To The Moon

This week, I built a tool to demonstrate how quickly wealth can compound depending on your starting balance, monthly contributions, and time horizon at different growth rates.

The Asymmetric Portfolio, for example, started from nothing, and I invest $500 per month. If I generate a 15.0% annualized return, the portfolio would be worth $3.46 million in 30 years.

After two years of returns closer to 30%…I hope I can beat a 15% return. But historically, that’s a high bar.

You can see an image of the tool below and play with it yourself by clicking on the image. I don’t show this to show off my coding skills. I have none. And if you look closely, the numbers below are correct, but the graph is wrong, so AI is still making mistakes.

I point this out because building this tool required exactly zero coding skills. I literally put this prompt 👇 into Claude and then asked it to make that output into HTML. If this doesn’t show the commodification of a huge swath of knowledge work, I don’t know what does.

I’ve been writing for over a year about my skepticism about investing in AI. But that’s about the returns on investment in data centers and what business models will work. I’ve never questioned that AI will impact the world.

AI is likely to be just as impactful as the internet was starting in the mid-1990s.

What I’m starting to see more clearly is where there’s going to be returns for AI usage and disruption in many jobs and industries.

We’re seeing is a paradigm shift in the return on agency.

the ability to make decisions and act independently.

Definition of agency

If you want to build something…you can.

You can have 100 AI agents working for you. You can have access to skills that were once incredibly expensive.

Not everyone has that kind of agency, but for those that do the sky is the limit. That’s the opportunity and the threat.

Increased agency will impact the operations and incentives of corporations. We’re already seeing job cuts at big tech companies because the best engineers can be more productive writing code with AI.

But AI isn’t just a negative for jobs. It will unlock opportunities for people with the most agency.

I’ll use myself as a very simple example.

I built a YouTube channel that now has over 45,000 subscribers. I record content, edit content, make thumbnails, negotiate sponsorship deals, etc. On top of that, I write this newsletter, I run the website, I designed (with some help) how the website works, I run payments, I answer reader questions, etc.

I do it all!

Not because I’m a genius.

Not because I work harder than anyone else.

I simply have high agency and a motivation to be independent. And in 2026, there are higher returns to my agency than I (or anyone else) could have had a decade ago.

I didn’t need to hire a writing editor (I have Grammarly).

I don’t need a video editor (I have Descript).

I don’t need a software developer (I use Beehiiv and vidIQ).

I don’t need a social media team (I have Hypefurry).

I’m not building a business with agents the way tech bros talk about them, but the platforms and tools that have been built provide me with incredible leverage on the work I do. Everything I can’t/don’t want to do is the click of a button. 10-20 years ago, I would have had to hire someone to do a lot of this work.

Below is a look at the video editor I use, and it’s literally a button click to cut out dozens of word gaps, retakes, and filler words from a video.

Another click and I have chapters for YouTube.

Another click and the video is published to YouTube.

That’s hours and hours of time saved. This kind of productivity improvement isn’t new in technology. What’s new is the scale of the productivity improvements and the breadth of what’s available without having a big team.

I don’t know anything about programming, but I can create a computer program and put it on the website.

I don’t know anything about graphic design, but I can create great images.

Some people call these agents. I think of them more like skills. Skills I can offload to an AI and not ever have to learn myself.

What’s the implication of these agents/skills? In the corporate world, the short-term impact is clear.

Meta has been laying off people.

Amazon is laying off people.

Block is slashing staff.

Is AI a job killer?

Kind of…

For big companies, it’s going to be a way to squeeze more productivity out of people. At least, that’s the goal. As we saw with the PC and internet, getting from here to there will be harder than a lot of companies think.

More importantly, I think AI is an agency enhancer. That’s good for the individual, but may not be as positive for the average corporation.

What’s the incentive to use an agency enhancer in Corporate America? So, Mark Zuckerberg can make a few more points of free cash flow margin?

There’s a tension between productivity and hyper agency-enhancing tools in large businesses.

Where there are no limits to enhancing agency is in small businesses — especially one-person businesses — where the incentives are aligned.

If I put out an extra video or test an ad or post more on social media, the value accrues to me.

Unlike writing or video production in the past, the agency of a person has a direct reward.

Does that same incentive structure exist everywhere?

Probably not.

So, what’s next?

I think we see the Smiling Curve on steroids.

A high agency person may be able to go from making $200,000 in a corporate job today to making $20 million in five years. Companies may be forced to pay up for good talented people that get stuff done.

As they should!

But what about the person who just wants to go to work, be productive, and go home? People in the middle of the curve may be washed out, even if they’ve “done everything right.”

What happens to people who have gone to school, climbed the ladder, and built expertise in areas that were once valuable, but are now being commoditized by AI?

Designing a house or designing a kitchen used to be the work of architects, designers, but now you could have carpenters do that. So now you elevated the capability of a carpenter, now you use an agent for that carpenter to go design a house, design a kitchen, come up with some interesting styles.

Jensen Huang in Stratechery interview

In this case, the architect doesn’t become the carpenter. The carpenter becomes the architect. The carpenter is the one who — with enough agency — can increase their value exponentially.

What happens to the architect and the designer? They’re the ones who have to adapt…

Another big question surrounds how corporations respond. Why are 10 people doing the work that 1 person could…if that person has enough agency?

But if you’re that 1 person…why work for a corporation, unless they give you 10x the money?

Will Best Buy pay a great programmer or a high agency marketer $2 million a year because they are that valuable?

I don’t have the answers, but this is what I think about when I see layoffs and employment data. Workers with high agency are going to be fine, and there will be some amazing businesses built with relatively few employees and a large number of AI tools and “agents.”

But who drives the economy from here to whatever the future looks like when the architects, designers, lawyers, and doctors are out of jobs? Will the high agency carpenter, the plumber, and the motivated YouTuber be enough to build a new economy?

Maybe…

But it’s not likely to be an easy path from here to there.

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