Skip to main contentThe New Currency
I believe they will trade in secrets.
Not state secrets or corporate intelligence. Personal secrets. Confessions. The content of their dreams. The peculiar, unrepeatable material of their inner lives.
Why Secrets?
Why would anyone buy such things?
Because a secret is the purest form of scarcity that remains.
No AI can generate my secret, because it exists only in my mind until I choose to release it. No algorithm can replicate my dream, because my dream is not a pattern. It is a singular event that happened once, in my sleeping consciousness, and will never happen again.
The New Aristocracy
The wealthy of the Z Economy will be those who have cultivated rich inner lives and are willing to sell access to them.
They will commodify confession. They will monetize their own interiority.
Relationships as Production
This leads me to what I find most interesting about the Z Economy: how it will reshape human relationships.
When identity becomes the primary commodity, relationships become the primary means of production.
Each relationship I maintain refracts my identity differently. I am a different person to my mother than to my lover than to my colleague than to my rival.
The more relationships I have, and the more varied those relationships are, the more complex my identity becomes.
Complexity is Wealth
Complexity is wealth in the Z Economy.
One partner gives you one reflection of yourself. Multiple partners give you multiple reflections. A web of intimate connections—lovers, mentors, collaborators, former enemies, complicated friendships—gives you a prismatic identity that simple arrangements cannot match.
The Pursuit
But here’s the dynamic I find troubling: when everyone pursues complexity, complexity becomes ordinary. The returns diminish.
So people will push further. They will seek stranger and stranger relationship configurations to distinguish themselves.
Intimacies structured around shared secrets that neither party can ever reveal. Bonds designed to be dissolved at predetermined moments. Relationships defined by incomprehension rather than understanding.
The goal will be to have a relationship structure so peculiar that it becomes part of your value.
People will form connections specifically to become more interesting.
They will architect their intimacies for the marketplace. 
