In the recent past, we have featured pieces around issues plaguing society ranging from wealth inequality to social media driven envy to short video addiction to shortening attention spans to a growing penchant for instant gratification through punting on everything from options to prediction markets. This piece links all of it to conclude why humanity is likely to degenerate as a result.
“…in the author’s words, long degeneracy represents “a belief that the world will only get more degenerate, financialized, speculative, lonely, tribal and weird”.
…long degeneracy is your college friend sports betting. long degeneracy is your uncle trading options. long degeneracy is your participation in an online community instead of an irl (in real life) one. these trends are modern efficiency applied to human nature – the shortest-term reward cycles.
forces like ai only accelerate long degeneracy – at its core there is an understanding that the time to “make it” is running out, and any new developments only shorten the clock.”
The author describes the feeling to help drive home the point:
“…rather than try to properly define it, it is easier to explain how it feels: imagine you are a new college grad from a middle class family. if you are lucky you have no education debt, but many do. if you are lucky, you land a 100k+ job, but many don’t. and even if you are lucky you still look up at astronomical asset prices (houses, stocks) and try to work out how you can maybe afford one in 20 years. with the understanding that they will only continue to go up in the meantime.
you are surrounded by online examples of success (usually fake or survivorship bias). your attention span has been fried by tiktok and youtube shorts. you simply don’t have the patience or discipline for the slow path.
so instead, you start taking outsized risks with your monthly paychecks – crypto, options (pls no), meme stocks, meme coins, sports betting (pls no). your rationale is that this current amount could never buy a house, but if you win it might. and if you lose you simply have to wait a week or two before you can reload.”
The author links to the polarising politics especially the emergence of the extreme left:
“hypergambling came into public consciousness around covid. in january 2020 peter thiel wrote to mark zuckerberg, with the observation that:
“from the perspective of a broken generational contract, there seems to be a pretty straightforward answer to me, namely, that when one has too much student debt or if housing is too unaffordable, then one will have negative capital for a long time and/or find it very hard to start accumulating capital in the form of real estate”.
while he was talking about millennials being socialist, that is just the other side of the same coin. hypergambling is the emergent seethe, socialism is the cope.”
What’s the root cause? Inequality is the obvious theme reckons the author:
“…the key underlying factor is growing income to asset inequality. not the ratio of highest earners to lowest earners, but the relationship between wages and the cost of a house.
as this continues to worsen, it will only make the linear timeline – get a normal job, save up for a house – longer and longer, until it becomes completely untenable. this is an example of an expected return (“get a good job after college”) compressing, and this fundamentally drives the search for higher yield in the form of riskier investments.
…with the proliferation of sports betting, prediction markets, online casinos, the invention of 0dte options, and the upcoming popularity of perpetual futures – the average consumer is a click away from entering the world of the degenerate.”
In this light, the Indian authorities’ move to curb real money gaming and weekly expiry of options seem to be in the right direction. But more needs to be done.
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Note: The above material is neither investment research, nor financial advice. Marcellus does not seek payment for or business from this publication in any shape or form. The information provided is intended for educational purposes only. Marcellus Investment Managers is regulated by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and is also an FME (Non-Retail) with the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) as a provider of Portfolio Management Services. Additionally, Marcellus is also registered with US Securities and Exchange Commission (“US SEC”) as an Investment Advisor.
