The Escort Fee
A Complete Analytical Work in Three Parts
Bonjourhi,
Here is a small thing that turns out to be a big thing. For most of history, when you bought energy, you were paying for the stuff itself. The oil. The coal. The gas. That is quietly stopping. More and more, you are paying for the road it travels on, and for the toll booth someone built across that road.
That single idea grew into the book we are releasing today. One book, eighteen issues, written in three parts. We have been living with it for months, and we are glad it is finally out the door.
Part I · The Escort Fee
The toll booth. When everything has to squeeze through one narrow place — a strait, a sea lane, a currency — the person who controls that place gets to charge for the squeeze. The strange part is that nobody had to plan this. It is just what happens when one country ends up holding the keys to the road everyone else drives on.
Part II · The Bypass
The hopeful part. Toll booths do not last forever. Someone always finds another road. Cheaper solar. Satellites instead of cables. Money that moves without asking permission. Eventually, sunlight gathered in orbit and sent straight down to anyone, no strait to cross, no fee to pay. It is already starting, and almost no one is steering it.
Part III · The Commons
The part that kept us up at night. Because a new road with no rules is not freedom. The toll booth just gets rebuilt a little higher up, where it is harder to see. So this book asks the plain question: who makes sure the new world belongs to everyone, and not just to whoever gets there first?
That is the whole arc. What is happening. Where it is going. And the choice we still get to make about it.
It is all available now. We think it will change how you read the news for a while. We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed wrestling with it.
BONJOURHI! INSTITUTE ANALYTICS · MONTREAL · 2026