Gambling is flourishing because it meets the needs of our moment: a low-trust world, where lonely young people are seeking high-risk opportunities to launch them into wealth and comfort. In such an environment, financialization might seem to be the last form of civic participation that feels honest to a large portion of the country. Voting is compromised, and polling is manipulated, and news is algorithmically curated. But a bet settles. A game ends. There is comfort in that. In an uncertain and illegible world, it doesn’t get much more certain and legible than this: You won, or you lost.
Bleak as hell to contemplate that the war in Iran is somehow due to something even more callous and nihilistic than fascism
need money to do anything else, money only stops being important when you have enough of it. Then it wraps around and becomes the only thing that matters again when you have too much and you turn into Smaug.
Decline in material conditions probably explains a lot, and if you pull out the crosstabs it seems like what’s happening is the “very” folks are shifting into the “somewhat” column (only 11% rated patriotism as “not important at all”). The wording of the question might also be weird - it asks “How important are each of the values to you personally” and then the money question is literally just “money,” not “having enough money to feed my family” or “having more money than most people”. Anyone worried about not having enough money is probably choosing the former interpretation.
“Hard work” also scores a whopping 94 on the very/somewhat important answers, higher than everything else (self-fulfillment is second at 91, followed by money and tolerance for others, tied at 90; it also comes in at 67 on “very important”, 9 points ahead of the runner up, tolerance for others), so the conclusion that people are pivoting en masse to scams and get rich quick schemes and screwing everyone else over as central values doesn’t seem to hold.
to the limited extent i had any community before, one group folded due to covid and the other decided to pretend covid ceased to exist. Followed immediately by 100% of the group who went to a convention coming home sick with it.
Gambling is flourishing because it meets the needs of our moment: a low-trust world, where lonely young people are seeking high-risk opportunities to launch them into wealth and comfort. In such an environment, financialization might seem to be the last form of civic participation that feels honest to a large portion of the country. Voting is compromised, and polling is manipulated, and news is algorithmically curated. But a bet settles. A game ends. There is comfort in that. In an uncertain and illegible world, it doesn’t get much more certain and legible than this: You won, or you lost.Bleak as hell to contemplate that the war in Iran is somehow due to something even more callous and nihilistic than fascismEdit: This is all garbo. See below.
need money to do anything else, money only stops being important when you have enough of it. Then it wraps around and becomes the only thing that matters again when you have too much and you turn into Smaug.
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Decline in material conditions probably explains a lot, and if you pull out the crosstabs it seems like what’s happening is the “very” folks are shifting into the “somewhat” column (only 11% rated patriotism as “not important at all”). The wording of the question might also be weird - it asks “How important are each of the values to you personally” and then the money question is literally just “money,” not “having enough money to feed my family” or “having more money than most people”. Anyone worried about not having enough money is probably choosing the former interpretation.
“Hard work” also scores a whopping 94 on the very/somewhat important answers, higher than everything else (self-fulfillment is second at 91, followed by money and tolerance for others, tied at 90; it also comes in at 67 on “very important”, 9 points ahead of the runner up, tolerance for others), so the conclusion that people are pivoting en masse to scams and get rich quick schemes and screwing everyone else over as central values doesn’t seem to hold.
Guess I should’ve applied more skepticism.
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The author is one of the Abundance libs. He’s got Peter Thiel connections.
(Edit:) Embarrassing: Peter Thiel’s Zero to One Might Be the Best Business Book I’ve Read
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Agreed. I figure the only reason Derek Thompson isn’t as loathed as Ezra Klein or Matthew Yglesias around here is that he’s somehow more forgettable.
Yeah I think those are bullshit. Let me pull up my Graphs that show all the young people are actually evil
to the limited extent i had any community before, one group folded due to covid and the other decided to pretend covid ceased to exist. Followed immediately by 100% of the group who went to a convention coming home sick with it.
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