Money is the most successful hallucination in human history. We eat it, breathe it, kill for it, and die without it—yet no one alive can say with certainty what it actually is. In The Invisible Leash, Boris Kriger pulls at the collar that economics has fastened around our necks and asks the questions polite society would rather avoid. Were we ever truly free before we invented currency? Is Adam Smith's "invisible hand" guiding us toward prosperity—or pushing us off a cliff? And what happens to the entire theory of human labor when the robots show up and do it better, cheaper, and without complaining?

Kriger takes a wrecking ball to the comfortable myths of classical economics, from the fairy tale of self-regulating markets to the quiet brutality of what he calls "monetary sadism"—the use of money as a weapon of control and humiliation. He traces the history of wealth from seashells to Bitcoin, dissects the psychology of financial paralysis, and exposes the dark mechanics by which nations and corporations accumulate fortunes that would make a pirate blush.

But this is not merely a book of critique. Kriger proposes a radical alternative: replace every tax ever invented with a single, automatic micro-levy on all financial transactions—a tiny, painless percentage that would render tax evasion impossible, fund a universal basic income for every citizen, and dismantle the bloated bureaucracies that feed on our confusion. He envisions an economy where giving matters more than taking, where artificial intelligence serves as an oracle rather than an overlord, and where human beings might finally slip free of the leash they tied around their own throats.

Witty, provocative, and deeply humane, The Invisible Leash is a book for anyone who has ever suspected that the economy is a game rigged by people who wrote the rules—and who wonders whether it is too late to write new ones.