The road forks. The wind shifts. Moneytripping has evolved to become more politically charged.

I’m still eavesdropping on conversations about the dollar and spending my afternoons in bank museums but more broadly, I’m covering the political and economic culture in the U.S., the anthropology of American interactions with the economic system.

It’s political economy, the interplay between economics, law and politics, and how institutions develop in different social and economic systems, tailored for the era of globalization.

My nature pulls me towards the edges, in the direction of alternative lifestyles that don’t much care for the mainstream’s worship of capitalism’s ravenous effects.

We’ve become a society only interested in competing, not for the love of the game but only to win, in hoarding our kindness, wealth and success, or the love of ourselves and our traditions. In an effort to stay on top, in an effort to be self-righteous, we hide these things, keep tabs on these things, lock and chain these things so that others will not take.

There’s nothing wrong with shooting for the moon, but in how America measures success today, with six figures of data sitting on bank ledgers, power and fame, the moon isn’t attainable for us all. And those that reach the moon become more reluctant to share the sky when our society makes these notches the only ones worth putting on your belt.

There’s capitalism’s growth for a few and then there’s the sustainable growth of countries not competing in the “Greatest Country in the World” race.

And those, my friends, are the ingredients for an outcome, the fall of ourselves, the fall of our success and wealth, the fall of America.

Maybe I’m tracking the tumble, but I’d prefer to sound the alarm in front of it. And I hope Moneytripping can be used to find options when unchecked capitalism doesn’t keep us safe and warm anymore.

Would I be able to do this without a safety net? No. I have friends and family around the country that will lend me money if the engine blows in the Escape, that will give me shelter once I’ve expended every penny in January, that are successful themselves and would share that if I wasn’t.

So I’m lucky. Remember that America, we’ve been lucky.

But we can’t always rely on ourselves. We have to trust in other people, other countries, other ideas.