Let's set the stage. We have extreme polarization, information overload and insufficient time to understand ground truth, historic concentrations of wealth and power in individuals, nuclear brinkmanship, masculine - feminine divides, a fiscally broken government leading the world, rotting institutions and infrastructure, increasing digital productivity soon to explode into physical acceleration, fears of superintelligent AI takeoff, etc.

Who will save us? What even can? Or how might we work out the future ourselves?

I have no answers, just hopefully productive questions. And perhaps I can live my life in such a way that surfaces more questions over time. I believe in humanity, compulsively and optimistically, with 110% of my being. I see the above conditions as challenges, not doom.

I also have to be realistic, 100% objective and self-interested, in order to preserve my sanity and contribute sustainably in the long run. Nobody can put on others' oxygen masks first, forever.

It seems to me that many figures in society are telling a wide variety of stories at the moment, but we cannot seem to converge on a universal or vastly positive one. We each have our own viewpoints and references and sources, which influence each other in a tragic tapestry of mimetic and increasing-velocity culture. Somehow, ancient religions still hold sway, but the mainstream universal culture is increasingly secular.

Let's consider a novel approach to not-for-profit altruism, paradoxically implemented as a for-profit LLC. The LLC will only pass thru annual profits—to its sole owner—in order to pay taxes each year, with any other financial gain re-invested as equity capital remaining in the LLC. The primary purpose of the LLC is to tell a universally positive story of humanity.

As you already will note, we are not trying to tax-optimize at all. We will pay our annual government subscription fee and make a big stink about it, when we feel it's additive to publicly analyze such things in alignment with the mission and story. For example, if taxes shoot up to 80% someday, we will probably have to complain this directly and disproportionately interferes with our first-amendment rights to tell our story and do our business. But we won't convert to a non-profit.

I believe the optimal approach to build such a brand is for the LLC's owner to operate extremely transparently, with zero personal assets, and an explicitly stated goal to go bankrupt by giving away the entire LLC's bank account as gifts. Then content can be created and shared around these gift-giving actions and expenses.

Extreme selflessness done enthusiastically and strategically might generate goodwill and "donations", i.e. gifts of revenue essentially subscribing to or sponsoring the LLC's mission. In fact, that's the explicit goal, the measuring stick of profit. For the purposes of this LLC, however, I think it's important to never take any gifts with strings explicitly attached via contract, for example a SAFE note. Or at least, to avoid this as much as possible.

That's not to say the LLC cannot redistribute some future received gifts (profits) in re-gifted parcels to early backers. Just that it would all be done under the precepts of paperless trust, centralized & unenforceable. I believe legal ownership of the LLC should remain undiluted and singular, by a committed individual, whose business is that of unencumbered decision-making in the spirit of generosity. This clarifies the brand and story in service of the mission. 

For now, let's call the LLC's owner a "Dalai Lama for Capitalism". I'm open to better suggestions. I suspect the first Dalai Lama will have to work very hard, over a very long period of time, to prove they are completely serious about this playful framework of giving away money to make a profit. Aside from a select few "believer" friends who might gift financial resources at the outset, mostly the Dalai Lama will have to just live out their life in alignment with the mission and let society judge their actions ex post facto.

Having no possessions also means no contracts except those necessary to support the governmental bureaucracy. It means not ever holding official office, nor becoming married under state law, except as needed for incapacitated decision-making or succession. A bus factor of 1 is both expected and structurally desirable as it clarifies the story and focuses the brand. Perhaps there is one item a Dalai Lama for Capitalism should own personally: a simple tombstone with the inscription to be realized over many decades, "He tried." or something like that.

With a sufficient following and distribution, a Dalai Lama for Capitalism wants to take their storytelling to the extreme, and prove it. She wants to engender this infinite game in others, encouraging a finite competition among LLCs, such that many different individuals would compare their performance and gift-generated revenue ROI on some time horizon, say 7 or 15 years, against each other. Then we might establish who is the most reputable and trusted over time.

We can even include negative "vote against" accounts for each of these agents. Then we could, for example, take the delta between the positive gifted profit sentiment and the negative payments, rolling up these "voice credit votes" quadratically on the most important and escalated trolley-problem questions of the day. We could view this "Dalai Lama Capitalism Hunger Games" as some sort of moral or trust-consensus protocol which companies like AI labs and governments may want to plug into, to outsource some of their decision-making, humanity-alignment training, and management.

Some day, an AI could enter the fray and win. Before that, or in parallel, we'd probably want to enforce a superstructure such that the n+1 storyteller LLC from AI takeover could regress to human hands, as needed. Some people have pointed out to me that self-replication would make it hard to recover control, but I guess that's the point of the time-horizon constraint in the first place, and the fact that the AI's LLC won't be profitable at all unless a mass of sufficiently valuable human individuals truly trust, believe, and will it to be so. Unlike with exceptional humans in the job market, meritocratic lag is an essential feature in this system rather than a bug.

This is a lot to digest, and I'd love to have a conversation with relevant people of influence, as I set up the trajectory of this bet. I'm not sure I actually want to be one of these Dalai Lama people, just for now I kind of have to, in order to test this fascinating theory. If it's correct there are profound implications. Many of these are potentially scary, and to be enumerated in a later essay.

My starting point is to mentor Phu, an inspiring college student I recently met in Phoenix AZ. I'm helping him obtain his O-1A visa, bringing him to SF, and giving him $50k of my low 6-figure net worth. Talking with Phu and teaching him little tips & tricks to navigate America has been very generative for me. I now see our collaboration as a pilot for a broader yet-to-be program called "&U".

The hypothesis for &U is that PG's 10-minute interview could be further honed to focus on the founder directly, pre-product, rather than trying to get to know how the founder thinks by asking about their product and progress.

I also found it hilarious that when I mentioned being a fan of the All-In Podcast to Phu, he said, "I zoomed with Jason last week." Upon further digging, sounds like Jcal had asked each Founder University entrant something like "are you a C-corp?" Personally, I would change that question to "what's your biggest bottleneck as a founder right now?" and focus on helping the kiddos rather than forcing them to comply with my structures. I don't have the full story, but regardless love all you Besties and excited to attend my second All-In Summit in 2 weeks!

To my longtime friends, family, and readers — please do not worry as my net worth goes to $0 or if I jokingly say things like "I'm gonna go live under a bridge now." I may operate with unusual intensity going forward, but I still plan to get regular massages and eat yummy meals and take fun vacations too, hopefully with many of you! Enacting the above with my Zaltiva LLC, my money will still be "mine" just sit in a different bank account, which I also fully control. I view this entire project as a reasonably sound investment in my professional career and general self-interested future.

I am reasonably confident that Phu will use my funds to help accelerate himself into wealth as opposed to running away with the money. He is highly motivated to succeed, to change the world, and to buy a home for his mom in Vietnam. He doesn't necessarily have to create a venture-backed startup, instead he might become an early employee or find a profitable small business opportunity, etc.

I don't want to put any pressure at all on him, hence the lack of a contract, but rather to help him organically become his future self more effectively. I believe that someday, if I am worthy of his trust, perhaps he will send some of his wealth back into my LLC, with interest, to continue paying it forward to the next yup-and-coming Andy-friend. If you ask him, you'll see what I mean.
 
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I'm excited for my new career. It's almost 100% purely focused on investing energy in relationships I cherish.