Trading markets is often dismissed as soulless and zero sum. For every winner there is a loser. I think this is a narrow view. The culture will keep softening its view on markets. Our discourse on technocapital has moved through something like the five stages of grief at a civilizational scale. We are somewhere in depression and are edging toward... See more

Markets are collective truth discovery machines encode information and allocate resources effectively. Interacting with markets will only continue to redefine what it means to be human in a connected civilization by changing the fabric of how we perceive, decide, and relate.

Peter Turchin calls the driver of today’s status pressure elite overproduction. When a society creates more elites and elite aspirants than there are elite positions, competition intensifies, instability rises, and status conflict spills into politics and culture.

The unusually prosperous boomer decades produced more elite aspirants than legacy... See more

Seen this way, the two motivational engines serve to reinforce each other. Winning gives me perspective to understand the world. Understanding the world helps me win the right games. Glory serves higher order meaning rather than replacing it. The finite game fuels the infinite one.