Market short-termism provides the temporal structure of hyperpolitics

Evidence

Hyperpolitics is, above all, an eminently market-friendly type of politics, in form as well as content. Markets offer exit options; by nature, they are focused on the short term. Trading algorithms know no future. As Hayek noted, the psychology of planning and mass politics were closely related: politicians would bide their time over decades; Soviet planners read human needs across multiple five-years plans; Mao, keenly aware of the longue durée, hibernated in rural exile for more than twenty years. The horizon of the market, however, is much nearer: the oscillations of the business cycle offer instant rewards to participants. Today, politicians navigate by election cycle and polling averages; citizens turn out to demonstrate for a day; influencers petition or protest with a tweet. Postpolitics may be over, but its successor would be unrecognizable to a time traveler from the early twentieth century. — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 60

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines hyperpolitics partly by its market-horizon temporality (instant rewards, election cycles) against the longue-durée of earlier mass politics.
• XREF: Hayek’s link between planning psychology and mass politics is a surprising basis for the 21st-century successor politics; connects to antipolitics chapter material.