About the Book
What if the problem isn’t that everything is broken—but that we’re using an outdated operating system?
Across climate, housing, food, work, education, and politics, modern societies appear locked in crisis. These failures are usually treated as isolated problems, each debated on its own terms. In Everything Is Broken, architect and systems thinker Anthony Fieldman argues that they share a common root: institutions designed for scarcity in a world increasingly capable of abundance.
Blending economics, systems design, psychology, and real-world case studies, Fieldman shows how incentives built around extraction and competition now undermine human and planetary wellbeing. Rather than offering ideology or utopian promises, the book reframes today’s challenges as solvable design failures—and asks what would change if we redesigned our institutions around sufficiency, resilience, and shared prosperity.
Clear-eyed, grounded, and ultimately hopeful, Everything Is Broken presents our current moment as a genuine inflection point. The tools to fix what’s broken already exist. Whether we use them intentionally—or only after collapse leaves no alternative—is the choice before us.
“A systems-level case for abundance in an age that insists on scarcity.”
About the Author
Anthony Fieldman is an architect and systems designer whose career has focused on large-scale, complex projects that shape how people live, work, learn, and gather. Over several decades of professional practice, he has worked across continents and sectors, partnering with multidisciplinary teams to rethink the built environment as a driver of human behavior, wellbeing, and collective outcomes.
Trained in design and guided by systems thinking, Fieldman approaches global challenges—housing, climate, food, education, work, and economic structure—not as isolated problems, but as interdependent design failures capable of being re-imagined. Everything Is Broken reflects his long-standing interest in how incentives, narratives, and institutional frameworks shape human flourishing, and how redesigning those systems can unlock more abundant and humane futures.
Fieldman lives in New York City, at least when he isn’t traveling for work, spending time with his daughter and other loved ones, exploring the world with his cameras, or building outlandish things in the Black Rock desert.
Contact Me
For interest in learning more about Everything Is Broken, collaborating, or to book media appointments, email me and let’s talk.