In the Age of Fragmentation...

Defragmentation is the opportunity. [Altucher Confidential] October 07, 2022 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( “In 1985, the movie The Breakfast Club pinpointed this cultural fragmentation by revealing the new American archetypes: the nerd, the jock, the beauty, the rebel, and the recluse. [Hero_Image] In the Age of Fragmentation… YOU MISSED OUT: 102% In 6 Days… Hate to say, “I told you so”… But we’ve sent you a countless number of emails trying to draw your attention to this unprecedented [wealth-building opportunity.]( And according to our file, you still didn’t take action. And that’s a shame. Because you just missed your shot at a 102% gain in 6 days – in the middle of a market selloff. That’s the bad news. The good news? We’re issuing a brand-new buy alert right now with money-doubling potential. [And you can go here now to get in position to receive it before you miss out again.]( [Chris Campbell] Chris Campbell Dear Reader, “What happens now with the Super Bowl,” said Paul Graham, “used to happen every night. We were literally in sync.” Paul Graham is a certified genius. He’s best known for his work on the programming language Lisp, his former startup Viaweb (later renamed Yahoo! Store), and co-founding the startup accelerator Y Combinator. He’s also known for his insightful essays, one of which he called “The Refragmenation,” published in 2016. In it, Graham details the mass-fragmentation he’s witnessed in America since he was a kid. This idea of a “refragmentation of everything” is timely, especially given yesterday’s rundown of the European Union’s potential breakdown. It also, in some ways that are obvious and others that aren’t, carries over into our ongoing discussion about crypto. More on that in a moment. First, here’s what Graham said (emphasis mine): US politics is much more polarized than it used to be. Culturally we have ever less common ground. The creative class flocks to a handful of happy cities, abandoning the rest. And increasing economic inequality means the spread between rich and poor is growing too. I'd like to propose a hypothesis: that all these trends are instances of the same phenomenon. And moreover, that the cause is not some force that's pulling us apart, but rather the erosion of forces that had been pushing us together. “Not a Single Millionaire” The two forces that pushed us together were WWII and the rise of the large corporate structure. It’s hard for us postmoderns to appreciate just how much WWII changed the social and economic life of every American. One way it did so was by decreasing variation in income. “Between 1942 and 1945,” Graham writes, “all wages were set by the National War Labor Board. Like the military, they defaulted to flatness. And this national standardization of wages was so pervasive that its effects could still be seen years after the war ended.” The entire economy was seized by the war both during and after. Any business owner who dared turn a profit was a turncoat. “Not a single millionaire,” said FDR as he wagged his finger. Wars tend to centralize power. And once governments get that power, they’re hesitant to give it up. The result was also an extreme level of social conformity, too: “Over 16 million men and women from all sorts of different backgrounds were brought together in a way of life that was literally uniform. Service rates for men born in the early 1920s approached 80%. And working toward a common goal, often under stress, brought them still closer together.” A New Kind of Company These social effects lasted, says Graham, informing the business world: “The kid pulled into the army from behind a mule team in West Virginia didn't simply go back to the farm afterward. Something else was waiting for him, something that looked a lot like the army.” That “something” was the rise of a “new kind of company”: the big, national corporation. The war accelerated the rise of the big corporations, but… In many ways, this was just the continuation of a longstanding trend. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, consolidation was the name of the game. Thousands of small and mid-size companies were swallowed up by titans like JP Morgan and JD Rockefeller. By the end of World War II, as Michael Lind writes, "the major sectors of the economy were either organized as government-backed cartels or dominated by a few oligopolistic corporations." (General Electric. General Foods. General Motors.) As for media, you had three choices -- CBS, NBC, and ABC-- and there wasn’t much difference between them. Since TVs were expensive, families huddled together to watch the same thing their neighbors were all huddling together to watch. Every night, millions of Americans would be watching the same thing. “What happens now with the Super Bowl,” said Graham, “used to happen every night. We were literally in sync.” As a result, the level of social conformity would today seem to most like an episode of Black Mirror. Alongside giant national corporations, there were giant national labor unions. These also put a premium on conformity. In the mid 20th century the corporations cut deals with the unions where they paid over market price for labor. Then, everything started to change. Crypto Legend Reveals: “The Next Bitcoin” He called Bitcoin at $61. Now he says this next crypto will be even bigger. In fact, he’s targeting 25X gains over the next year alone. [>>Click here now for the details]( Refragmentation “In the early 20th century,” Graham wrote, “big companies were synonymous with efficiency. In the late 20th century they were synonymous with inefficiency. To some extent this was because the companies themselves had become sclerotic. But it was also because our standards were higher.” Innovation became the name of the game and large corporations couldn’t keep up. There was a (re)fragmentation in culture, too. In the 1980s, the yuppies -- young rich professionals -- were on the rise. Until the 1980s, it was the norm to be underpaid early in your career as a company man. Everyone had to “pay his dues.” The yuppie didn’t work for a big company. He worked in law, finance, or consulting. Some kids began to dress “preppy,” while other kids began to rebel against that norm and dress like punks. The movie The Breakfast Club pinpointed the new fragmentation of the American youth. It consisted of archetypes like the nerd, the jock, the beauty, the rebel, and the recluse. Fragmentation is here to stay, says Graham: “Or rather, back to stay. Nothing is forever, but the tendency toward fragmentation should be more forever than most things, precisely because it's not due to any particular cause. It's simply a reversion to the mean. When Rockefeller said individualism was gone, he was right for a hundred years. It's back now, and that's likely to be true for longer.” While refragmentation might be the big trend… There’s something more obvious today than it was even back in 2016: the rise of defragmentation. And that’s where the REAL opportunities sit. The Great Defragmentation The next 100 years won’t be defined by fragmentation, but by defragmentation. Crypto is one way we will see this defragmentation of the global economy. In the same way your computer “defrags” disparate silos of data in your computer… Crypto will allow the disparate silos of data to “talk” to one another in a way that was previously impossible. (Crypto programmers call this “modularity” and “interoperability”.) One example is supply chain. Some big projects are building the tools to defragment the supply chain -- through transparency and data visibility-- by providing a “trustless” layer of data that everyone can rely on and nobody owns. This could cut down on fraud, theft, corruption, and make for a more efficient, and more dynamic, supply chain market. Maybe we’re thinking too far out, but… Couple this with decentralized parts manufacturing -- with the help of 3D printers, AI, and blockchain -- and we’re looking at an entirely new era for globalization. Yes, fragmentation is a reversion to the mean. And, in the long run, due to defragmentation, it can also lead to a much more efficient and dynamic economy. It has always been our thesis that most cryptos are headed to zero… But we also believe that a small number of today’s fledgling crypto projects are tomorrow’s Googles, Facebooks, and Twitters. In fact, these Big Tech companies pale in comparison to what the next generation of tech will accomplish. Best part? Investing in those tools on the ground floor is possible right now. [Click here for all of our research.]( (And more on that later.) Until Sunday, [James Altucher] Chris Campbell For Altucher Confidential Strange 2021 Prophecy Rapidly Coming True [Click here to learn more]( America’s #1 Futurist George Gilder is telling American’s to “brace yourself” for the coming $16.8 trillion revolution. This same revolution could redefine millions of jobs and radically transform the way just about every major corporation does business. It could even change the way you get paid, save and invest for retirement. [And, says George, it could make you exceedingly rich — click here to see why.]( [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( Altucher Confidential is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. 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