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2021-01-28
The /r/wallstreetbets / Gamestop drama is burning hot right now, hot enough to heat up the popcorn that I'm enjoying eating while I watch it all unfold.
I've long considered the stock market to be mostly a form of gambling. Investors make decisions based not on the value of the companies they invest in, but on what they think other investors are going to do; so, more like a prediction market. The indexes do not summarize the overall value of industry, but instead represent all of the expectations of where the market should be and where it ought to go next.
It's all very meta and inbred. That's a big reason why I like how this situation is unfolding. Just desserts for a financial system that doesn't serve the general economy.
Another aspect that I like, though, is that this is shoving chaos into what is presented as an orderly system. You could see that as an attack on it, but what it's doing is exposing its flaws and weaknesses. The "order" in the stock markets is heavily skewed towards insiders and the super rich, so busting that up is generally a good thing. But, it's good even for the non-dysfunctional pieces of the system to have to cope with disorder.
I'm a big fan of Babylon 5, the sci-fi series from the 1990s that made Deep Space Nine better. The overall arc of the series was a struggle between order, imposed by the Vorlons, and chaos, fomented by the Shadows. Each side saw their way as best for the evolution of the younger races in the galaxy. While the Vorlons were generally "good" and the Shadows "evil", it was somewhat more subtle than that.
"It is the cycle. It is the force of history itself. You cannot win against death. We have embraced it. We've helped it along, by creating conflict. Weak races die. Strong races are made even stronger. Evolution must be served. There is no other way." -- The Shadows, as a vision to Delenn
On the spectrum between calcified order and hopeless chaos, stock markets are definitely more on the former end, and they need some disruption. (Suitable that it's coming from the high-tech sector, as is often the case with disruption.) In the absence of regulation, or the willingness of leaders to adopt, or even just try, new and different economic policies - a more orderly form of change - there really is no other way to evolve our market systems.
Babylon 5 culminated in the younger races rejecting the imposed order/chaos dichotomy, and successfully declaring their right to self-determination. That takes some maturity, responsibility, and humility to pull off, which is mostly absent from stock market "players" today, on either side of the current conflict. So, no hope for an optimal resolution, for now, but maybe this burning will evolve the stock market just a little closer to a higher, better state.