions are dying. Big cities are dying. The world is ripe for pioneers. Yes, all the usual naysayers on both the left and the right are out there still preaching resentment of the white man, the Jews, the Albanians or whomever else is supposed to excuse your failures before they even happen. It’s loser talk. Don’t waste your time. Your fate can be determined by the scope of your imagination and drive, and by your character. Thats a wonder. Grab it with both hands, because there is no guarantee that America will stay this open. But it’s open right now.