from: No Mercy / No Malice
Scott Galloway @profgalloway
May 7, 2021
I often write about platforms (iOS, Amazon Marketplace, etc.) as they are a source of value creation and power. The platform of unprecedented wealth creation is the free market of capitalism. The global adoption of markets has corresponded with the greatest expansion of prosperity in human history. But similar to tech platforms, free markets are neither naturally occurring nor immune to collapse. The “free” market can fail.
Live from New YorkThis Saturday at 11:29 pm ET, we’ll witness the latest manifestation of market failure. A new king will seize the Iron Throne from Mark Zuckerberg, whose empire has been disarticulated. (He just doesn’t know it yet.) I wonder if Professor Tim Wu or Senator Amy Klobuchar visits the Night King in his dreams? Or maybe depressed teens, the GRU, or the ghosts of people dragged out of their cars in India and hanged because of falsehoods spread on WhatsApp. OK … that escalated quickly.
Anyway, the social network’s CEO has ceded the Iron Throne to the Launcher of Dragons, Borer of Tunnels, and Father of X Æ A-Xii. The coronation will take place before a live studio audience, with Tesla long bots and adoring CNBC personalities shaming anybody who doesn’t surrender to the narrative. Elon Musk is now the most influential individual in the world — so influential, he can distort the modern world’s premier platform, our free market system.
Is Mr. Musk a net positive for society? 100% yes. It’s the word “net” that is the problem. We do basic math on a person/firm, issue a thumbs up/down, and decide (if thumbs up) to ignore the externalities. This is tantamount to deciding pesticides are a net good (they are), so we should disband the EPA.
Naked examples of Musk’s influence/externality: the tweeted endorsements of his favored assets. Bitcoin is a trillion-dollar cryptocurrency that could reshape the world economic order … and Musk can manipulate it with (many) fewer than 280 characters.
Researcher Lennart Ante found “significantly abnormal returns of up to 18.99%” after Musk tweeted about bitcoin. “I believe that cryptocurrency traders are looking for role models and validation,” Ante told us when we asked him about his research. But, “we are facing a moral dilemma” he pointed out, between free speech and the protection of investors. When Musk changed the bio of his Twitter account to “#bitcoin” on January 29, the cryptocurrency rose from $32,000 to more than $38,000. Is it free speech? Yes. Does that mean it won’t destabilize the markets and end badly?
I. Don’t. Know.
Mr. Musk can even move markets accidentally. When he tweeted “Use Signal,” referring to the encrypted messaging app, shares in Signal Advance, a Texas medical device maker, increased 5,100% in three trading days.
The musk of Musk’s influence gets stronger this week. He’s established an informal alliance with Dogecoin, a functioning cryptocurrency that’s also an extended practical joke. In the week leading up to Musk’s SNL appearance, and following his tweet claiming to be The Dogefather, Dogecoin briefly reached $85 billion in market cap, more than Moderna or Airbus. By midweek it had registered an astounding $45 billion in transaction volume in 24 hours. Click here for a detailed, scientific video rendering of what this level of trading actually looks like.
Reality Distortion FieldThe theory of relativity dictates that massive objects distort the space-time continuum, and light and matter slide toward it. Musk has become a similar celestial force in our markets — but in this case, the graviton particles are genius, attention, id, and capital. In a healthy market, resources flow where they’ll generate the best return: Workers move to cities with strong job markets, capital flows to companies with robust growth prospects. But in Musk’s case, the power of celebrity in a social media age, a rising class of retail investors with stimulus funds, and our idolatry of innovators have combined to create a vacuum that may cauterize other naturally forming celestial objects. I’m especially proud of the last sentence.
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