The Meaning Economy Is Now Possible is a provenance document by Lee Sharks, deposited 3 January 2026, arguing that a long-utopian idea has become materially available.
Its opening states the historical claim: "For most of human history, an economy based on meaning was utopian. We could talk about 'knowledge work' or 'creative labor' or 'the value of ideas,' but these were always translations. The underlying infrastructure of exchange was material." What changed is that machine systems now compose, rank and circulate meaning directly, which makes meaning an object with measurable position rather than a metaphor for something else.
The document is the affirmative counterpart to the Semantic Economy diagnostic at #291. Where that framework specifies extraction — semantic rent, liquidation, the Capital Operator Stack — this one argues that the same infrastructural change which makes extraction possible also makes a meaning economy possible for the first time, and that which of the two obtains is not settled by the technology.