Buckminster Fuller’s GRUNCH of Giants

Dear Reader,

Buckminster Fuller’s GRUNCH of Giants was one of those books that opened my eyes. Fuller was a genius—an inventor, architect, and philosopher. He was my mentor. And what he wrote in GRUNCH is as relevant today as it was back in 1983.

“GRUNCH” stands for “Gross Universal Cash Heist.” And that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s Fuller’s term for the massive global corporations—multinationals that have amassed so much power, they’ve replaced governments as the real decision-makers. They control the wealth, the resources, the rules. And they don’t care about you or me. These entities—what Fuller calls a “giant invisible empire”—are driven by profit. Period. End of story.

What Fuller saw, and what too many people still miss, is how disconnected wealth has become from humanity. These corporations don’t care about your well-being, and they sure as hell aren’t working to improve society. It’s all about cash. Profit at any cost. The environment? Disposable. People? Expendable. And it’s only getting worse.

He also warned us about technology. Not in a “fear the machines” kind of way, but in the sense that automation is taking over jobs—fast. But here’s the thing: Fuller didn’t think technology was the problem. He believed it could save us. If we used it right. If we leveraged it for the benefit of all humanity, instead of using it to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Globalization? Another danger Fuller called out long before most people even understood what it meant. The more power we hand over to these giant corporations, the less control we, the people, have. Fewer hands control the world’s wealth, and the rest of us are left scrambling for scraps.

But Fuller wasn’t just about tearing down the system. He was a visionary. He had this idea—crazy at the time but makes perfect sense now—that we could use technology and resources to support everyone on this planet. That there was enough for all of us, if only we stopped playing the game by GRUNCH’s rules.

GRUNCH of Giants is more than a critique of capitalism. It’s a call to arms. Fuller believed in humanity’s ability to solve its biggest problems, if we could just break free of the corporate stranglehold.

Robert Kiyosaki