Finance as culture

Social media acts as an emotional coordination layer, increasing the amplitude and frequency of culture. Jealousy, resentment, and fomo are more viral and powerful than ever, particularly when everyone is on their computer all day post-lockdown.

Today, it is hard not to notice the prevalence of equity culture. Every employee optimizes their stocks and options. People frequently move between companies to build a portfolio of equities. Employees of successful startups want to become angel investors. Second-year MBAs want to be founders or VCs. Nobody wants to miss out on the next equity succ... See more

Memes took lottery culture to new heights. Stocks popular among a retail audience, like Apple, have historically traded at higher multiples than others in their category. Tesla accelerated the divergence between retail excitement and fundamentals: TSLA revenue grew 50% over the past two years, but meme culture helped its market cap grow by 12x.

What Instagram did to body image, wallstreetbets and Twitter are doing to bank account image.

When “stocks only go up”, people realize the stock market is a casino with much better payouts. Gamified trading has tethered us to our phones and bank accounts.

Labor’s share of income is declining across countries; in the US, it fell from >63% in 2000 to <57% today. COVID accelerated this dislocation between labor and capital. The further the disconnect between labor and capital, the more resentment we see between them. GameStop was the greatest invasion of labor into capital since the Peasants’ Revolt – ... See more

For those who want more risk than public equity markets provide, a long tail of speculative assets are exploding – digital collectibles, DeFi, Bitcoin. Bitcoin grew more than 5x YoY. Collectibles like NBA Top Shot did $60m in sales in a week. DeFi (decentralized finance), the infrastructure powering the casino of crypto, had a $40b influx in the pa... See more

The financialization of culture has manifested in two primary ways: lottery culture and equity culture.