Why I Started Agency Economy

There are three principal problems for the young people of our country right now, a relationship forming crisis, sometimes called the ‘Loneliness Epidemic’, a feeling of political powerlessness and ostricization, and an anxiety about the future. The youth in our country are generally getting more “radical”, with the more concerning point being the desire for harm or suffering, rather than the beliefs themselves. People are getting nastier, and it shows; the data says that the current young generation is the most unhappy any generation has been at their age, and every worse, their unhappiness has changed the U-shaped happiness curve entirely. Young people are so unhappy, the happiness breakdown looks nothing like it has in the last 45 years.

What can I do about this? Maybe, it’s those phones! Maybe, it is capitalism! Maybe, it is the internet, or climate change, or fascism, or whatever large macro-problem I can identify. I personally am not going to go down that line of thinking, because what can I do about the systems that currently govern the world? I am no king, and their is only doom and gloom if you decide to wear a crown, and think you will tackle the world. Why focus on the world at all? It is easy to get stuck in an endless conundrum, this illusion of “personal responsibility,” that somehow extends outside of our person. I dispaired quite a bit about the genocide currently being done by the occupying Israelis, funded by the United States. I think a lot of people are dispairing. I forget the exact trigger, but it had to do with some recent news out of Palestine in early August, maybe late July, but I had to act. This lead to the formation of Agency Economy.

Agency Economy is a non-profit organization, focused on promoting digital agency among young people in the United States. It isn’t about tackling the issues of our day, but giving the small vertical slice of people that I can reach the tools to challenge them in their own lives. We are atomized by social media, constant renters by subscription services, and everything we rely on depends on an economy that is built on the neoliberal illusion. People want to fight this. People may find this scandalous, but the fight ultimately is internal, not external. The fight is in your home, not your street. The fight is on epistemic principals, not on their terms. Agency Economy is about focusing in on our online lives, we spend hours of our day on devices. I could spend pages criticizing all of the slop I consume! The answer is not to be a luddite. Agency Economy is about educating, and advocating, and supporting the alternative. Don’t read nonsense on X, Reddit.com, Instagram comments, whatever. Read the blogs of your friends and the people in your community; do those people not have a blog? We will show you and them how they can get one started, not started as some Squarespace or Wix.com nonsense subscription, but something they truly own, something that cannot be revoked. Our first battle is getting people to have their own websites, we cannot be ready to fight against big tech corporations and their addiction machines when we have not adequately developed the alternative– and I cannot complain about the alternative not being here, when I am doing nothing about it! It doesn’t stop at websites, it means getting people off of Windows, and on to Linux. It means having people cut their tv/movie subscriptions and self-host their media for family and friends. It means advocating for ownership, a real ownership, of the things we buy and giving people options besides the monthly charge or the perpetually revokable lease after you “““buy”””.

The key practical ideas I want to get implemented in these next 2-3 months are moving people from Windows to Linux as Windows 10 support will be ending October 14th, Providing free static/small service hosting for anyone in the chicagoland area, and running a domain drive to purchase one-year of a domain name for anyone who comes. The goal being to remove as many starting barriers as possible for people to get started on a journey of digital agency. I want to empower as many people as I can to be able to do this as I can. The goal is they can then show their people, and do this for their groups, and slowly chip away at the hegemony of big tech in their and the lives around them. If this is agreeable to you, check out Agency Economy. If you have questions, send me an email!