Infinite Debt Problem, The

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. We have built a financial system that makes promises about an unlimited future on a planet with limits. That's the contradiction at the heart of modern finance. Global debt has climbed from $50 trillion to over $300 trillion in four decades - an exponential curve. Meanwhile, resource extraction is flattening. Two lines, two opposing stories. The gap between them is The Infinite Debt Problem. This isn't a doom-and-gloom book. It's a practical, market-based solution: replace fixed-rate sovereign debt with the Productivity Bond, an instrument whose return is linked to measurable improvements in efficiency. How it works: inflation protection plus a share of productivity gains, a 0% real-return floor, a 5% cap, and countercyclical payments - lower in bad years, higher in good years. The evidence: in 10,000-path simulations, the Productivity Bond reduces financing costs by 3.1%. The hybrid version cuts costs 11.8%, lowers distress 25.9%, and improves welfare 13.9%. The critical insight: the government's ability to capture AI-driven gains is make-or-break. Capture less than 15% and the bond barely outperforms. Capture more than 30% and it substantially outperforms. The book also introduces the Productivity Dividend - a universal payment to every citizen funded by AI royalties and productivity taxes - and a new social contract based on productivity and sharing, not work, growth, and inequality. AI could vault us over the Four Walls or break the financial system. The Productivity Dividend ensures everyone benefits. The choice is ours: extraction, inequality, and instability - or productivity, sharing, and sustainability. The infinite debt problem is not an inevitability. It is an invitation to build a financial system that serves prosperity.