Financialized capitalism shifts faith from deferred to instant gratification
Evidence
Correspondingly, people’s faith in capitalism becomes more focused on the present and less on the future. It no longer follows Weber’s sacrificial paradigm, which is embodied in the “deferred gratification” principle (see, for instance, Straus 1962). Relations and transactions alike are underpinned by a compulsion for instant gratification in an economy that rewards speed, reveres immersion in the present, and endorses volatility. What is more, with the contraction of mortgage credit, average households are today less tightly involved in the risk and debt imaginaries of home ownership and more conscious of their own present precarity in the face of uncontrollable uncertainty. It is against this background that finance’s speculative dynamics emerges triumphant over neoliberal reason. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 116
Categorization
- XREF: Directly reverses Weber’s Protestant ethic / deferred-gratification thesis, which the reader knows well. — connects to: The spirit of capitalism shifts from risk-taking to uncertainty-endorsing speculation. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 79; Financialization fragments corporate, state, and individual horizons into short-termism — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 138; Financialized capitalism shifted from spreading risk to endorsing risk via self-insurance. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 274
- SHARE: The claim that contraction of mortgage credit made households MORE conscious of present precarity (less embedded in debt imaginaries) is a counterintuitive trope worth sharing.
Broader Connections
- The spirit of capitalism shifts from risk-taking to uncertainty-endorsing speculation.
#expands(0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 79 - Financialization fragments corporate, state, and individual horizons into short-termism
#expands(0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 138 - Financialized capitalism shifted from spreading risk to endorsing risk via self-insurance.
#expands(0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 274