https://oldcoinbad.com/p/long-degeneracy
In the author’s words, long degeneracy represents “a belief that the world will only get more degenerate, financialized, speculative, lonely, tribal and weird”.
The most concise and holistic explanation of this trend is:
"As real returns compress, risk increases to compensate".
The combination of anime children, terms like "degeneracy", and crypto shilling is frankly extremely repellant.
He's living proof, I suppose. Why care about image of you think the world is burning around you anyway?
I dislike the author's framing of this in terms of right-wing meme culture, but almost all of the analysis is nevertheless correct. An orthodox Marxist could make essentially the same argument using different terminology - except about the inevitability of the trend continuing forever.
> except about the inevitability of the trend continuing forever.
Which is important because it yields completely different behavior from the believer...
Great post, thanks for linking to that. The prevalence of crypto millionaires is definitely a big factor. Especially for people under 35; when you see your peers becoming rich from essentially random behaviors (like buying the right coin), it really undermines the idea that success is linked to hard work. And that impression funnels back into culture.