24. Epilogue — The Trust Layer the Internet Still Needs

Look forward from here.

The last chapter ended on borrowed time — the conviction that the scam economy we know is living on it, and that the loan is being called. That is a claim about the future, and I have spent this entire book earning the right to make it by looking backward and around: at three eras of an economy that grew from nuisance to industry, at the wound under the machinery, at the door we have refused to open. The honest thing to do at the end is to point the same instruments at the years ahead and say what I think they will show. Not a roadmap. A forecast, with the uncertainty left in, because anyone who tells you they know exactly what the scam economy looks like in 2030 is selling you something. What I can do is tell you which way the gradients point, and what it would take to bend them.