In 1944, economist Karl Polanyi published a landmark book tracing the rise of industrial capitalism. He called it The Great Transformation. Built on the three pillars of land, labor, and money, his framework laid out the tensions that would eventually test, and reshape, the entire system.
Eighty years later, all three pillars are shifting simultaneously, according to Jonathan Amoia. And the investment implications are profound.
Land: The World Order Is Being Redrawn
The post-WWII architecture that governed global affairs for eight decades: the UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO are under serious strain. Trust in multilateral institutions is eroding. Selective adherence to international norms is becoming the rule rather than the exception. Wars and geopolitical clashes are multiplying.
What’s replacing the old order isn’t a new one; it’s a multipolar scramble, with the U.S. and China each competing for loyalty and leverage across a fractured world. Alliances are being redrawn. The tectonic plates are moving, and everything built on top of them is shifting too.
Labor: The Most Consequential Disruption Since the Industrial Revolution
The world’s largest companies are collectively spending trillions of dollars on data centers. They’re not doing it to marginally improve productivity. They believe AI agents will democratize knowledge while lowering labor costs at scale, and they want to own the infrastructure when that happens.
The leaders building these systems aren’t hedging their language. Consider what the people closest to this technology are saying:
- Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI: Most professional tasks, such as legal, accounting, project management, and marketing, will be “fully automated within 12 to 18 months.”
- Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic: AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, potentially pushing unemployment to 20%, something he called “unusually painful.”
- Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI: Changes that would normally unfold over 75 years will be compressed into a very short window. He admits he loses sleep over it.
- Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia: “Every job will be affected, and immediately. It is unquestionable.”
- Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan: “It will eliminate jobs. People should stop sticking their heads in the sand.”
We’ve already seen the opening act. Starting in late 2024, several of the world’s largest software firms fell 30% or more in value as markets absorbed a difficult reality: competitive advantages in coding that took decades to build can now be replicated with AI tools in weeks.
The critical question is whether AI actually makes the pie bigger (better for all). Currently, it appears more likely to reallocate existing slices, cutting labor costs while displacing some companies entirely. In an economy where consumer spending represents 70% of GDP, rising unemployment isn’t just a social problem. It’s a macroeconomic one.
Capital: The Dollar’s Quiet Decline
Dozens of countries are actively building payment infrastructure to bypass the U.S. dollar. This is the largest financial realignment in most investors’ lifetimes.
The architecture of dollar dominance traces back to 1974, when the petrodollar agreement locked in U.S. dollar pricing for global oil trade. The result: virtually every nation on earth needed dollars to buy energy, creating an almost unlimited demand for American currency—effectively giving the U.S. a credit card with no spending limit. Both political parties used it freely, contributing to $38.8 trillion in current national debt.
That architecture is cracking. Saudi Arabia now accepts yuan, rupees, and euros for oil and is considering joining the BRICS alliance. Late last year, BRICS nations launched a pilot digital currency called “The Unit”—built on the Cardano blockchain—and backed by 40% physical gold and 60% BRICS national currencies. Unit’s are designed specifically to enable trade among member nations without touching the dollar or facing any U.S. sanctions.
The numbers reflect the trend: the dollar’s share of global reserves has fallen from 72% in 2000 to 57% today. Gold surged 65% in 2025 and is up approximately 20% more this year. BRICS now represents 10 countries, roughly 45% of the world’s population, and 40% of global GDP.
When demand for dollars falls, purchasing power erodes. Investors are right to ask what the next chapter looks like.
What It All Means
This isn’t alarmism, it’s pattern recognition. The facts of our current moment are exceptional, but history offers some grounding. There have been 14 gold surges exceeding 20% in modern price history. Following those surges, the S&P 500’s average annual return has been 11.4%. Meanwhile, midterm election years carry a 70% historical probability of a meaningful market correction, with an average intra-year drawdown of 18%.
We are living through a transformation in the foundational pillars of the global economy—land, labor, and capital—all at once. This is not something to fear but to understand the generational investment opportunities presented. At Advocate Wealth, we are incorporating all of the above themes into client conversations and optimizing portfolios accordingly.
By: Chris Bates