Short version (brief credit lines)
Yves Laurent is a multipotentialite author and operations executive with twenty-five years across diverse industries. Founder of Stones Don't Lie Press. He writes on social systems, technology and work.
Stones Don't Lie Press
Press Kit
Yves Laurent
Materials for press, radio and podcast
PDF version coming soon. The full page is available here.
Pronunciation
Yves Laurent is pronounced "eev lo-RAHN" (real French birth name, not a pseudonym). Not to be confused with Yves Saint Laurent, the fashion designer.
Biography
Three versions of different lengths, ready to copy and paste.
Medium version (introductions)
Yves Laurent is a Mexican-French author, a multipotentialite in Emilie Wapnick's sense of the term, and an operations executive with twenty-five years inside corporations designing the systems he later criticized in his books. He has worked in aviation (Mexicana), technology (GE-GXS), health (Suggestic) and retail (KOKORIO with Cuidado con el Perro). Cybernetics engineer with a master's in Data Science, PMP and Six Sigma certified. Founder of Stones Don't Lie Press. His catalog includes Las Piedras No Mienten, The Generosity in the Doorway / La Generosidad en el Umbral, and the Stone Papers series. He lives in Mexico City with his family.
Long version (press features)
Yves Laurent (Mexico City, 1973) is a Mexican-French author and operations executive with twenty-five years inside large corporations. He started his career in technology at GE-GXS in the late nineties; he survived the dot-com bubble in New York, and in August of 2001 was reassigned from Mexico to help offshore the Albany call center that had just been closed on him. He flew to the US on September 19 of 2001, eight days after 9/11, to train the people whose jobs the Mexican team he built would eventually take. He then worked four years at Mexicana de Aviación (2006-2010), watched one of the country's largest airlines gradually subside, and left just weeks before its bankruptcy. In the following years he ran operations at Televisa, KOKORIO (Cuidado con el Perro and other retailers across the region), and currently at Suggestic, a health and artificial-intelligence startup based in Silicon Valley with global presence.
He writes about what he learned from the inside. His first book, Las Piedras No Mienten, is an analysis of twelve thousand years of systems that promised cooperation and delivered control. His second, The Generosity in the Doorway, diagnoses the contemporary debate on universal basic income, AI-driven labor displacement, and the historical precedents that anticipate this moment (Marienthal 1933, Cybersyn 1971, Davos). Founder and editorial director of Stones Don't Lie Press.
He identifies as a multipotentialite in the sense coined by Canadian writer Emilie Wapnick (TED2015, book How to Be Everything, 2017): the author who channels simultaneous interests in seemingly disconnected fields and finds his argument at their intersections. Video games since age four, music, code, professional certifications, political theory, social archaeology, film production, cryptocurrencies since 2012. All become argumentative input for the Stones Don't Lie Press catalog. Synthesis at the intersections is his epistemological method, not an aesthetic preference.
He is a cybernetics engineer (Universidad La Salle, 1998), with a master's in Data Science (2020), PMP and Six Sigma Green Belt certifications. He lives in Mexico City with his wife and his daughters.
Published books
The full catalog under the Stones Don't Lie Press imprint.
Las Piedras No Mienten
De la historia del control al Manifiesto Ludista
- Language:
- Spanish
- Publisher:
- Stones Don't Lie Press
- Date:
- July 2026
- Price:
- 9.99 USD Kindle
- ISBN:
- 978-607-29-9334-1
- ASIN:
- B0H9T9ZRQC
An analysis of twelve thousand years of systems that promised cooperation and delivered control. From Göbekli Tepe to Rome, from feudal Europe to Cybersyn Chile, from Rojava to Mondragón to Marinaleda to Rochdale to Kerala. The book traces the mechanisms by which cooperation is extracted rather than freely given. Its second half proposes the Ludist Manifesto, a testable system inspired by successful multiplayer game design. Part five applies the same skepticism to the author's own proposal and lists the six fundamental problems he acknowledges he has not resolved. Written in Spanish; the English adaptation is currently in progress.
The Generosity in the Doorway
On Universal Basic Income and the Coming Architecture of Work
- Language:
- English (also available in Spanish as La Generosidad en el Umbral)
- Publisher:
- Stones Don't Lie Press
- Date:
- June 2026 (EN), July 2026 (ES)
- Price:
- 4.99 USD Kindle (both languages)
- ISBN:
- 978-607-29-9197-2 (EN) · 978-607-29-9333-4 (ES)
- ASIN:
- B0H6RT5Y32 (EN) · B0H9SWQXTS (ES)
Fourteen diagnostic essays on universal basic income, AI-driven labor displacement, and the historical precedents that anticipate this moment: Marienthal 1933, Cybersyn Chile 1971, and the Davos-class capture of the narrative. The book neither defends nor condemns UBI. It diagnoses what the public conversation hides about it. Sam Altman abandoning his own basic income proposal in April 2026 after a sixty million dollar study is the confirmation of the book's central thesis.
FREE LEAD MAGNET
Stone Papers / Cuadernos de Las Piedras
Free bilingual series. Archaeological deep-dives anchored to the mother book.
- Language:
- Bilingual (EN + ES per volume)
- Publisher:
- Stones Don't Lie Press
- Date:
- Stone Paper I available now
- Price:
- FREE with email signup
- ISBN:
- No ISBN (free PDF, non-commercial)
Stone Paper I: Göbekli Tepe. When humans built temples before houses. Eleven thousand years ago in what is today Turkey, hunter-gatherers coordinated the construction of stone temples over centuries, without agriculture, without cities, without kings. It challenges the implicit order that says agriculture first, then civilization. Written under the SDLP editorial rule of adaptation rather than literal translation.
PUBLIC-POLICY PAPERS
Papeles
Public-policy papers signed by the author in his personal capacity.
- Language:
- Spanish only
- Publisher:
- Stones Don't Lie Press
- Date:
- Paper I available now
- Price:
- FREE with email signup
- ISBN:
- No ISBN (free PDF, non-commercial)
Paper I: La Cantera. A public-policy proposal that converts the stipend of the Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro program (Mexico's federal youth apprenticeship) into cooperative capital via the Italian Marcora mechanism of 1985. Not universal basic income. Not an incubator. Not public employment. Budget-neutral. Tightly-scoped pilot with control cohort and death criteria written in advance inside the paper itself. This editorial line is Spanish only.
Interview topics
Concrete hooks a radio or podcast producer can pick up to steer the conversation.
-
01
Sam Altman abandoned his own UBI proposal
In April 2026, after a sixty million dollar study, Altman walked back on universal basic income and offered instead equity in the machine that replaces the worker. What that pivot reveals, and why it is the confirmation of the central thesis of The Generosity in the Doorway.
-
02
Marienthal 1933 as a brutal mirror of the 2026 AI layoffs
Personal testimony from the author after three waves of mass layoffs: GE-GXS in 2001, Mexicana in 2010, and the current AI wave. The pattern Jahoda, Lazarsfeld and Zeisel documented in 1933 is repeating at Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and IBM.
-
03
Ludism is NOT anti-technology
The word comes from the Latin ludus, meaning game. It is a philosophy of playable, transparent, auditable systems. Not the anti-machine movement of nineteenth-century England. A critical distinction the book clears up from the first chapter.
-
04
Rojava dismantled in January-April 2026 after thirteen years
It did not fail. It was suppressed by combined external pressure. A pattern the book documents across twelve thousand years: voluntary-cooperation experiments rarely collapse from within; they get closed from the outside when they threaten the hegemonic order.
-
05
Kerala lost its left-wing government after ten years
But the real mechanism of the defeat was fiscal asphyxia from the Modi/BJP central government, not clean democracy. Union transfers fell from 5.52% to 2.54% of GSDP in four years. 'Democracy decided' is never enough as an explanation.
-
06
Cybersyn Chile 1971
Stafford Beer's cybernetic project that the Pinochet coup destroyed in 1973. What would have changed in the world had it survived, and why it was closed by military violence just two years after it launched.
-
07
The Ludist Manifesto proposed in the book
A system of points: XP (knowledge), SP (social impact), and access Levels to resources with no money as the coordinator. A testable proposal with success and death criteria written in advance, not an ideology.
-
08
Why governments do not apply methodologies that corporations do
DMAIC, PMBoK, Six Sigma. The absence of methodology is not accidental: it is functional for decision-makers who prefer not to be held accountable. Reflection from twenty-five years running operations.
-
09
La Cantera, a new public-policy paper
It proposes converting the stipend of Mexico's Jóvenes Construyendo el Futuro program into cooperative capital via the Italian Marcora mechanism. Budget-neutral. Tightly-scoped pilot with control cohort. The cancellation criteria are written in advance.
-
10
Multipotentiality (term coined by Emilie Wapnick, TED2015)
The author recently identifies as one, after twenty-five years of carrying mild guilt for not fitting the pure-specialist box while running music, code, books and certifications in parallel. His core authorial method is synthesis at the intersections between seemingly disconnected fields.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers ready to be quoted verbatim.
Fourteen diagnostic essays on universal basic income and AI-driven labor displacement. Important: the book neither defends nor condemns UBI. It diagnoses what the public conversation hides about it. The title is an image, the generosity offered at the door someone is being pushed through.
Twenty-five years inside corporations designing the same systems I later criticized. GE-GXS during the dot-com bubble. Mexicana de Aviación when it subsided. The current AI layoff wave. I do not write from theory. I write from within.
No. Ludism comes from the Latin ludus, meaning game. Not the anti-machine movement of nineteenth-century England. It is a philosophy of playable, transparent, auditable systems. The confusion is common and the book opens by clearing up the distinction.
It is the confirmation of the book's thesis. Altman spent sixty million dollars on a study to discover that the generosity offered at the door does not protect the person receiving it. It protects the system that is pushing them toward that door. He now proposes something worse: equity in the machine that replaces you.
Both, in that order. Parts one through three diagnose twelve thousand years of forced-cooperation patterns. Part four proposes the full Ludist Manifesto. Part five applies the same critical skepticism to my own proposal and enumerates the six fundamental problems I acknowledge I have not resolved.
Stones Don't Lie Press is not opportunistic self-publishing. It is publishing under its own editorial standard. USCO registration in the US and INDAUTOR in Mexico for every title. No DRM. Free PDFs of the Stone Papers catalog as lead magnet, Kindle versions for revenue. The publisher serves the author, not the reverse.
Eleven thousand years ago in what is today Turkey, hunter-gatherers coordinated the construction of stone temples over centuries, without agriculture, without cities, without kings. It challenges the implicit order that says agriculture first, then civilization. Stone Paper I is free bilingual at yveslaurent.me.
In 1933 three Austrian sociologists, Jahoda, Lazarsfeld and Zeisel, studied a town where everyone had lost their job. They expected political radicalization. They found the opposite. Silence. Disengagement. A reduction of the time spent on any activity. It is the same pattern repeating today with the mass layoffs at Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce and IBM.
It is a concrete proposal. Convert the JCF stipend into cooperative capital via the Italian Marcora mechanism of 1985. Budget-neutral. A tightly-scoped pilot with control group and death criteria written in advance. The full paper is free at yveslaurent.me/papeles. It is written in Spanish.
Everything at yveslaurent.me. The Stone Papers are free. The three books in the catalog are on Amazon Kindle at prices between four and ten dollars. La Cantera paper is free. On LinkedIn as Yves Laurent for shorter articles.
Emilie Wapnick has the precise term: multipotentialite. It's someone with many interests and simultaneous creative pursuits. I heard her in a TED talk recently and I recognized myself after twenty-five years of believing it was a defect. The multipotentialite's advantage is idea synthesis, combining fields that normally don't talk to each other. When I write about Göbekli Tepe I'm connecting archaeology with game theory with Six Sigma with contemporary politics. It's not scatteredness. It's the method I use to reach the angle a pure specialist cannot see.
Writing sample
So that a producer can evaluate the author's voice before the interview.
Download Stone Paper I: Göbekli Tepe (English PDF, free)A representative sample of the author's voice and the editorial canon of the Stones Don't Lie Press catalog.
Contact
Direct channels for interviews, podcast invitations, or any editorial inquiry.
- Web
- yveslaurent.me
- Professional email
- [email protected]
- linkedin.com/in/yveslaurent-
- X (Twitter)
- @IvesFLaurent
- Amazon Author Page
- amazon.com/author/yveslaurent
- Goodreads
- Author profile
- Imprint
- Stones Don't Lie Press
All editorial communication is handled through Stones Don't Lie Press.
