Capitolo 1
Redefining the Future Through Expanded Values
In a world obsessed with financial maximization, Yancey Strickler's vision offers a revolutionary alternative. As co-founder of Kickstarter, Strickler witnessed firsthand how challenging conventional financial wisdom could create remarkable possibilities. His platform has channeled billions of dollars to creative projects that traditional investors would have dismissed as unprofitable. This success story isn't just about a company-it's about reimagining what's possible when we expand our definition of value beyond monetary returns. "This Could Be Our Future" has been praised by thought leaders like Seth Godin and Daniel Pink as a blueprint for a more balanced approach to decision-making. The book arrives at a critical moment when growing inequality and environmental challenges are forcing many to question whether financial maximization has become a destructive force rather than a constructive one. What if our obsession with money is actually limiting human potential rather than expanding it?
Capitolo 2
The Hidden Default That Shapes Our World
Hidden defaults guide our behavior in ways we rarely notice. Just as retail planners position businesses for right turns because people avoid left turns against traffic, our society contains countless invisible nudges that shape our choices. Consider organ donation rates: neighboring countries Austria (99.98%) and Germany (12%) differ dramatically not because of cultural differences but because Austria defaults citizens to opt-in while Germany defaults to opt-out. We typically follow the path of least resistance.
These defaults don't just happen-they develop as people with knowledge and power shape systems to their advantage. Some defaults we can easily adjust, like paperless billing preferences. Others are nearly invisible, like water to fish in David Foster Wallace's famous parable. They become embedded in our customs, traditions, and social codes until we mistake them for natural laws.
The most powerful hidden default in modern society is financial maximization-the belief that the rational choice is always the one that makes the most money. This magnetic north pulls our decisions and defines our concept of progress. GDP, our primary metric of success, measures how effectively we maximize financial returns without assessing broader implications.
This explains America's bankruptcy-inducing healthcare system, pharmaceutical companies raising prices on existing drugs, and corporations spending more on stock buybacks than R&D or employee wages. As product developers say: you are what you measure. Financial maximization has spread beyond business to dominate education, government, healthcare, and scientific research-institutions once focused on knowledge, service, care, and discovery are increasingly measured by money alone.
The concept began innocently with Adam Smith in 1776. In "The Wealth of Nations," he argued that society functions best when people act according to self-interest, with an "invisible hand" maintaining balance between capital, land, and workers. But Smith never advocated for the extreme profit-maximizing behaviors common today. Financial maximization as we know it emerged more recently, particularly through game theory developed in the 1950s by RAND Corporation scientists.
Their famous Prisoner's Dilemma scenario demonstrated that betraying your partner was "rational," even though cooperation produced better overall outcomes. This darker interpretation of self-interest fostered distrust rather than Smith's original vision of mutual benefit. The game's structure-isolated interrogation rooms-predetermined its moral. Yet when the same game was called "Community Game" instead of "Wall Street Game," cooperation rates nearly doubled, revealing how powerful framing can be in shaping our perception of what's rational.
Capitolo 3
The Homogenization of Everything
In 2017, country singer Sam Hunt's "Body Like a Back Road" topped Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart for an unprecedented 34 consecutive weeks-longer than any song by Elvis, the Beatles, or Madonna. This wasn't a fluke but the logical conclusion of financial maximization making everything increasingly homogeneous.
Radio, once a democratic medium where diverse voices could reach audiences across continents, fell victim to corporate consolidation. Initially, Congress limited ownership to just two stations per entity to preserve media diversity. But gradually, these limits were eroded-from two stations to five, then seven, and by 1984 to forty stations. After the 1996 removal of virtually all limits, Clear Channel Communications alone controlled more than 1,200 stations by 2002. Today, just two companies own half of all American radio stations. This consolidation led to massive layoffs, homogenized playlists with stations sharing up to 97% of the same songs, and a dramatic decline in musical diversity.
The movie industry has followed a similar path. Of the top ten highest-grossing films in 2017 and 2018, all were sequels or adaptations of existing material. Since multinational conglomerates began purchasing Hollywood studios in the 1980s, the percentage of remakes, sequels, and adaptations has skyrocketed to 61% of all Hollywood movies in the past fifteen years. These corporate owners prioritize financial returns over creative risk-taking, treating films like any other product line with predictable variants.
This homogenization extends to our physical landscape. At Second Avenue and First Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side, a TD Bank now stands where Mars Bar, a beloved punk dive, once operated. This transformation exemplifies New York's radical gentrification. From 1910-1960s, average NYC rent grew modestly from $40 to $200 monthly, but from the 1970s-2010s, it exploded from $335 to $3,500. As property values soared, small businesses faced impossible rent hikes-some tripling overnight. National chains, which barely existed in New York before the mid-1990s, now dominate the cityscape.
While urban gentrification makes headlines, small towns faced similar devastation through shopping centers. A 1954 tax code change called "accelerated depreciation" transformed commercial real estate into tax shelters, dramatically accelerating mall construction across America. By 1970, the US had thirteen thousand shopping centers, almost all built since the tax change and located outside town centers. From 1954 to 1977, retail in American city centers dropped by 77 percent. When big-box stores like Walmart arrived, they captured 84 percent of their sales from existing local businesses, causing twelve thousand store closures.
Despite the popular narrative of a startup revolution, American entrepreneurship rates have plummeted to half of what they were in the 1970s. This isn't from lack of desire-two-thirds of Americans dream of starting businesses-but from the impossibility of competing with established giants. As G.K. Chesterton observed, "Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few."
Capitolo 4
The Mullet Economy: Business in Front, Party in Back
America's recycling system collapsed in 2018 when China refused to accept our contaminated materials. The problem stemmed from "single-stream" recycling-putting all recyclables in one bin-which replaced the more effective "multistream" approach. While single-stream seemed convenient and reduced collection costs, it produced significantly more contaminated materials. When China raised its standards, American cities were left burning recyclables with nowhere to send them-a perfect example of how short-term financial thinking creates long-term problems.
In 1970, economist Milton Friedman published a transformative New York Times op-ed that introduced financial maximization to the mainstream. Writing during a time when businesses faced pressure to address social issues, Friedman argued that corporate social responsibility was a "fundamentally subversive doctrine." He claimed businesses couldn't have real responsibilities because they weren't real people, and declared that "the social responsibility of a business is profit."
Friedman's doctrine gave rise to what Strickler calls "the Maximizing Class"-accountants, lawyers, and consultants from elite schools working at firms like Bain, BCG, and McKinsey. These professionals specialized in extracting wealth while minimizing costs. As companies struggled through 1970s economic downturns, they implemented changes including tax avoidance, political lobbying, decreased service quality, wage freezes, budget cuts, and mass layoffs.
Three years after Friedman's essay, wages stagnated for most Americans. While productivity continued to climb, compensation flatlined. From 1948-1973, hourly compensation grew 91%, but from 1973-2013, it grew just 9.2%. When families struggled with stagnant wages, credit cards emerged as a solution. Credit card debt in America went from effectively zero in 1966 to $55 billion by 1980 and $1 trillion by 2018. As Strickler puts it: "This is where the pay raises went. They became debt."
This created what Strickler calls "the Mullet Economy": cost-cutting "business in front" for most people, financial windfalls "party in back" for the top 10%. The two-step process involves companies first cutting costs through wage freezes and layoffs, then redistributing the "saved" cash to executives and shareholders. Since stock buybacks were legalized in 1982, they've grown dramatically, reaching over $1 trillion in 2018. Many American companies now spend more on buybacks than on R&D.
Some of the biggest victims of the Mullet Economy are college students taking on record debt to enter a workforce with stagnant wages. While college tuition has increased nineteenfold since 1971 to $34,740, student debt has ballooned to $1.4 trillion, up 150% in just ten years. Nearly a third of borrowers are in default or forbearance, unable to keep up with payments.
Politics has also been corrupted by financial maximization. Research from 2015 revealed that elections are decided almost entirely by money, with a direct ratio between campaign spending and vote share. The majority of political funding comes from large corporations, executives, and the wealthiest 1% of Americans. In exchange for contributions, politicians weaken regulations, expand tax loopholes, and undercut government functions that might limit financial maximization.
Capitolo 5
The Trap of Perpetual Anxiety
Despite his success at Kickstarter, Strickler struggled with self-doubt, comparing himself to the cutthroat CEO ideal portrayed in business magazines. Standing in line at a grocery store, he noticed a Harvard Business Review with aggressive phrases like "Be paranoid," "Disrupt yourself," and "Go to war." This militaristic, aggressive tone pervades modern business culture-headlines about "wars" for tech dominance, CEOs "out for blood," and Silicon Valley "casualties"-reflecting the combative mindset that financial maximization encourages.
Since 1966, UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute has surveyed college freshmen about their values and life goals. In 1967, "develop a meaningful philosophy of life" topped the list at 85%, while "be very well off financially" ranked seventh at 41%. By 2016, these priorities had dramatically reversed-82% of freshmen considered being rich essential, while developing a meaningful philosophy of life dropped to 46%. This shift began in the mid-1970s, reflecting the normalization of financial maximization.
Adam Smith noted that society's tendency to worship the rich and powerful while neglecting the poor was "necessary" to maintain social order. In today's business world, our role models are successful wealthy people who achieved their dreams and made millions. We base our self-worth on external validation, imagining these external goals as destinations that will solve our problems. But research shows that achieving "extrinsic" goals like wealth and recognition leads to increased anxiety and depression compared to achieving "intrinsic" goals focused on learning and helping others.
During the Internet 2.0 era, fast growth and big valuations defined success. A New York Times profile of Zenefits celebrated its rapid growth and $4.5 billion valuation while ignoring the CEO's alarming statements about being "petrified" and feeling like "the wheels are ready to come off." A year later, he was fired for violating regulations to maintain growth rates demanded by investors. Once companies invite financial maximization inside, they become trapped by their choices, prioritizing immediate gains over long-term sustainability.
The trap of financial maximization keeps us perpetually anxious, always chasing the next goal without finding lasting satisfaction. Despite the seeming permanence of the current system, even Milton Friedman's now-dominant idea was once just a proposition that required persuasion. History continues to evolve, and alternatives are possible.
Capitolo 6
Expanding Our Definition of Value
Maslow's hierarchy of needs helps explain money's proper role in our lives. Financial security functions as a foundational safety need in modern society-as fundamental as physical safety, but still "low" on Maslow's pyramid. Daniel Kahneman's research confirms this, showing happiness increases with income only up to about $75,000 annually-the point of financial security. Beyond this threshold, additional money produces diminishing returns.
This creates a trap in financial maximization: as someone accumulates more money, each additional dollar means less. Many successful people reach this realization but struggle with what comes next, as society provides little guidance for moving beyond financial security toward love, esteem, and self-actualization.
Financial maximization assumes that by growing money, everything else follows. But research contradicts this. Daniel Pink cites a Carnegie Mellon study showing that introducing money as motivation actually decreased enjoyment and intrinsic interest in activities. When participants were paid to make shapes with blocks and then the payment was removed, they played less than those who were never paid at all. Money transformed a joyful activity into a transaction.
Pink identifies three higher drives that truly motivate us: autonomy (control over what we do), mastery (improving our skills), and purpose (meaning behind our actions). These values, which align with Maslow's higher tiers, suggest that basing decisions on non-financial values is rational and expands our potential.
For a century, we've measured value through GDP, tracking money spent by businesses, consumers, and government. But economist Simon Kuznets, who introduced GDP after the Great Depression, warned about its limitations. GDP doesn't account for "the intensity and unpleasantness of effort" required to earn income, nor does it distinguish between beneficial and harmful spending. A thousand dollars spent on a family vacation counts the same as a thousand dollars spent on divorce attorneys.
Though "value" and "values" appear similar, they represent distinct concepts. Value (singular) is monetary worth-quantitative and measurable-while values (plural) represent ideals and principles-qualitative and harder to measure. The economic perspective offers convenience through money's universal language. As financial maximization grew dominant, society shifted from focusing on values (what's meaningful) to focusing on value (what maximizes money).
Capitolo 7
Bentoism: A Framework for Balanced Decision-Making
While we typically focus on maximizing immediate self-interest-visualized as a hockey stick graph going up and to the right-there's a larger universe we miss. Our decisions affect not just ourselves now, but our future selves and our communities. Bentoism (named after the Japanese bento box meal) expands our view of self-interest across two axes: Time (now to future) and Self-Interest (me to us). This creates four spaces: Now Me, Now Us, Future Me, and Future Us-each representing a valid perspective that impacts our decisions.
Applying Bentoism to the Prisoner's Dilemma reveals why the RAND secretaries chose loyalty over betrayal. Each perspective in the Bento offers a different answer: Now Me wants to avoid jail at all costs; Now Us considers our partner and favors solidarity; Future Me considers our values and what we'll regret; and Future Us envisions the world we want to create. The secretaries chose Now Us over Now Me because their values guided them to do so.
In Pulp Fiction, Butch's seemingly irrational decision to risk his life retrieving his father's gold watch illustrates Bentoism in action. In a deleted scene, Butch debates with himself, weighing different perspectives: Now Me says leave ("It's just a watch"); Now Us thinks of his lover Fabienne; Future Me reminds him of his values ("This watch is a symbol"); and Future Us connects him to his family legacy. This internal debate resembles checking a Bento box, where the decision ultimately comes from balancing immediate self-interest against deeper values.
Financial maximization simplifies our complex world into a single goal, but Bentoism offers a more nuanced approach. Like the screwdriver expanding possibilities beyond the hammer, Bentoism functions as a values processor with each quadrant containing core values. Now Me values security, pleasure, and autonomy; Now Us emphasizes community, fairness, and tradition; Future Me prioritizes mastery, purpose, and grit; while Future Us champions awareness, sustainability, and knowledge.
Capitolo 8
Values Maximization in Action
When Adele announced her first tour in four years, she faced a common problem: scalpers buying up tickets to resell at massive markups. Rather than maximizing profits, Adele partnered with Songkick to distribute 40% of tickets to her most loyal fans at fair prices. This algorithm-powered approach reduced scalping by 90% and saved fans an estimated $6.5 million. Instead of financially maximizing, Adele was fairness maximizing-optimizing for her values as a person and artist while still running a profitable tour.
The NBA's transformation through the three-point shot illustrates how discovering new forms of value changes how we play the game. Though introduced in 1979, the three-pointer was initially dismissed as inefficient and selfish since it had a lower success rate than two-point shots. But when data analysts in the 2000s began measuring shot efficiency with new technologies and metrics, they discovered that three-pointers were actually more valuable over time. Despite establishment skepticism, teams that embraced this approach outperformed expectations, completely transforming basketball within a decade.
Balancing money's influence isn't a new concept. Religious traditions have long used the Sabbath as a structural break to preserve time for rest and worship beyond money's reach. Despite most blue laws being reversed today, Chick-fil-A still closes on Sundays, sacrificing an estimated $1 billion annually. While financially irrational, this choice reflects a Bentoist perspective-optimizing for values beyond money, which contributes to their popularity as both a restaurant and workplace.
For followers of the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement, value comes from not spending money on unnecessary things. These primarily Millennial adherents focus on happiness rather than luxury, creating radical budgets that allow them to save aggressively toward early retirement. FIRE demonstrates how money can be respected while not being the only value that matters.
Expanding values beyond financial maximization isn't theoretical-it's already happening. When Kickstarter became a public benefit corporation in 2015, it codified commitments beyond shareholder value, including pledges not to use tax loopholes, to support artists in less commercial areas, and to donate 5% of after-tax profits to arts education and fighting inequality.
Patagonia exemplifies Future Us thinking through its public benefit corporation charter, which includes the remarkable pledge to share proprietary information with direct competitors when doing so might benefit the environment. In 2014, after spending four years developing a sustainable biorubber for wetsuits, they shared the material with competitors. Similarly, Tesla released all its patents publicly in 2015, recognizing that their competition wasn't other electric carmakers but the "enormous flood of gasoline cars" that threatened climate stability.
Capitolo 9
The Thirty-Year Theory of Change
Jeff Bezos shared a story about a friend learning to do a perfect handstand. Her coach advised that mastering a handstand takes six months of daily practice, not the two weeks most people expect. This unrealistic expectation leads to quitting. When we underestimate effort required, we cut corners and give up. But with realistic expectations and planning, we have a chance at success.
While we crave instant change, evidence suggests substantive shifts in majority viewpoints take about thirty years. Joseph Lister's antiseptic method took thirty years to go from controversial to standard practice. The NBA's three-point shot, introduced in 1979, took thirty years to become essential to the game. Milton Friedman's financial maximization philosophy went from fringe to dominant in the same timeframe.
Hungarian philosopher Karl Mannheim observed that society changes because new people are born while others die-a continuous transfer of cultural heritage. Life resembles a party where newcomers learn the rules, adults control the festivities, and eventually people leave while the party continues. This turnover happens quickly-in thirty years, a third of today's population will be gone and half the larger future population will be new.
Change emerges in response to crisis-television inspired exercise, and surgery deaths led to antiseptics. Recycling illustrates this pattern perfectly. Before the 20th century, little was meant to be discarded, but consumerism created mounting garbage problems. Oregon started the first modern recycling program in 1970, and by the 1990s, recycling became mandatory in many cities. Similarly, organic food evolved from niche health stores in the 1980s to mainstream availability after FDA standards were established in 2000.
The year 2050-thirty years from now-represents a generation away from our present moment. This timeframe matters because it's how long it typically takes for revolutionary ideas to become normal parts of life. If a Bentoist movement continues growing, 2050 is when we might expect a meaningful shift in how society values things.
Capitolo 10
Creating a Values Maximizing Future
John Maynard Keynes, founder of macroeconomics, championed capitalism while recognizing its limitations. In his 1930 essay "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," he predicted that after about 100 years of necessary greed and avarice, humanity could move beyond money worship. That hundred-year mark is approaching now.
From 1946 to 1973, America experienced unprecedented prosperity with median pay increasing 91% and family incomes doubling. But when financial maximization took over, the focus shifted from collective prosperity to individual gain. Forty years later, America has the world's highest wealth inequality, stagnant wages since 1973, and CEOs earning 271 times more than average workers. Had America continued its pre-financial-maximization trajectory, workers would earn more, executives would still prosper (though less extravagantly), public services would be better funded, and society would be stronger overall.
We're trapped under financial maximization's limitations, but we can free ourselves by acknowledging how expansive our universe of value truly is. If this broader perspective became normal, companies would repair products rather than replace them, CEOs might pay themselves less and workers more, and we could satisfy financial needs while prioritizing deeper values.
Many of us struggle to articulate our values because we're too busy pursuing financial security. The Bento begins with a blank piece of paper, drawing a box with four quadrants and asking simple questions: What do I want and need? What does my future self want and need? What do we want and need? What does future us want and need? After brainstorming responses and finding themes, the Bento reveals one's true values and purpose.
Organizations must evolve beyond mere financial targets to embrace Bentoist values while maintaining profitability. Companies with clear secular missions-like those focused on environmental impact-should be willing to sacrifice some profit to fulfill their values-based commitments, making these missions as consequential as financial concerns.
By 2050, a Bentoist approach to value could become mainstream. The Values Maximizing Class-comprised of diverse professionals from accountants to venture capitalists-would identify, measure, and grow rational, non-financial values. Their research might reveal three paths to value growth: creating new value in new things, new value in existing things, and growing existing value in existing things.
The Values Helix illustrates how values pass through generations. Each generation's values and relationships directly influence the next, creating a continuous chain of values transmission across time. We each have responsibility to consciously shape which values change and which endure, recognizing that meaningful transformation happens gradually. Eventually, financial maximization will diminish as our dominant value, replaced by an expanded view that shifts from rational self-interest to rational self-coherence-a destination worth turning left for.
