Speculation addresses incalculable uncertainty, not merely probabilistic risk.

Evidence

To a certain extent, our ongoing fascination with the highs and lows of speculative frenzies comes from conflating speculation with “betting”—that is, with risk-taking “for its own sake” and without ambition to generate substantive value. Yet as economists from David Ricardo and Frank Knight to Hyman Minsky and John Maynard Keynes have long demonstrated, reducing speculation to gambling is a mistake because it overlooks the fundamental difference between risk and uncertainty in the behavior of economic agents. Knight’s classic work Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (1921) posits that (unpredictable) uncertainty characterizes much more economic activity than does (probabilistic) risk. Risk is the concern of gamblers, but most economic and social actors are faced with decisions that are in fact conditioned by uncertainty—that is, by incalculable “outcome probability” (everyday life decisions, the outcomes of which are simply impossible to accurately predict). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 54

Categorization

• DEFINE: The Knightian risk/uncertainty distinction is the conceptual core of homo speculans and must be precise.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal: this is the foundation for claiming populists make speculative bets, not irrational gambles. — connects to: Decisions are made under irreducible uncertainty that evidence alone cannot resolve — Christine Daigle, Jacob Golomb (eds.), Beauvoir and Sartre: The Riddle of…, 490; Financialization treats risk as probabilisable, displacing close knowledge of the object valued — Ève Chiapello, Financialisation of Valuation, 35; Speculation is an imaginative act confronting uncertainty, not mere risk-taking — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 85 (+2 more)