www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/opinion/the-crypto-collapse-magical-thinking-capitalism.html

I have come to view cryptocurrencies not simply as exotic assets but as a manifestation of a magical thinking that had come to infect part of the generation who grew up in the aftermath of the Great Recession — and American capitalism, more broadly.

For these purposes, magical thinking is the assumption that favored conditions will continue on forever without regard for history. It is the minimizing of constraints and trade-offs in favor of techno-utopianism and the exclusive emphasis on positive outcomes and novelty. It is the conflation of virtue with commerce.

Another manifestation of magical thinking is believing that the best hopes for progress on our greatest challenges — climate change, racial injustice and economic inequality — are corporations and individual investment and consumption choices rather than political mobilization and our communities.

Corporations are valuable socially because they solve problems and generate wealth. But they should not be trusted as arbiters of progress and should be balanced by a state that mediates political questions. Trade-offs are everywhere and inescapable. Navigating these trade-offs, rather than ignoring them, is the recipe for a good life.

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