History does not repeat, but it sure does rhyme. 110 years ago, Ford’s declaration of $5 a day contributed to the largest voluntary mass migration in American history [1], a direct seed to Detroit’s blossoming to become the largest majority Black city today. [2] Over that same 110 years, Detroit has consistently birthed both artist and culture beloved the world over. [3, 4, 5]
Before being America’s only City of Design, [6] before and after the rebellions, after NAFTA destroyed our industrial economy, [7] even after the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy, [8] it’s always been Detroit versus everybody, and we never stopped making it happen.
Back to the part about history and rhyming. The Vagus Pines Cooperative Network is a community-owned, artist-led economic ecosystem. This is your official invitation, and call to action. Let’s build Detroit’s Golden Creative Economy.
When White people catch a cold, Black people get the flu, even though everybody is getting sick. While federal and public jobs are been being indiscriminately gutted [9], Black women have been largest victims of the economic warfare, and in 2025 they have suffered job losses by the hundreds of thousands. [10] Technology can no longer carry the promise of a new middle class.[11, 12] Basic necessities get more expensive every year, DTE is asking for more money they don’t need, and money itself isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on or the computers that hold the balance sheets. [13, 14]
Right now, the richest White people are trying to capture the federal government by dismembering its body to sell its parts to the highest builder. [15, 16] But this isn’t the first time there’s been a secret plot to overthrow the government. [17] Other white men want a permanent Great White Daddy as their infallible global CEO and psychopathic dictator. [18] Maybe, it’s because they want to return to the only world they have ever known. [19] No matter how you slice it, this is the collapse of the US empire, and it started over 50 years ago. [20] That’s not even to mention the $21 trillion that went missing from the US government between 1998 and 2015. [21] The money is bad and there’s no making it better [22], but a change is gonna come. [23]
I was 13 when I watched Zeitgeist. It wasn’t the, “Jesus is copycat”, nor was it the, “9/11 was an inside job”, but what followed was a 10 year battle with depression because I understood the current monetary system to be debt slavery. While I felt generally powerless, my basic coping mechanism is learning. My current perspective is the result of 20 years of discovery.
Over the span of just four years, two of the greatest innovations in the 5,000 year history of money were released onto the world. Since its creation in 2008, Bitcoin has become a $1.42 trillion dollar asset in the $2.43 trillion dollar currency market that it originated. [24, 25] In 2012, Dr. Adam Trexler created the Aurum, a fractional gold product that overcame 2,000 years of problems of using gold as money. [26] By harnessing nanotechnology, his company Valaurum produces gold, printed with the convenience and security of modern cash. We have yet to see how these technologies will combine to shape a new world.
Together, these technologies can protect the value of your labor, attention, and buying power, reduce the costs associated with an inflated administrative class, and challenge the basic assumption that we need a central authority to manage our money. For the first time in history, we are looking at the possibility of building debt-free, interest-free, community-owned, and democratically governed multi-currency monetary system. [27, 28] The Golden Age begins with culture and golden authenticity.
If Detroiters know something, it’s three things; how to keep it real, how to make money, and how to look good doing both. We have always been the nation’s north star. From escaping chattel slavery and Jim Crow, to chasing economic opportunity while shaping the image and sound of the American Dream. Detroit will continue to set the standard to follow.
From seed to fruit, our organization is founded on the principles of peer education, mutual benefit, and collective action embedded into cooperative philosophy. Through the production of Golden Certificates of Authenticity paired with Fine Art and reproductions, trans-media marketing, and unapologetically Black culture, Vagus Pines is positioned to develop the most innovative socioeconomic model in modern history.
By combining our global cultural influence, innovations in fractional gold, blockchain enabled transparent accounting, world class creative talent, and the democratic business structure of cooperatives, Detroit will be home to the new standard of creative economies.
Here’s how we do it.
Starting a Golden Creative Economy begins with securing the value of Art produced in Detroit. Traditionally, the Art market secures value and trust through established names and the certificates produced by them. Two auction houses capture the majority of the global value of the Fine Art market [29], in a system that makes investment into emerging artists a financial non-starter, no matter the talent. Not to mention the micro economic data that isn’t being tracked, like island art fairs and auctions at Noni’s. It’s class based clout based economy.
Using fractional precious metals allows Vagus Pines to create a floor price (base resell value) for all art created within our cooperative network. Unlocking a new incentive model in the Art market, where the minimum value of every artwork is worth a certificate’s weight in gold.
We create products that allow Art to become a safe investment for everyone. For originals and reproductions alike, your value is always secure. This new hybrid asset class positions Art as a financial tool that can unlock the economic mobility of the 99% using Art backed loans. When paired with immutable information stored on a publicly trackable blockchain, and the innovations of smart contracts and programmable money, a new world of information enhanced Art becomes possible. Not only is the artwork valued by artistic labor, the price payed, and its certificate’s weight in gold, but also the work’s growing cultural significance, economic activity, artist reputation, and the corresponding speculative value.