The Shmoo Diaries, Part II: When Abundance Can’t Be Owned Why “Free” Makes Us Nervous

Hi everyone, how’s your week?

Mine’s been reflective. A little unsettled. That tends to happen this time of year, and it usually means I’m circling something worth paying attention to.

Every so often, a story sticks with me, and I feel the need to share it because I think it's so important. This is a story I've been sitting with for a while.

Last week, I introduced most of you to the Shmoo. A creature that made food, shelter, and basic needs available for free. Lasting Abundance. No cost. No effort. No ownership.

And society rebelled!

If abundance is possible, why do we keep running from it?

You can feel the same discomfort today whenever something becomes too accessible.

The moment a tool gets easier, cheaper, or more widespread, the reaction is predictable. People start asking whether it’s safe. Whether it’s ethical. Whether it’s real.

The conversation rarely begins with curiosity. It usually starts with suspicion.

Free makes us uneasy.

Not because it lacks value, but because it breaks the rules we’re used to playing by. We’ve been trained to believe that effort equals worth, and that price is proof of legitimacy. 

When something useful shows up without a clear owner or a meter attached, it doesn’t feel generous. It feels uncertain and destabilizing.

That reaction didn’t start with AI. And it didn’t start with the Shmoo either.

It began the moment we stopped asking whether something was good and started asking whether it could be owned.

Tesla’s Idea Was Never Just About Electricity

Nikola Tesla is often framed as a misunderstood genius, a tragic figure crushed by lesser minds. That framing is true, but misses the bigger picture.

Tesla’s most threatening idea wasn’t technical. It was structural.

Wireless energy, as he imagined it, wasn’t simply a new way to deliver power. It was energy as part of the environment. Like air. Like gravity. Present everywhere. Available to everyone. Not owned. Not metered. Not billed.

That idea wasn’t dangerous because it wouldn’t work.

It was dangerous because it couldn’t be controlled.

An energy system that couldn’t be measured couldn’t be monetized. A system that couldn’t be monetized couldn’t support existing power structures. It didn’t matter how elegant the technology was or how transformative the potential might be.

It failed the business model test.

And once that was clear, the outcome was inevitable.

The Calculation That Quietly Ends Possibility

J.P. Morgan’s role in Tesla’s story is often described as betrayal or shortsightedness. In reality, it was something much simpler.

It was a calculation.

If energy could not be owned, it could not be sold. If it could not be sold, it could not be controlled. If it could not be controlled, it had no place in the system.

That logic wasn’t evil. It was consistent.

The important thing isn’t that Tesla lost. It’s why he lost. 

Abundance that doesn’t fit a pricing mechanism doesn’t get debated. It gets sidelined. Starved of funding. Labeled impractical. Forgotten.

The idea doesn’t disappear because it’s wrong. It disappears because it can’t be absorbed.

This pattern repeats far more often than we like to admit.

Innovation Is Welcome, As Long As It Behaves

We like to believe we live in an age that celebrates disruption. In reality, we celebrate a very specific kind of innovation.

Innovation that creates new markets. Innovation that preserves ownership. Innovation that increases efficiency without threatening control.

What we resist is innovation that makes existing structures unnecessary.

Abundance is acceptable when it can be packaged, tiered, licensed, and controlled. The moment it escapes those boundaries, it stops being framed as progress and starts being framed as risk.

That’s when the language shifts. Responsibility. Safety. Oversight. Guardrails.

Some of that concern is legitimate. Much of it isn’t.

The real question is rarely whether something is dangerous. It’s whether it’s governable.

AI Fails the Same Test

Artificial intelligence didn’t just improve existing tools. It collapsed entire categories of effort.

Writing. Analysis. Research. Design. Coding.

Tasks that once required specialized training and time are now available to anyone willing to learn how to ask better questions. That isn’t incremental improvement. It’s a structural change.

And once again, the discomfort isn’t really about quality.

It’s about control.

Open models make people nervous. Tools that anyone can use are treated as irresponsible. Capabilities are framed as threats rather than opportunities. Access becomes something that must be justified.

You hear it in the way people talk about who should be allowed to use these tools, as if capability itself required permission.

This isn’t about protecting society from harm. It’s about preserving hierarchies that depend on scarcity.

The Shmoo made food and shelter abundant. Tesla imagined energy that couldn’t be owned. AI makes cognitive labor abundant.

Each time, the abundance itself becomes the problem.

The Business Model Comes First

This is the part we don’t like to say out loud.

Most systems don’t exist to maximize human potential. They exist to sustain themselves. When something threatens that sustainability, it doesn’t matter how beneficial it might be.

It will be constrained.

We see this now in how AI development is being shaped. Not only by what’s possible, but by what can be monetized. Not by what empowers individuals, but by what fits existing revenue structures.

Access tiers replace openness. Computing powerbecomes the choke point. Distribution becomes centralized. Abundance technically exists, but only for those who can afford it.

This isn’t accidental. It’s the same calculation playing out again.

Why “Free” Keeps Losing

Free is treated as unserious. Unsustainable. Naive.

But what’s really being questioned isn’t whether free works.

It’s whether free can be controlled.

Wireless energy failed that test. The Shmoo failed that test. Open AI systems are struggling with it now.

Abundance that doesn’t ask permission feels threatening because it removes leverage. It shifts power away from those who manage access and toward those who simply use what’s available.

That shift is uncomfortable, not because it’s wrong, but because it’s unfamiliar.

The Question Beneath the Question

We keep asking whether these tools will take jobs, disrupt industries, or reshape markets. Of course they will. Transformative technology has always done that.

Those are just the obvious questions.

The deeper question is something we haven't faced yet. It's this:

What happens when people can create real value without owning the systems that have traditionally controlled it?

We don’t have a clear answer, because most of our institutions were built to allocate scarcity, not to function in a world where creation is widely accessible.

So when abundance shows up anyway, the instinct is predictable.

We redesign the system to make things scarce again

Where This Leaves Us

The Shmoo showed what happens when abundance appears without preparation. Tesla showed what happens when abundance can’t be owned. AI is forcing both lessons on us at once.

We aren’t just unprepared psychologically. We’re structurally misaligned.

Until we confront that, the pattern will continue. Abundance will arrive. Control will respond. Scarcity will be rebuilt.

Not because abundance is impossible.

But because it doesn’t fit.

The first step isn’t changing the system. It’s seeing it clearly enough to recognize when it’s running.

Looking Ahead

In the next chapter, we’ll look more closely at the calculation itself. 

Not Tesla’s invention, but Morgan’s decision. Not ideology, but economics. Not what’s argued in public, but what’s decided quietly.

Because the most important choices shaping our future aren’t happening in headlines.

They’re happening in boardrooms, budgets, and default settings.

And once those harden, everything else follows.

Warmly,

Jan

 -30-

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