A Treaty of Detroit for
the AI Economy.
A Data Savings Act would do for the AI economy what pensions did for the industrial age: turn participation into ownership and contributions into compounding assets. Pensions built the American middle class. Data Savings can rebuild it. Every citizen an owner, every data contribution an asset, every American a stakeholder in the AI economy they power.
Sign the Declaration
I believe that the AI economy deserves the same institutional seriousness that America once brought to the industrial one. Add my signature below as part of the public record sent to Washington, D.C. in support of the Data Savings Act Proposal.
The rise of the post-AI middle class.
Over the past decade, AI has compressed the American middle class from both directions by automating the work that required judgment, boosting the productivity of the work that didn’t. What looks like efficiency on a quarterly earnings call is something else on a labor-force chart: hollowing.
The standard response is simply tax the rich and a monthly check to the poor. Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a compassionate idea built on a defeatist premise. That human economic contribution has become obsolete. It hasn't. Not only every AI system on Earth requires continuous streams of human-generated data to function, but an economy exists to serve human needs and create human participation. Without people, there is no demand, no purpose, no value.
A Data Savings Act would recognize that contribution. Just like the Treaty of Detroit did in the past. Turning participation into ownership. Contributions into compounding wealth. Users into owners. The precedent exists. The policy does not, yet.
Who's sponsoring this Act.
The Data Savings Act is sponsored by the International Data Reserve, a non-profit founded on a simple premise: data today needs what money needed a century ago. When paper currency emerged, it required an issuer and a standard-setter to give it real value. Data is no different. Our role is to set that standard, audit the companies that handle your data, and ensure the value it creates returns to the people who produced it.
We are not a tech company. We do not sell your data, store your data, or compete with the platforms that do. We are a reserve in the traditional sense: an independent institution that sets the rules, keeps the ledger, and answers to its members rather than to shareholders.
The Data Savings Act is the American expression of this mission, and it begins with your signature. The Act establishes the American Data Reserve as your regional regulator, the first of its kind, and a guarantee of American data sovereignty. No global body will have jurisdiction over data held in the United States. Other countries will follow with their own regulators, and our job is to ensure these institutions are interoperable, so that a dollar of data saved in Ohio and a dollar saved anywhere are equally, genuinely, yours.
Sponsor the Act. Shape the century.
Private and public organizations, technology and financial services companies, industry and professional associations, universities, labor unions, and others are invited to co-sponsor the Data Savings Act Proposal. Co-sponsors receive advance access to the framework, an invitation to the yearly Assembly, and attribution on all public materials.