Let me go “High Value” for a minute. Because change – like we’ve never seen in our lifetimes – is in the air.
This week’s Peoplenomics report, out yesterday, “Coining Future: Making Work Mean Something,” asks a hard question: what if crypto stopped rewarding burned electricity, locked-up capital, and casino behavior—and started rewarding verified human progress instead?
The piece introduces Proof-of-Actual-Progress and ForgeToken, a proposed system where serious human-AI breakthrough work could be hashed, timestamped, reviewed, validated, and economically recognized as intellectual capital.
The larger idea is that the next durable financial rail may not be another speculative coin, but a ledger of useful breakthroughs: better agriculture, energy handling, diagnostics, water systems, resilience tools, and practical inventions. Instead of converting electricity into heat and financial theater, the future may belong to systems that convert disciplined thought into artifacts, artifacts into value, and value into more thought.
GVS: Global Values Shift
Last summer, I wrote and published “Downsizing: Missing the Collapse of Empire.” Because one of the concepts we’re really big on is Earth Homes. You can think of it as “living in a Life Pod.” Somewhat like the problem of feeding humans moving over very long time spans in space travel. But, of course, no rocket fuel needed.
Sure, this week, making enough money for a truck payment, insurance, rent, and so forth seem to be all that matters. And you’d be right – it is, too – until “the systems” begin to fail. Then your choice will be flying into the arms (and confiscatory power) of government, or as the old cartoon character Snagglepuss used to say “Exit, stage right….”
Here’s the thing, though: Most people – probably 98 percent – won’t have any options. A mob running into government arms.
There will be a very few of us – and lucky people who might own a weekend lake or river property – who will be able to tell Authority to “Take a hike!” It won’t be fun, though. Real hard work has been on a hundred year vacation. The closest most people get to a callous these days is a remark.
Out in New Mexico, the classic “earthship” model—pioneered by Michael Reynolds—is a very specific animal: tire-and-earth rammed walls for thermal mass, passive solar orientation, integrated water catchment, and closed-loop systems for sewage, greywater reuse, and off-grid living. It’s a self-contained habitat, engineered to operate largely independent of utilities. That’s different from generic “earth homes,” which are mostly about burying or berming a structure for insulation and stability but don’t necessarily close the loop on water, food, and energy.
It’s also distinct from what we’ve been circling in my books, Peoplenomics, and ShopTalk Sunday— evolving our “life podding” concept—which leans more modular, more retrofit-friendly, and more systems-driven: add-on resilience, layered food/water/energy capabilities, and practical step-by-step buildouts that ordinary people can deploy over time, rather than a single, all-in, desert-born architecture.
What Drives a Value Shift?
Closing the Strait of Hormuz, for one. Already, the implications are apparent, but few people understand the geopolitics down at the temporal layer.
You see, turning off all the oil production in that part of the world won’t impact you tomorrow. But give it some time. When higher fertilizer prices work themselves up the food chain, brothers and sisters, we have a problem.
That gives a real thinker (like you) many metrics you can use in scaling your response to the risk of a sudden values shift. I happen to like the 1929 market collapse, because what flipped the economic slowdown of that era into a Depression was a severe drought: Dust Bowl.
Which gets us to the most important hard concept part of today: What is the combination of Drought and energy cost increases going to push the economy toward?
We do the detailed ChartPack twice a week on the Peoplenomics side of the house. But there are others – like my friend The Economic Fractalist – whose work points at a similar outcome. He’s kind enough to post pointers in our Comments section once in a while and his latest tip – over here – is absolutely worth putting into your planning.
Because, as another commenter just posted in the past hour:
“Destabilization of bond and credit markets (credit deflation) is required to move into the realm of the early 1930’s. Collapses in net present of the balloon valuations of equities and real estate did the job before. Widespread drought is the historical omen and instigator of bad economic times. Drought was a major factor in the 30’s of mass forced migrations and diaspora. The energy hyperinflation is a new but potent wrinkle as a potential instigator.
Will the bottomless purse of modern monetary theory save us this time? Doubts…”
“Denial” isn’t just a “river in Egypt” anymore. It’s got us surrounded and their “average people” may not survive it. The definition of “Wealth” itself is about to move. Toward that biblical idea of working all day for a measure of oil and a measure of grain.
We can almost see “the past as future” now. As the Great Values Shift dawns, wealth won’t be what you might earn. It will be what you can eat, store, or defend. If you aren’t working your plan yet, you could miss the party.
Speaking of which, time to turn on data and drivel machine. Stand back…
Data Dump
Let’s srtart off with GDP:
“Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.0 percent in the first quarter of 2026 (January, February, and March), according to the advance estimate released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2025, real GDP increased 0.5 percent. The contributors to the increase in real GDP in the first quarter were investment, exports, consumer spending, and government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, also increased.”
Personal Income (and other fairy tales based on accounting, not local reality):
Personal income increased $149.2 billion (0.6 percent at a monthly rate) in March, according to estimates released today by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). Disposable personal income (DPI)—personal income less personal current taxes—increased $142.5 billion (0.6 percent), and personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $195.4 billion (0.9 percent). Personal outlays—the sum of PCE, personal interest payments, and personal current transfer payments—increased $198.6 billion in March. Personal saving was $857.3 billion in March, and the personal saving rate—personal saving as a percentage of DPI—was 3.6 percent.
Employment Cost Index:
Compensation costs for civilian workers increased 0.9 percent, seasonally adjusted, for the 3-month period ending in March 2026, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Wages and salaries increased 0.8 percent and benefit costs increased 1.2 percent from December 2025.
Compensation costs for civilian workers increased 3.4 percent, not seasonally adjusted, for the 12-month period ending in March 2026. Wages and salaries increased 3.4 percent and benefit costs increased 3.6 percent over the year
New Unemployment Filings
or all the talk about AI causing widespread job reductions, we’re sure not seeing much evidence in the data, But there are waiting periods, so let’s see where it goes over summer.
Snivel and Drivel
I’m sorry, but “Let’s all jump into WW 3” doesn’t sound especially encouraging. America: A new strategy for waterways. But drag everyone in?
Europe has become unreliable, though. US Forces in Germany Could Be Reduced as Trump Escalates Tensions With Berlin.
Market futures are “doing lines” today. Because in spite of Oil at 4-year high after Trump reportedly mulls military action against Iran — here’s what we know, Market futures were up strongly which looks to us like government manipulation. Anyone besides me think Plunge Protection operations should be illegal? They’re like failing to honor honest downside bets…
Call this “National Liberal Hand-wringing Day: How the Supreme Court’s Louisiana districting decision weakens the Voting Rights Act. What’s really going on is the High Court is going anti-racist. Remember, when you set boundaries on the basis of race – anyone’s – that is prima facie racism.
Then there’s Mamdani of New York: This publicity-seeker seems to know no bounds New York’s Mamdani calls on King Charles to ‘return’ Koh-i-Noor diamond taken from India. So a guy who doesn’t even have a track record of improving New York is telling a king what, again? Maybe Mamdani has caught “Trump passport photo disease.” (TPPD) Running on the East Coast now.
Passings: David Allan Coe, country music legend, dead at 86
Around the Ranch: The Tomato Butcher
I was unmerciful. I clipped off fully a third – maybe edging up toward half – of the shoots on my electroculture tomato build.
There are a ton more details in the recent Peoplenomics report on this stuff, but that device to the right is an “arbitrary waveform generator” and its job at the moment is to supply 20 volts (swinging 10 either side of the zero axis center) to my tomato bed in the garden room. Less than one milliamp of current in the root zones. (0.83 mA max)
This is only the first of many such experiments to come, but for now, the stimulated tomatoes are doing well with the tallest at just under 30 inches.
The control tomato – lower left in the pic – is only 18 inches tall now. However, with only a single plant we can’t draw many conclusions. Other than the small one wasn’t one of our “shocking” experiments.
I promise to bore you with the details as this plant grows, but just be aware that at this time of the year, the garden room can hit 95 degrees, even with the swamp cooler running full-tilt on the cool end of the room and a 3,100 CFM fan chilling the other end.
Between the grow lights, fan, cooler, and other power uses, our solar panels continue paying us nice dividends as savings.
Advertising agencies might hate people like us: We’re the “avoided cost” fan club out here.
Write when you’re ready to pick,
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