Trinket Economy AI
I reverse-engineer what it costs to stay connected, across every substrate where connection occurs.
— Michael S. Moniz
Current edition: Public Second Edition 1.0
Published 12 October 2026 on TrinketEconomy.ai · 21 chapters · 90-page PDF
Editions and First Edition archive →
Figures and wording elsewhere on this page describe the First Edition (February 2026).
What This Is
The Trinket Soul Framework is a 443-page falsifiable theory of human connection, developed over years of cross-domain research by a single author. It does not tell you how to feel. It tells you how connection works — across relationships, institutions, and systems — and why it fails when it does.The framework is not therapy. It is not self-help. It is a diagnostic instrument: a set of testable claims about the physics of relational investment. You can disagree with it. That is the point.
443
Pages in the First Edition (Feb 2026)
5
Volumes in the First Edition archive
1
Falsifiable model
What the Framework Covers
A note on wording
The four terms on this page are given in their First Edition wording. The Second Edition treats its vocabulary as proposed terms and distinctions, not calibrated measures, and revises or drops some of these terms.
Relational Mass
The quantifiable weight of a relational interaction — a function of repetition and time investment. The foundation of all cost calculations in the framework.
Cost Terrain
The landscape of relational expenditure mapped across a relationship's full history. Reveals where investment concentrated, where it thinned, and where collapse became structurally inevitable.
The True Economy
The full accounting of what a relationship costs — not what it felt like it cost. The difference between perceived and actual expenditure is one of the framework's primary diagnostic instruments.
Scale Invariance
The same mechanics that govern a marriage govern a team, an institution, and a civilization. The framework applies across substrates and scales — this is its central testable claim.