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The parallel here, to me, is that the stock market is solely based on investors' perceptions of reality, not reality itself. As soon as investors realize that t
by uoaei 6y ago
The parallel here, to me, is that the stock market is solely based on investors' perceptions of reality, not reality itself. As soon as investors realize that their investments are untenable, they will pull out, triggering an accelerating freefall until we hit terminal velocity.
The economy is unhealthy but people can be convinced to ignore that because it's not easy to see the holistic conditions of the US economy on a day-to-day basis, and the way we summarize it in public discourse and media (looking at indices of the stock market) are assuaging any fears that may arise.
Personally I find the analogy perfectly apt.
- ohyes 6y agoRight, but we don’t want that. How can we avoid that?
- uoaei 6y agoThe roadrunner is achieving prosperity. He goes far, fast. He keeps winning because he is obeying his animal spirits[1] -- literally running on roads. The coyote pursues prosperity, but rather than using his animal spirits, which would tell him to hunt like a coyote does, he instead repeatedly requisitions absurd contraptions that are manufactured by "Acme." We presume (because the cartoon is on TVs in America, and America's mythos is pervasive and ever-present) that Acme is a private company which uses the free market to drive its innovation and development cycles. Acme's advertising is presumably based on their mail-in order business, which at the time was heavily oriented toward homemakers and other "normal people." These contraptions invariably have negative unintended consequences, and yet Wile E Coyote turns to them in the next episode for the next great promise in technology, never learning his lesson. The metaphorical business cycle plays out in every episode: Coyote puts his trust in the Solution To His Problems; he spends money and time buying and setting up the contraption that will Solve His Problem; he deploys it, but because of external (usually environmental) conditions it fails; Coyote is worse off than before because he over-extended himself. Coyote in this case would be a small business owner or similar everyman who is trying to figure out and out-play the game to get rich. I guess the lesson here is to create an economy that is amenable to the localized, instinctive decisions made by each of its participants, and not to spend time on manufacturing conditions for success by setting up extremely efficient but otherwise very finicky systems, but rather to pursue it step by 3-toed step. The fancy contraptions (quantitative easing being an obvious and recent example) never end up working as intended and instead make life harder for workers in aggregate. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_spirits_(Keynes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_spirits_(Keynes)
- diogenescynic 6y agoDid you just make this comment on the fly? Really superb analogy using OP's example. Love this comment.
- chkaloon 6y agoGreat analogy. I just finished "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", and your concept of animal spirit sounds similar to Phaedrus' concept of quality.
- diogenescynic 6y agoThe stock market is a game of expectations and essentially is a graph of how rich people feel about the economy.
- IAmGraydon 6y agoThe stock market, at it’s basis, is a gauge of whether investors believe that other investors will buy at a higher price than they did.
- ethbro 6y agoUnderlaid by etf rebalancing purchases and sales.