Finance is monetized quantification of future uncertainty exploiting shared existential precariousness

Evidence

As we have seen, finance is, elementally, the monetized quantification of future uncertainty, measured through the evaluation of risks and the translation of those risks into discrete and highly fungible financial objects. I argued (in chapters 1 and 6) that these objects both measure and transform social life, rendering social reality and labour power highly “liquid.” In this reading, finance is merely one particularly ugly means of contending with the ontological fact of shared precariousness. We are all share some degree of existential precariousness at our core, and various systems of power and government are sustained to the extent that they reassure us otherwise. In a more Marxian idiom, we might say that humans, as an inherently cooperative species, are ontologically dependent on one another, precarious in that we rely on social bonds to ensure our reproduction: this is our “species being” (see Dyer-Witheford 2006). — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 554

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of finance as quantified future-uncertainty management that converts risk into fungible objects — precise taxonomy the reader needs.
• XREF: Directly bridges to deWaard’s cultural argument — finance liquidates social reality and labor, the mechanism of cultural colonization. — connects to: Financialization treats risk as probabilisable, displacing close knowledge of the object valued — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 35; Uncertainty deepens societies’ need for narratives and makes finance their model — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 36; Finance functions to obscure capitalism’s raw dependence on precarious life — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 46 (+8 more)
• ADDENDUM: The ‘liquid’ rendering of social reality echoes the sacrificial logic in the small acts of decorum toward corpses framing — precariousness managed through reassurance systems.

Broader Connections

• Radicalized uncertainty pushes societies to adopt finance as a model for imagining the future #expands (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 18
• Finance’s resilience stems from imagination, not rationality #corroborates (0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 28
• Tech platforms profit by embedding uncertainty, not by minimizing it #exemplifies (0.78) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 183
• The future’s anticipatory structure holds teleological necessity and surprise together #complicates (0.72) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 250