The leaks are killing us

Let‘s build an economy without them.

What exactly is the economy?

Think of the economy as a tornado tearing up a house—but played back in reverse.

There are huge amounts of money circling around and around every day, but slowly a beautiful house is being assembled. First the foundation, then the walls, then the furniture, then the roof.

That house is our lives. It’s our progress as a society.

• It’s every new app that lets us see our parents face-to-face when we call, or watch unlimited movies for the price of one theater ticket.
• It’s every new road or subway line that lets us see our friends more often, or spend less time commuting to work.
• It’s every new class that lets us learn to dance salsa, or speak Chinese.

But every dollar that leaks out of the whirlwind—every unused subscription, every scam somebody fell for, every dollar saved but not invested, every career that could have been—makes the house grow a little slower. For all of us.

Isn’t capitalism supposed to take care of that?

Capitalism is just a system of rules: rules that should apply to everybody. The point of the rules is to make us work together to give ourselves better lives… even when we (as individuals or as groups) want to act selfishly and irrationally.

But it only works if we have the right rules: ones that reward folks for building the house.

And today, it’s often more profitable to trick people than to actually help them.

So how do we stop the leaks?

For some issues, like climate, the costs of bad business don’t show up until years down the road. Regulation like carbon taxes is a powerful way to make those costs feel real today.

But many of the resources that constantly leak out of the whirlwind are fundamentally personal.

• For most of us, money is the first “resource” we think about. Here, the leak is often obvious… that is, after the fact. How many times have you regretted not researching that brand before buying it—or forgetting to cancel that subscription—or not making that investment 5 years ago?
• But your health is an even more fundamental resource. You know that moment after you finally dig yourself out of a motivation hole and you realize all the opportunities you threw away? Stopping the leak here means taking care of your mental health just as much as it means eating well and exercising.
• Last but not least, time is by far the most precious resource each of us has. It’s literally the difference between life and death. And stopping the leak here doesn’t mean becoming a 🤖… it means the exact opposite. The more efficient we are at using our time, the more of it we have to do what we love and value most.

So if it’s personal, what’s stopping us?

Information overload.

We’re constantly bombarded with new diets, new budgeting apps, and new productivity methodologies. And they all contradict each other. Our friends, our family, and our idols all do different things, so how do we decide who to trust?

Is it any wonder we get overwhelmed and just tune it all out?

That’s why we’re building an app for humans. An app that stops the leaks. An app with the heart of a teacher. Because we believe that by giving people information that makes sense, control over what to do about it, and tools to automate the hard stuff, we can 10x how fast the house gets built—and how fast our society progresses and makes all our lives better.

p.s. we’re starting by helping people invest smarter—check out Candle here.