Finance’s dominance rests on speculative imagination, not just market rationality.

Evidence

Speculation has become the very practice around which modern societies coalesce, the vernacular through which we express our collective disbelief in the waning legitimacy of neoliberalism. By bringing these social practices to the fore of my analysis, I have sought to open up the black box of financialization and show how finance percolates through our everyday lives in uneven and contradictory ways. A core argument of the book has been that, contrary to popular narratives, finance’s dominance arises not only from the subordination of our collective values to market rationality. If finance reigns supreme today, it is thanks to the generative power of its unique speculative imagination: its unswerving capacity to draw profit from the unknown and in so doing to forge unexpected connections in society at large. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 550

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that speculative imagination rather than value-subordination explains finance’s dominance — is this falsifiable, and what would disprove it?
• XREF: Core thesis connects to the reader’s finance/prediction-markets research — how speculation reshapes social imagination. — connects to: Finance’s resilience stems from imagination, not rationality — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 28; Speculative finance dominates by co-opting the generative worker imagination. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 142; Finance capitalism’s power struggles are fundamentally contests over speculative imagination — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 148 (+4 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the book’s central concept: the speculative imagination as a generative social force.

Broader Connections

• Finance’s resilience stems from imagination, not rationality #corroborates (0.95) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 28
• Finance capitalism’s power struggles are fundamentally contests over speculative imagination #expands (0.90) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 148
• Speculative finance dominates by co-opting the generative worker imagination. #expands (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 142
• Economic expectations are products of imagination rather than reason. #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 137
• Financial assets are largely imaginary, yet imaginary does not mean unreal #expands (0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 29