Something I noticed a few years ago was the prevalence of gambling ads in everyday life. Like, if you fly to Medellin, every billboard from the airport to the city is for gambling. Same in Eastern Europe. My intuition is that the more hopeless the average consumer thinks their economic outlook is, the more likely they are to “risk it all” because, fuck it, might as well gamble your way out of the underclass. Subject people to high inflation, uncertain job prospects, and zero friction speculation, you can make a lot of money exploiting that anxiety. And now we’re in the era of venture-backed financial nihilism where billion-dollar companies are built on this phenomenon.