The Ownership Revolution: Why “Invest America” Might Actually Work
I was in Amsterdam at the Network State Conference when I first heard Brad Gerstner mention “Invest America” on a podcast, probably a couple of years back. As a capitalist and a huge proponent of letting things compound over decades, I thought this was an extremely solid idea.
The idea has since gained serious traction and might actually turn into reality. The core thesis remains compelling: make every individual an owner and let them have a stake in it all. The core pitch was 1k USD for every American at birth, invested in the S&P 500.
The Psychology of Universal Ownership
I sincerely believe this might have surprising psychological effects as the thing gets rolling. When you own something, your relationship to risk and time fundamentally shifts. Current welfare systems create dependency relationships. Universal ownership creates interdependency through shared stakes.
The anthropological evidence supports this intuition. Societies with broader ownership structures tend toward greater social cohesion. When everyone has skin in the game, zero-sum thinking gives way to positive-sum collaboration. Rather than becoming altruistic, people find their incentives naturally aligned with collective prosperity.
A Rare Concrete Solution
What I like about this proposal is how concrete and potentially beneficial it is. Most policy discussions operate in abstraction. “Invest America” offers implementable mechanics: automatic investment accounts for every American, funded through various means, with long-term growth compounding for decades.
We live in an era of doom and gloom and widespread passivity. This seems like the ideal antidote. Universal ownership addresses what I suspect drives much contemporary political instability: the sense that systems don’t work for ordinary people. When you own nothing but your labor, and that labor feels precarious, extremism becomes attractive as revenge against rigged systems.
The Network Effects
Universal ownership creates universal interest in productive policy. When everyone benefits from economic growth, policies that enhance productivity become politically attractive rather than costly. Infrastructure, education, research stop being partisan issues and become shared investments.
This also democratizes financial literacy by necessity. When everyone has meaningful capital at stake, understanding markets stops being a luxury good for the already-wealthy. Financial education becomes as essential as basic literacy.
Why the Timing Works
The mechanism leverages existing systems rather than fighting them. We have the computational tools, financial infrastructure, and institutional knowledge to make universal ownership work at scale. More importantly, we have the political necessity.
I haven’t seen serious pushback, and I’m hard-pressed to imagine how one might oppose this. The usual concerns about market volatility, implementation complexity, and fiscal burden all have reasonable technical solutions. The deeper philosophical objection that universal ownership somehow diminishes ownership’s value doesn’t hold up. Productive capacity expands when more people have stakes in expansion.
Practical Steps Forward
This feels easier to implement than 100xing our nuclear baseload capacity, although I think both are important steps toward an abundant, safe future. Sometimes the most powerful changes work with existing systems rather than against them.
Societally, we need to take it step by step. “Invest America” represents incremental change that could create lasting transformation. We’re channeling technological abundance toward social cohesion rather than division.
The current trajectory of concentrated ownership and diffuse resentment leads nowhere good. Here’s a (market driven!) path toward a future where technological progress enhances rather than threatens social stability. Some ideas are too important to leave to chance, too practical to leave to theory, and too beneficial to leave to tomorrow.
Even a media outlet with as little reach as this one should highlight solutions this concrete and promising. Would love to see something like this across the globe.