November 8, 2025 • 36 mins
From social media and dynamic pricing to meme stocks and AI hype, gamification has taken over our lives—and a recent op-ed argues that it’s even spread into our economy, driven by Trump. Nate and Maria discuss the psychology behind the “casino economy” and why speculation and risk are so addicting. They talk about what it means when governments, businesses, and individuals lean into risk even as buffers against bad bets shrink—and why it’s easy not to object until it’s already too late.
Further Reading:
From the New York Times: It Is Trump’s Casino Economy Now. You’ll Probably Lose
For more from Nate and Maria, subscribe to their newsletters:
The Leap from Maria Konnikova
Silver Bulletin from Nate Silver
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And I'm Nate Silver. Earlier this week, you've heard us
talk about hopefully you're listening every episode, Yes, right, listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
If not, what are you doing with your life?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
What are you doing with you You heard us talk
about Las Vegas and the kind of literal casino economy.
We want to be a little bit more figurative about
that today, the casinofication of the American economy of frankly,
everyday life in lots of ways.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah. So there was an op ed in The New
York Times on October twenty sixth from Kyla Scanlon that
talked about kind of this casino economy and what does
she mean by that? We have gamification of almost I
mean gamification has been something we've talked about before, but
(01:16):
casinoification specifically is that we are fueling speculation, we're fueling
risk taking, and we're kind of placing bets on a
lot of things, and you know, we're betting that this
all works out well for the US. Except instead of
gambling with your own money, you're gambling with the United States,
with US currency, with the way that the US is
(01:38):
perceived abroad with you know, how our economy is going
to do, and we're you know, you're seeing the government
placing these big bets and we don't actually know, Nate,
whether they're smart gamblers or not, right, We don't know
what went into that, whether they are people who are
like advantage players where like, oh, you know, there are
(01:59):
some edges here that we can exploit, or whether they're
just djens who are like I like to take risk
and I hope it works out. I'm betting it all
on black Come on, baby, US go service. I was.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I was checking my invidias dot and my Bitcoin and
the DraftKings bets I have for the midday night game.
And yeah, yeah, that's at a little distracted by by
all these you know, on the poly market price. You
can't see a bdega without seeing a count sheep or
poly market billboard in the New York City area anymore. So,
this is all around us. I enjoy some of it,
(02:34):
in profit from some of it, but like, I can
imagine how it becomes overwhelming to a more normy American.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Oh, absolutely, And I think that there are two different
spheres here, right, there's the like rise of prediction markets,
the fact that Trump himself is getting into the prediction
market business, you know, crypto, and the fact that Trump
himself got into crypto, like the actual gamifications. But then
there are also things like we're going to you know,
have the government invest in like invest in Nvidia and
(03:04):
do all these different things. Try to play a game
of chicken with tariffs to see like who's going to
blink first? Right, who's going to swerve first? Are we
going to end up in a trade war? Are we
going to end up with better concessions for the United States.
We're seeing it at every single level of society, and
I think that higher level is people are focused on
(03:25):
the lower level. They're like, oh, you know, you know
Calshian prediction markets, and they're getting into like sports betting
and all this stuff. This is terrible, but maybe they
should actually be looking more at that higher level, which
is saying, well, okay, but we're also you know, pouring
us government money into meme coins, and we're also trying
(03:47):
to see like can we levy one hundred percent tariffs
on some countries and have them still want to do
business with us? Like what can I get away with basically,
and so that that might be even though it's harder
to pinpoint and it's harder to make a nice headline
about that, those might be some of the more worrisome
(04:08):
elements of.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, and look, in some ways, I'd like to see
the American government be a little bit more market driven
in some things. I mean, the government isn't paying a
lot of people in market rate salaries. That's a big problem.
And like, you know, there were debates years ago about
like should Americans be allowed to invest their social Security savings.
I'm not sure that they shouldn't. It's probably not a
(04:31):
popular position among progressives, right, But like, but you also
face things like if all these risks become correlated, right
then in the United States, felt then social scurityholders would
bear more geopolitical risk. I mean, look, I mean there
are a few dimensions, right. One is like exhaustion of
like you feel like every decision that you make you're
(04:54):
battling some algorithm or there's some way to optimize. And
I guess if you're have high agency and our experience
and have money and don't have to worry about as
much of this stuff, right, then maybe it leads to opportunities,
but where it feels like everything is game of everything
is complicated, right, I mean we haven't had Natlsha Shull
(05:15):
on the show. She's an anthropologist who wrote Addiction by Design,
which is about similar.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Really interesting book.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, between literally slot machine design and like social media
apps continue with scroll the complete absorption that you're in constantly, right, yeah, can.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I want to take a step back with that because
this is some of the most fundamental work in twentieth
century psychology, and I just want to give people a
little bit of a refresher if it's been like a
little while since they're psych one oh one. Everyone kind
of has heard about Pavlov's dogs, Right. If I bring
food to a dog and it gets used to kind
(05:57):
of the food, it salivates because it knows it's about
to eat, right, And if you ring a bell every
time before you bring the food, now the dog learns
to associate the bell with the food. Now we take
away the food food, and the dog hears a bell
and the dog salavates. That's called associated learning. Now, what
(06:17):
Pavla found was then you can extinguish it. Right if
after a while you keep bringing the bell and no
food comes, Eventually the response will be extinguished and the
dog will stop salivating. Now fast forward to be of Skinner,
who kind of took behaviorism to the next level and
realized that basically the single best way to get rats,
(06:42):
guinea pigs, humans to do what you want them to
do is not just through reinforcement learning, which is, you know,
you reinforce a behavior that you want with something positive,
but through a cycle of intermittent reinforcement. So regular reinforcement learning,
you press a button and you get a pellet, or
you get a coin that you can use for a
(07:03):
slot machine or whatever. It is, like, I don't know
if we're talking about a human or a guinea pig,
but if sometimes when you press the button you get
a pellet, sometimes you don't, Sometimes you get two pellets,
you know, sometimes you don't. Then all of a sudden,
there is nothing you can do to get that rat
to step away from pressing the button. If that pellet
is compelling enough, it will just keep pressing because that
(07:25):
intermittent cycle of reinforcement is something that is just inherently appealing. Right,
It's that gamble, Right, Oh, maybe I won't get anything,
but maybe I'll get a lot, and maybe I'll get
more than I ever got before. Maybe I'll get like
an extra sweet, amazing treat. And that is how animals
including humans learn the best, but also how they start
(07:47):
engaging in compulsive behaviors. And all of a sudden, you
see you know, rats, guinea pigs, humans who are just
pressing that pressing that button over and over. So now
we're seeing how powerful that psychology is and what happens
when you take the guardrails off of it, and when
you start seeing the US government engaging in that sort
of behavior.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
I mean, look at slot machines, like, there are a
couple of things you can learn from st machines in
terms of reinforcing behavior that can be compulsive.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Number one is this combination of small and big rewards. Right,
if you play a slot, then you spend for five
dollars and no, there's a churn, ch changing, and you
win three dollars back, right, or ten dollars back or
two dollars back or something right, And then you have
the occasional big jackpot where it attendant comes and pays
(08:36):
you and it creates a big scene.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
That combination seems to be pretty powerful, right, But The
other thing these machines do. They have complicated game modes
where you feel like you almost win, like, oh, if
you get five reels all turned in the same direction right,
then you trigger some bonus mode in a buffalo stampede
or a wolf howl or whatever else. They all have
like animal themes or the prices right or weel afford it.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
I see the buffalo one everywhere, so I'm assuming that's
a high margin one for casinos. I have no idea.
I know that different machines have different you know, different
value for casinos, but the buffalo ones everywhere please continue.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
But yeah, you feel like, oh, man, if I just
got this one more real to turn, I would trigger
stampede mode and make lots of money. And so they
show you. You're kind of like they dramatize your near
misses if you're like, oh, I came so close last
time that like, how could I give up on this case? Yeah,
all these when you and by the way, you don't
know the payouts for slot machines are not posted anywhere
(09:38):
easily viewable by anybody. Right.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
By the way, a really good illustration of this without
getting into kind of the innards of a slot machine
is if you've ever kind of seen a game show,
which I'm sure everyone has, where they spin the wheel, right,
and there's always like the huge prize is always in
between like tiny prizes. Yeah, exactly, and you see kind
(10:02):
of that drama of like the needle almost going to
the huge prize and then not, and it almost never doesn't.
I don't know, Like I assume that it's not rigged,
but if you ever do that at a carnival, don't,
by the way, because then it is rigged.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah. I don't know what the regulations are on like
onslop mission, but like in general, the reporting different. A
book suggest that like the computer within milliseconds microseconds determines
what the payout is, it's according to a fix schedule,
and if you don't abide by that schedule, then you
get in a great deal of trouble with the gaming board, right.
I don't think they're regularly as much how they represent
(10:36):
that outcome to you and so like, so you are
manipulating people not only with the payout schedule, which has
been optimized by MT engineers to figure out what gets
people to be most compulsive, right, but also the way
in which a given result is shown can also contribute
to anxiety. Excitement, yes, the feeling of just having missed
(10:58):
out on an amazing, life changing jackpot.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The visual is so important. The visual is so important.
That's why I gave the example of the game show
right where you spin the wheel, because when you see
like cherry, cherry cherry, and then like it's almost a
cherry and that it just like misses by a half, right,
and you're like, oh damn.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Now there's something that's moving from the analog to the
so like a lot of uh, most of the tennis
tournaments now now use electronic eye judges, line judges. Right,
So go to the US that's good, right, Well, it
depends on how accurate. But you'll go to the US
Open and Hawkeye I think it's called, will show one
of the ball is in or out right, and then
(11:39):
they'll show the replay and the replay is computer generated.
I'm like, that's not a fucking replay, right, it's not.
Actually you can't verify when the computer was right or wrong,
and it's very close called by showing the computer's input.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
No, that's that's actually it's really annoying. Yep.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
But like feeling like you never kind of were able
to like touch grass and get something real. I think
is a feeling that's a little bit a little bit
frustrated too, for sure, something that's and I guess people
are verifiable are used to that. I mean us kind
of gets into the seging we taped earlier and we
had earlier this week about like the feeling of constantly
being manipulated by the algorithm. You know, there has been,
(12:17):
for example, a big increase in like fast food revenues
per order per customer in recent years. And part of
this is that, like part of this is at like
now people are ordering on kiosks most of the time,
even at physical locations. So number one, number one, you
(12:39):
were just stopping costs, right, Number two people you have
all types of up cells. Oh here's an extra sex
you can add for just forty nine cents. Right, I'm
sure the margin is very high or whatever, and like
and like just that constant fatigue from being you know,
sometimes my little my partners, you're like, which you got
like a simple restaurant, Yeah, tonight one of these it's
like not corporate own. It's like, well it's actually this
(13:01):
other place was like, yeah, I just don't want all
the fucking option. I want to b plus plain of
spaghetti without any fuss and without feeling like everything is
being golden dying for me.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You know, yeah, no, absolutely, And it's psychologically speaking, you know,
once again we've were talking about kind of thin lines
between a frustrating experience and one that actually works in
terms of nudging the consumer to the type of behavior
that you want. So, yeah, when you're at a Kidoska
and you're like, oh, like, do you are you sure
you don't want to, like, for fifty cents upgrade this
(13:31):
to like an extra large right, which would normally cost
this much more, but you get kind of you get
an extra deal, and it's so interesting. So I flew
to Vegas this past weekend and took a lift from
the airport and got my little statement, you know, the
little email that they send you and something I think
(13:54):
my lift was, I don't remember, twenty five dollars something
like that. And then I see the statement and it's
like forty eight dollars plus a thirty percent discount for
this and this and this, so that and so twenty
five dollars. So they present the exact same amount in
very different ways and all of a sudden, you're like, oh,
I got a deal.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
It was supposed to.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Be forty eight dollars, but really I got it for
twenty five dollars. It wasn't supposed to be forty eight dollars.
They just make that shit up so that you don't
feel like you're being taken advantage of. And but that
works with fast food, that works with everything door dash.
So when you know, I order from delivery apps and
you get that sort of thing all the way all
the time where you're like, oh, get a credit, like
(14:35):
do you want to double dash? Do you want to
add this from another store while you know with no
delivery fee? Right? Do you want some ice cream? You
ordered Italian and this will pair well from Gelato, no
extra delivery fee. Your dasher can stop buy and get Gelato.
I wasn't planning to get Gelatto, but uh, you know,
it does seem like a great deal because I don't
have to pay two delivery fees. Maybe I will get
Gelatto after all. Right, that kind of so the way
(14:58):
that you present it can actually turn it from something
that's either annoying or really cool. And there are when
it comes to consumers, When it comes to advertising. They
are very strict regulartions on this, but that's not true
across every industry, and that's certainly not true when it
comes to kind of the US government because it's the
one that's supposed to be regulating. So there are few
(15:19):
things other than the Constitution that regulate what it can
do when it comes to kind of gamifying different experiences.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
And now and then you can like actually get an
offer that's like actually pretty good. These typically happen in
times and places when the environment can be a little
bit recessionary, right, Like, so, Maria, I am going to
be out with you playing the napt in Vegas this week.
There's also various poker tournaments in December. It's a good
month for poker. The World Chairs of Poker is offering
(15:48):
a twenty five thousand dollars bonus if you were eligible
because you cash the main event or had enough cashes
in the summer World Chairs of Poker and the s
Bahamas event they have right if you catch their main event.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
There By the way, the main event in the Bahamas
is twenty five thousand dollars, so it's.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
A serious event. However, if you cash, you basically get
your buy in back for free and like fifteen percent,
twenty five thousand maybe premium, you know, a fe little
bit for a skilled premium if I'm being generous with myself, right,
Like that's actually worth real money, you know. But the
reason why is because like they're trying to get people
(16:26):
there and out compete these other tournaments. They actually are,
they're actually really spending real marketing budget. And you, if
you want to participate in that, have the optimist consumer
to benefit from that. Right, That's usually not true. Usually
you're being squeezed on the margin and every nickel that
you think you save is coming out of your pocket
at some other point in time. I mean you see
(16:47):
it in politics too, or like for years Democrats in
particular would send all these emails Nancy Pelosi says it's
urgent and us contribute today this fucking fund, right and
like and people get fed up with that, and like,
we have this problem in myopia. When of you design algorithms,
we're like, an algorithm can often tell you what, given
(17:07):
current conditions in the short term, will maximize revenues.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
They do not adjust enough for consumer fatigue, They do
not just enough for like the long term balance sheet
of the consumer. Right, they do not just enough. For
like with political messages, a message that was once fresh
can become stale. Right, being the fourth or fifth iteration
(17:32):
of Obama is not the same as the first version
of Obama or whatever else. Right, And yeah, I think
I'm talking to guys just who like makes films, Like, yeah,
I don't use this algorithm shit for like making picking
films at all, Right, we just make films that are
derivative and and and a lot of algorithms they become
inferior out of sample. And like also, you know, with
(17:57):
with AI, I mean I assume within could happen now, right,
I assume that with some of the services, you'll say, okay,
here's you know, here's an ad from the gap or whatever, right,
And here's how you would look in this nice new
T shirt from the Gap.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Maybe it's probably a little flattering to your dimensions and
whatever else. But like people are gonna begin to feel
correctly very manipulated, and that makes lead to like, you know,
I mean, even with Trump, right, I would argue there
is some degree a boy who cried wolf syndrome with Trump,
where like everything is seen as an outrage and therefore
(18:33):
the things that actually are outrages, which there are many
outrages in my opinion as the American citizen, Right, people
are just so fucking sick of the message and they
and they tune out and they lose their serotonin response
and whatever else, right, And yeah, it's pretty pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
And we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Do you have any tips for help people navigate the stuff, Maria.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Oh Man, Yeah, well, you know, try to uh oh,
try to get out of it a little bit. Like
people need to like just take a step back and
try to reclaim We haven't talked about this at all
on the episode, but like reclaim some semblance of their attention, right,
like get off social media, stop like reacting to things
(19:34):
all the time, and try to like just try to
I know, I know, and just try to take a
step back and get some perspective. What I try to
help people through their decision making and they're about to
make kind of a big purchase, a big decision or whatever.
It is something I often do, as I say, okay,
before you look at anything, before you buy anything, before
(19:55):
you kind of do anything like that, why don't you
take a pen and paper and write down, like what
are the most important things to you, right, Like what
are you looking for? What is in this particular decision,
Like what are you optimizing for? What do you care
a little bit less about how much are you willing
to kind of spend and give yourself kind of answer
(20:15):
those questions and give yourself firm limits, because then you
think a little bit less susceptible to those nudges that
happen to behavior in the moment, because in the moment,
it's really hard to make good decisions, especially if you're tired. Right,
this is like poker, This is like trying to play
well at the poker table. Think through all of these
(20:36):
scenarios ahead of time, because in the moment when it
comes up, if you haven't thought through, you're going to
tilt and you're going to make a poor decision because
you don't actually know how to react in the moment.
And so I think taking that time and taking those
steps back can be really really important for just solid
decision making, especially as we acknowledge that our attention is
(20:57):
limited and we are getting tired.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
The other thing I'd add is that like people make
this mistake of spending the most time on the most
marginalis instead of the most place takes decisions right where
it's like, okay, I can optimize this or that by
picking the six different versions of uber or lyft take
(21:20):
me to the airport, right, and one's a little bit
more expensive, and once they're a little sooner, it's like,
if it's like reasonably close, just pick one and don't
worry about it, because the mental effort of worrying about
it outweighs the marginal gain that's within some margin of
uncertainty anyway, right, equilibrium, Often you're indifferent between different options.
I mean, likewise, like if there is something that like,
(21:41):
you know, don't buy a bundle of things that aren't
interesting to you personally, right. You know, if you're paying
some extra fee when you check in a hotel for
a bigger room and you're planning on having a crazy
twenty four hours in Vegas and being in your room
just to sleep, but probably is not a good piece
(22:02):
of advice for you. Whereas for me, if I'm spending
hours working, which I often do, then it might be
worth the upgrade. It's kind of common sense stuff, and like,
you know, even things like airline frequent flyer moules like
the average person probably have a lot of airline optimizers
in the risky business audience, right, But like there's a
cost to all this. Some people think it's fun to
maximize this kind of thing, but like you just have
(22:25):
to simplify some decisions.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
So I think that it's it's really interesting, but everything
we've been talking about on a consumer level actually plays
out on the government level as well, and on how
Trump is trying to kind of play right and take
these take these risks and play these games of chicken.
So that actually goes both ways. You know, as as
(22:47):
citizens of the United States, we do have this reaction
where he's trying to flood the zone and like get
everyone to just not respond anymore because it is you know,
it's just one thing after another after another. You get tired.
But he's using very similar tactics, not on think, not
on purpose, but when he's trying to kind of place
all of these bets with the US economy on different
(23:09):
activities like levying tariffs. And I mean this is the
Taco effect, right, the fact that Trump will always chicken
out at the end where he says, oh, I'm going
to put one hundred percent tariffs on you I'm going
to do this. I'm going to do that. And as
a negotiating tactic, when you're trying to kind of take
this calculated what you think is a calculated risk, because
(23:30):
you're like, I'm never actually going to have to follow
through on this, because I know that this person will
back off first, right, I know that she will want
to negotiate with me because they don't want to get
into a trade war. I know that Canada will kind
of do what I want because they don't want to
get into a trade war, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It works until it doesn't, right, because what happens with
(23:50):
other countries is exactly what's happening with a consumer, where
like you've actually flooded the zone, right, and where you've
done this so many times, and you've been erratic so
many times, and you've made these threats so many times
and then pulled them back that at some point, as
a leader of a foreign country, might be you know what,
screw this, Like I'm tired, right, We're not going to
keep repeating this cycle, and I'm actually gonna, you know,
(24:12):
stand my ground. So it has a very different effect,
but it's the exact same sort of reinforcement mechanism that
we're seeing on a domestic level, but you now see
it abroad with very large economic circumstances where you kind
of you keep taking those risks, and then eventually the
risk calculus changes and you have to realize that what
(24:33):
was a calculated risk is now just a pure gamble,
probably a negative ev gamble. And unless you're a very
very smart player, you often, especially when you're in it
and you're so enamored and kind of in love with
your own success, right, and you're almost like you're riding
high because you think you've been successful at doing all
(24:54):
of these things, can be very difficult to have an
objective reality check and realize, hey, the risk has actually changed,
the risk proposition has changed, I should change the way
I'm betting.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
And look, when people feel like they've been manipulated for
a long period of time, right, and and then the
exit situation, they tend to I mean, you can probably
tell me if I'm if there's some studies here like
they rebel against that a lot, right, So like I
am so fucking through with this. I mean again, I
you know, I cover politics a lot, so I can't
(25:25):
help but make like politics analogies.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
But like, well we're talking about politics now, so it's
again you know, but.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Like I feel like people might have felt with the
you know a lot of people getting mad. I mean,
the Democratic Party has it's rebounding slightly now, right, but
has like lower voter registration numbers and lower party identification numbers,
and it has in a couple of decades, right, it's
toward toward a low point.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Part of it is like this is party, it's kind
of supposed to be upstanding, irresponsible, but like they kind
of fuck up some shit and they kind of like
Tony that they fuck up some shit, and like, you know,
if you like thought it was a bad idea, like
I did to run Joe Biden again and felt like
you were gas lit by the Democratic Party, which I
also did, Right, then it's very easy to say, fuck
(26:11):
these guys. They're wrong about immigration, they're wrong about trans rights,
they're wrong about economics, they're wrong about everything, because like
there's that reputational halo effect and then the rebellion effect.
They're probably better terms for this, right, But like, you know,
any relationship, and in a personal relationship, a business between
(26:33):
two countries, Like resentment building up, you can tolerate a
lot of it in the near tournament almost always comes
out in the long term, and often the the rebellion
afterward is worse than the Martians you would have lost
in a piecemeal base in the short run.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, and if you go even more globally, if we're
talking about kind of some of these risks for US
foreign policy, for alliances, for what the future of the
world order looks like down behind, like, that's actually not
very encouraging, right, because it's one of these things where
you casino ify, you know, the US government, and it
(27:13):
takes a long time for these effects to build up.
But then the resentment is such that the backlash is
much harder and undoes any economic games you might have
picked up in the immediate term, and your long term
economic future suddenly looks a lot bleaker. Now if we
if we think that that's what's happening in the US
government right now, we're not seeing some of these effects yet,
(27:33):
but we will, and they're probably the backlash is going
to be a lot worse than people imagine it's going
to be.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, you know, the other suspicions people have is that
when you're gamifying things, that things are kind of subtly rigged,
and yeahs and vansage right, which they usually are, which
they often are usually are, Which is you know, all
these heuristics are basically correct, right that usually if there's
some complication then although some people might be able to
(28:02):
take advantage of that complication even just being you know,
price discrimination, being tiered into different regions. I mean it's
if you go to Europe, you notice there's less tiering
of different types of services. Right, you take business class
in Europe and all this difference there's the middle seat
is empty basically, and you board like slightly sooner. Right,
there's less tiering in general, there's more kind of nominal equality.
(28:24):
And whereas in the American economy there are so many
hyper dimensions. And you notice it in New York City especially,
Even people who are objectively really well off in New
York are like, why can't I have an even nicer apartment?
Or why can't a sushi place like cost four and
fifty dollars ahead or whatever? Right, Like, you notice it
a lot more. It probably works to make people like
(28:45):
extremely competitive, right, But it is a certain equilibrium that
creates cumulative fatigue and burnout and maybe maybe worse decision
making in the long run. I mean, we've both been
enough situations where like, you're playing poker terminal day, you
have a lot of other life decisions, and you're optimizing
some travel shit, and you're like, Oh, I'm just fucking
sick and tired of this, right, I just like to
(29:06):
sit down and have a nice, mildly over priced burger
and not have to make all these fucking decisions anymore.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yep. And it's one thing if you're you and it's
a burger and it's poker decisions. It's another thing if
you're a government leader and you've just had this stuff
kind of lobbied at you over and over and over.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
And we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
By the way, as we talk about kind of the
downstream effects, it's both on a personal resentment level, but
it's also where like behavioral incentives will sometimes take a
long time for the math to play out. So, for instance,
with tariffs, you have kind of this situation where people
(30:08):
are like, oh, well, you know, inflation isn't going up.
It's not that bad, And it's because companies have the
ability to shield consumers. For some there's some buffer, right,
there's a period of time before it actually like we'll
start hitting. And so it's incorrect to say, oh, there's
no effect, no negative effect, just because you can't see
it immediately. And so too, I would say it's incorrect
(30:30):
to say that there's no kind of international order negative
repercussions of some of this kind of gamifications just because
we can't see all of them yet, because those are
going to take a longer time to play out. And
you have these institutions in place that have been in
place for decades and they're designed to kind of be
resilient and to be able to withstand a lot of pressure.
(30:53):
But at some point, like if you keep if you
keep hammering on it, like those cracks are going to
start to appear, and we're going to see some of
those effects, not now, but you know, in five years
or whatnot. But the problem with gamification is that if
you're the gambler who's making the risk now and you're
getting it a reward, you don't particularly care if you're
going to bring the house down five years from now,
(31:13):
if you're not going to be there to get the backlash.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Gim Pooker. We have like long term equilibriums called game
theory optimal solutions or GTO, where like if everybody is
optimizing their strategy, what results And GTL strategies actually are
not supposed to be exploitive quote unquote, right, they're actually
kind of defensive. They're like, we assume that everybody else
is smart and playing optimally within the constraints of the
(31:36):
rule set, right, and so therefore here's where we wind up.
And it's kind of in some ways like a fair solution. Right,
you're bluffing but not too much. You can be greedy
but not too greedy, and if you debate from that,
then you can be exploited. Yeah, you know, I mean
how how customers feel when they're when they're disempowered in
our relationship by you know, I don't know, but like
(31:56):
all that algorithm, price discrimination, all that stuff is like,
you know, I think contributes to people feeling like they're
getting the short end of the deal, right, and that
you know, there's a big debate over inflation. People have
been spending down their paychecks more and more and more.
She look at nervous about the crimea actually decrease people
might save more if they're more nervous, right, but certainly
(32:17):
in the kind of the boomears after COVID, and there
are big debates about like how bad is inflation and
if you look at kind of like how much people
are spending per basket of goods, how the Bureau of
Labor cists define it, Inflation was already pretty bad, but
they're also spending more on shit they don't necessarily need
sir manipulated into purchasing it. And you remember that the
(32:38):
second time. I guess we're repeating ourselves, right. It's just
like you know, I, you know, I probably wouldn't endorse
everything in Kyla Scanlon's argument. I don't think she's guilty
of this. I think sometimes progressives can be really fucking
prudish about this stuff. But I directionally, I totally understand.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
The complaint, so do I, so do I, And she
actually I want to find this original quote because I
don't remember what it originally says. But she reminds us
and she doesn't have the original quote either. She paraphrases
what John Maynard Keynes, who is kind of one of
the fathers of economic thought, you know, free market economics,
(33:18):
et cetera. Et cetera. That he warned that markets can
stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent. And
I think that that's a really kind of valid concern
and one of the reasons why sometimes kind of the
gamblers thinking doesn't actually work in the sense that, like
things work until they don't, they go up until they don't,
(33:40):
and you have to avoid risk of ruin in the meantime, right,
you cannot go broke. That's why the Martin Gale strategy
doesn't work for people when they're gambling. And by the way,
that Martin Gale strategy, which we've talked about before, is
you know, if you place ten dollars on a bet
and you lose, the next time, you need to place
twenty so that you can you know, get back your losses.
So basically, if you double all the time, you just
(34:02):
have to lose one. You just have to win once
and you'll be fine. But what happens if you're you know,
suddenly in the millions and you don't have that money,
like you're fucked. You don't know how how long that's
going to go. So, yeah, markets can stay irrational longer
than most people can stay solvent. And I think that
that's something that should be worrisome to us as we
look at all of these behaviors, as we look at
(34:22):
all of this increased pushing edges, risk taking, and see
that it's coming on the part of you know, our
commander in chief of the government, of the policies that
are being undertaken, and the fact that you know, we
have things that are actually kind of tied into highly
speculative ventures and if you're betting on all of them
to do well, you better hope that those are all
(34:44):
plus e V bets and that the calculus hasn't shifted
on you, which because of the way that you know,
we've seen the reinforcements changing and the behavior is changing,
and how kind of a ratic it's been. I think
that both you and I have raised issues on why
some of these bets may no longer be plus V
and why that risk calculus may have changed. And after that, Nate,
(35:08):
whether it's resent like you've been talking about, and like rebellion,
whatever we choose to call it, that might be a
bigger backlash than you bargained for. Let us know what
you think of the show. Reach out to us at
Risky Business, at Pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted
(35:31):
by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a Cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Ka
Pushkin. Welcome back to Risky Business, a show about making
better decisions. I'm Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And I'm Nate Silver. Earlier this week, you've heard us
talk about hopefully you're listening every episode, Yes, right, listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
If not, what are you doing with your life?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
What are you doing with you You heard us talk
about Las Vegas and the kind of literal casino economy.
We want to be a little bit more figurative about
that today, the casinofication of the American economy of frankly,
everyday life in lots of ways.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Yeah. So there was an op ed in The New
York Times on October twenty sixth from Kyla Scanlon that
talked about kind of this casino economy and what does
she mean by that? We have gamification of almost I
mean gamification has been something we've talked about before, but
(01:16):
casinoification specifically is that we are fueling speculation, we're fueling
risk taking, and we're kind of placing bets on a
lot of things, and you know, we're betting that this
all works out well for the US. Except instead of
gambling with your own money, you're gambling with the United States,
with US currency, with the way that the US is
(01:38):
perceived abroad with you know, how our economy is going
to do, and we're you know, you're seeing the government
placing these big bets and we don't actually know, Nate,
whether they're smart gamblers or not, right, We don't know
what went into that, whether they are people who are
like advantage players where like, oh, you know, there are
(01:59):
some edges here that we can exploit, or whether they're
just djens who are like I like to take risk
and I hope it works out. I'm betting it all
on black Come on, baby, US go service. I was.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
I was checking my invidias dot and my Bitcoin and
the DraftKings bets I have for the midday night game.
And yeah, yeah, that's at a little distracted by by
all these you know, on the poly market price. You
can't see a bdega without seeing a count sheep or
poly market billboard in the New York City area anymore. So,
this is all around us. I enjoy some of it,
(02:34):
in profit from some of it, but like, I can
imagine how it becomes overwhelming to a more normy American.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Oh, absolutely, And I think that there are two different
spheres here, right, there's the like rise of prediction markets,
the fact that Trump himself is getting into the prediction
market business, you know, crypto, and the fact that Trump
himself got into crypto, like the actual gamifications. But then
there are also things like we're going to you know,
have the government invest in like invest in Nvidia and
(03:04):
do all these different things. Try to play a game
of chicken with tariffs to see like who's going to
blink first? Right, who's going to swerve first? Are we
going to end up in a trade war? Are we
going to end up with better concessions for the United States.
We're seeing it at every single level of society, and
I think that higher level is people are focused on
(03:25):
the lower level. They're like, oh, you know, you know
Calshian prediction markets, and they're getting into like sports betting
and all this stuff. This is terrible, but maybe they
should actually be looking more at that higher level, which
is saying, well, okay, but we're also you know, pouring
us government money into meme coins, and we're also trying
(03:47):
to see like can we levy one hundred percent tariffs
on some countries and have them still want to do
business with us? Like what can I get away with basically,
and so that that might be even though it's harder
to pinpoint and it's harder to make a nice headline
about that, those might be some of the more worrisome
(04:08):
elements of.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah, and look, in some ways, I'd like to see
the American government be a little bit more market driven
in some things. I mean, the government isn't paying a
lot of people in market rate salaries. That's a big problem.
And like, you know, there were debates years ago about
like should Americans be allowed to invest their social Security savings.
I'm not sure that they shouldn't. It's probably not a
(04:31):
popular position among progressives, right, But like, but you also
face things like if all these risks become correlated, right
then in the United States, felt then social scurityholders would
bear more geopolitical risk. I mean, look, I mean there
are a few dimensions, right. One is like exhaustion of
like you feel like every decision that you make you're
(04:54):
battling some algorithm or there's some way to optimize. And
I guess if you're have high agency and our experience
and have money and don't have to worry about as
much of this stuff, right, then maybe it leads to opportunities,
but where it feels like everything is game of everything
is complicated, right, I mean we haven't had Natlsha Shull
(05:15):
on the show. She's an anthropologist who wrote Addiction by Design,
which is about similar.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Really interesting book.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
Yeah, between literally slot machine design and like social media
apps continue with scroll the complete absorption that you're in constantly, right, yeah, can.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
I want to take a step back with that because
this is some of the most fundamental work in twentieth
century psychology, and I just want to give people a
little bit of a refresher if it's been like a
little while since they're psych one oh one. Everyone kind
of has heard about Pavlov's dogs, Right. If I bring
food to a dog and it gets used to kind
(05:57):
of the food, it salivates because it knows it's about
to eat, right, And if you ring a bell every
time before you bring the food, now the dog learns
to associate the bell with the food. Now we take
away the food food, and the dog hears a bell
and the dog salavates. That's called associated learning. Now, what
(06:17):
Pavla found was then you can extinguish it. Right if
after a while you keep bringing the bell and no
food comes, Eventually the response will be extinguished and the
dog will stop salivating. Now fast forward to be of Skinner,
who kind of took behaviorism to the next level and
realized that basically the single best way to get rats,
(06:42):
guinea pigs, humans to do what you want them to
do is not just through reinforcement learning, which is, you know,
you reinforce a behavior that you want with something positive,
but through a cycle of intermittent reinforcement. So regular reinforcement learning,
you press a button and you get a pellet, or
you get a coin that you can use for a
(07:03):
slot machine or whatever. It is, like, I don't know
if we're talking about a human or a guinea pig,
but if sometimes when you press the button you get
a pellet, sometimes you don't, Sometimes you get two pellets,
you know, sometimes you don't. Then all of a sudden,
there is nothing you can do to get that rat
to step away from pressing the button. If that pellet
is compelling enough, it will just keep pressing because that
(07:25):
intermittent cycle of reinforcement is something that is just inherently appealing. Right,
It's that gamble, Right, Oh, maybe I won't get anything,
but maybe I'll get a lot, and maybe I'll get
more than I ever got before. Maybe I'll get like
an extra sweet, amazing treat. And that is how animals
including humans learn the best, but also how they start
(07:47):
engaging in compulsive behaviors. And all of a sudden, you
see you know, rats, guinea pigs, humans who are just
pressing that pressing that button over and over. So now
we're seeing how powerful that psychology is and what happens
when you take the guardrails off of it, and when
you start seeing the US government engaging in that sort
of behavior.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
I mean, look at slot machines, like, there are a
couple of things you can learn from st machines in
terms of reinforcing behavior that can be compulsive.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Number one is this combination of small and big rewards. Right,
if you play a slot, then you spend for five
dollars and no, there's a churn, ch changing, and you
win three dollars back, right, or ten dollars back or
two dollars back or something right, And then you have
the occasional big jackpot where it attendant comes and pays
(08:36):
you and it creates a big scene.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
That combination seems to be pretty powerful, right, But The
other thing these machines do. They have complicated game modes
where you feel like you almost win, like, oh, if
you get five reels all turned in the same direction right,
then you trigger some bonus mode in a buffalo stampede
or a wolf howl or whatever else. They all have
like animal themes or the prices right or weel afford it.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
I see the buffalo one everywhere, so I'm assuming that's
a high margin one for casinos. I have no idea.
I know that different machines have different you know, different
value for casinos, but the buffalo ones everywhere please continue.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
But yeah, you feel like, oh, man, if I just
got this one more real to turn, I would trigger
stampede mode and make lots of money. And so they
show you. You're kind of like they dramatize your near
misses if you're like, oh, I came so close last
time that like, how could I give up on this case? Yeah,
all these when you and by the way, you don't
know the payouts for slot machines are not posted anywhere
(09:38):
easily viewable by anybody. Right.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
By the way, a really good illustration of this without
getting into kind of the innards of a slot machine
is if you've ever kind of seen a game show,
which I'm sure everyone has, where they spin the wheel, right,
and there's always like the huge prize is always in
between like tiny prizes. Yeah, exactly, and you see kind
(10:02):
of that drama of like the needle almost going to
the huge prize and then not, and it almost never doesn't.
I don't know, Like I assume that it's not rigged,
but if you ever do that at a carnival, don't,
by the way, because then it is rigged.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah. I don't know what the regulations are on like
onslop mission, but like in general, the reporting different. A
book suggest that like the computer within milliseconds microseconds determines
what the payout is, it's according to a fix schedule,
and if you don't abide by that schedule, then you
get in a great deal of trouble with the gaming board, right.
I don't think they're regularly as much how they represent
(10:36):
that outcome to you and so like, so you are
manipulating people not only with the payout schedule, which has
been optimized by MT engineers to figure out what gets
people to be most compulsive, right, but also the way
in which a given result is shown can also contribute
to anxiety. Excitement, yes, the feeling of just having missed
(10:58):
out on an amazing, life changing jackpot.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The visual is so important. The visual is so important.
That's why I gave the example of the game show
right where you spin the wheel, because when you see
like cherry, cherry cherry, and then like it's almost a
cherry and that it just like misses by a half, right,
and you're like, oh damn.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Now there's something that's moving from the analog to the
so like a lot of uh, most of the tennis
tournaments now now use electronic eye judges, line judges. Right,
So go to the US that's good, right, Well, it
depends on how accurate. But you'll go to the US
Open and Hawkeye I think it's called, will show one
of the ball is in or out right, and then
(11:39):
they'll show the replay and the replay is computer generated.
I'm like, that's not a fucking replay, right, it's not.
Actually you can't verify when the computer was right or wrong,
and it's very close called by showing the computer's input.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
No, that's that's actually it's really annoying. Yep.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
But like feeling like you never kind of were able
to like touch grass and get something real. I think
is a feeling that's a little bit a little bit
frustrated too, for sure, something that's and I guess people
are verifiable are used to that. I mean us kind
of gets into the seging we taped earlier and we
had earlier this week about like the feeling of constantly
being manipulated by the algorithm. You know, there has been,
(12:17):
for example, a big increase in like fast food revenues
per order per customer in recent years. And part of
this is that, like part of this is at like
now people are ordering on kiosks most of the time,
even at physical locations. So number one, number one, you
(12:39):
were just stopping costs, right, Number two people you have
all types of up cells. Oh here's an extra sex
you can add for just forty nine cents. Right, I'm
sure the margin is very high or whatever, and like
and like just that constant fatigue from being you know,
sometimes my little my partners, you're like, which you got
like a simple restaurant, Yeah, tonight one of these it's
like not corporate own. It's like, well it's actually this
(13:01):
other place was like, yeah, I just don't want all
the fucking option. I want to b plus plain of
spaghetti without any fuss and without feeling like everything is
being golden dying for me.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You know, yeah, no, absolutely, And it's psychologically speaking, you know,
once again we've were talking about kind of thin lines
between a frustrating experience and one that actually works in
terms of nudging the consumer to the type of behavior
that you want. So, yeah, when you're at a Kidoska
and you're like, oh, like, do you are you sure
you don't want to, like, for fifty cents upgrade this
(13:31):
to like an extra large right, which would normally cost
this much more, but you get kind of you get
an extra deal, and it's so interesting. So I flew
to Vegas this past weekend and took a lift from
the airport and got my little statement, you know, the
little email that they send you and something I think
(13:54):
my lift was, I don't remember, twenty five dollars something
like that. And then I see the statement and it's
like forty eight dollars plus a thirty percent discount for
this and this and this, so that and so twenty
five dollars. So they present the exact same amount in
very different ways and all of a sudden, you're like, oh,
I got a deal.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
It was supposed to.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Be forty eight dollars, but really I got it for
twenty five dollars. It wasn't supposed to be forty eight dollars.
They just make that shit up so that you don't
feel like you're being taken advantage of. And but that
works with fast food, that works with everything door dash.
So when you know, I order from delivery apps and
you get that sort of thing all the way all
the time where you're like, oh, get a credit, like
(14:35):
do you want to double dash? Do you want to
add this from another store while you know with no
delivery fee? Right? Do you want some ice cream? You
ordered Italian and this will pair well from Gelato, no
extra delivery fee. Your dasher can stop buy and get Gelato.
I wasn't planning to get Gelatto, but uh, you know,
it does seem like a great deal because I don't
have to pay two delivery fees. Maybe I will get
Gelatto after all. Right, that kind of so the way
(14:58):
that you present it can actually turn it from something
that's either annoying or really cool. And there are when
it comes to consumers, When it comes to advertising. They
are very strict regulartions on this, but that's not true
across every industry, and that's certainly not true when it
comes to kind of the US government because it's the
one that's supposed to be regulating. So there are few
(15:19):
things other than the Constitution that regulate what it can
do when it comes to kind of gamifying different experiences.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
And now and then you can like actually get an
offer that's like actually pretty good. These typically happen in
times and places when the environment can be a little
bit recessionary, right, Like, so, Maria, I am going to
be out with you playing the napt in Vegas this week.
There's also various poker tournaments in December. It's a good
month for poker. The World Chairs of Poker is offering
(15:48):
a twenty five thousand dollars bonus if you were eligible
because you cash the main event or had enough cashes
in the summer World Chairs of Poker and the s
Bahamas event they have right if you catch their main event.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
There By the way, the main event in the Bahamas
is twenty five thousand dollars, so it's.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
A serious event. However, if you cash, you basically get
your buy in back for free and like fifteen percent,
twenty five thousand maybe premium, you know, a fe little
bit for a skilled premium if I'm being generous with myself, right,
Like that's actually worth real money, you know. But the
reason why is because like they're trying to get people
(16:26):
there and out compete these other tournaments. They actually are,
they're actually really spending real marketing budget. And you, if
you want to participate in that, have the optimist consumer
to benefit from that. Right, That's usually not true. Usually
you're being squeezed on the margin and every nickel that
you think you save is coming out of your pocket
at some other point in time. I mean you see
(16:47):
it in politics too, or like for years Democrats in
particular would send all these emails Nancy Pelosi says it's
urgent and us contribute today this fucking fund, right and
like and people get fed up with that, and like,
we have this problem in myopia. When of you design algorithms,
we're like, an algorithm can often tell you what, given
(17:07):
current conditions in the short term, will maximize revenues.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
They do not adjust enough for consumer fatigue, They do
not just enough for like the long term balance sheet
of the consumer. Right, they do not just enough. For
like with political messages, a message that was once fresh
can become stale. Right, being the fourth or fifth iteration
(17:32):
of Obama is not the same as the first version
of Obama or whatever else. Right, And yeah, I think
I'm talking to guys just who like makes films, Like, yeah,
I don't use this algorithm shit for like making picking
films at all, Right, we just make films that are
derivative and and and a lot of algorithms they become
inferior out of sample. And like also, you know, with
(17:57):
with AI, I mean I assume within could happen now, right,
I assume that with some of the services, you'll say, okay,
here's you know, here's an ad from the gap or whatever, right,
And here's how you would look in this nice new
T shirt from the Gap.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Maybe it's probably a little flattering to your dimensions and
whatever else. But like people are gonna begin to feel
correctly very manipulated, and that makes lead to like, you know,
I mean, even with Trump, right, I would argue there
is some degree a boy who cried wolf syndrome with Trump,
where like everything is seen as an outrage and therefore
(18:33):
the things that actually are outrages, which there are many
outrages in my opinion as the American citizen, Right, people
are just so fucking sick of the message and they
and they tune out and they lose their serotonin response
and whatever else, right, And yeah, it's pretty pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
And we'll be back right after this.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Do you have any tips for help people navigate the stuff, Maria.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Oh Man, Yeah, well, you know, try to uh oh,
try to get out of it a little bit. Like
people need to like just take a step back and
try to reclaim We haven't talked about this at all
on the episode, but like reclaim some semblance of their attention, right,
like get off social media, stop like reacting to things
(19:34):
all the time, and try to like just try to
I know, I know, and just try to take a
step back and get some perspective. What I try to
help people through their decision making and they're about to
make kind of a big purchase, a big decision or whatever.
It is something I often do, as I say, okay,
before you look at anything, before you buy anything, before
(19:55):
you kind of do anything like that, why don't you
take a pen and paper and write down, like what
are the most important things to you, right, Like what
are you looking for? What is in this particular decision,
Like what are you optimizing for? What do you care
a little bit less about how much are you willing
to kind of spend and give yourself kind of answer
(20:15):
those questions and give yourself firm limits, because then you
think a little bit less susceptible to those nudges that
happen to behavior in the moment, because in the moment,
it's really hard to make good decisions, especially if you're tired. Right,
this is like poker, This is like trying to play
well at the poker table. Think through all of these
(20:36):
scenarios ahead of time, because in the moment when it
comes up, if you haven't thought through, you're going to
tilt and you're going to make a poor decision because
you don't actually know how to react in the moment.
And so I think taking that time and taking those
steps back can be really really important for just solid
decision making, especially as we acknowledge that our attention is
(20:57):
limited and we are getting tired.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
The other thing I'd add is that like people make
this mistake of spending the most time on the most
marginalis instead of the most place takes decisions right where
it's like, okay, I can optimize this or that by
picking the six different versions of uber or lyft take
(21:20):
me to the airport, right, and one's a little bit
more expensive, and once they're a little sooner, it's like,
if it's like reasonably close, just pick one and don't
worry about it, because the mental effort of worrying about
it outweighs the marginal gain that's within some margin of
uncertainty anyway, right, equilibrium, Often you're indifferent between different options.
I mean, likewise, like if there is something that like,
(21:41):
you know, don't buy a bundle of things that aren't
interesting to you personally, right. You know, if you're paying
some extra fee when you check in a hotel for
a bigger room and you're planning on having a crazy
twenty four hours in Vegas and being in your room
just to sleep, but probably is not a good piece
(22:02):
of advice for you. Whereas for me, if I'm spending
hours working, which I often do, then it might be
worth the upgrade. It's kind of common sense stuff, and like,
you know, even things like airline frequent flyer moules like
the average person probably have a lot of airline optimizers
in the risky business audience, right, But like there's a
cost to all this. Some people think it's fun to
maximize this kind of thing, but like you just have
(22:25):
to simplify some decisions.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
So I think that it's it's really interesting, but everything
we've been talking about on a consumer level actually plays
out on the government level as well, and on how
Trump is trying to kind of play right and take
these take these risks and play these games of chicken.
So that actually goes both ways. You know, as as
(22:47):
citizens of the United States, we do have this reaction
where he's trying to flood the zone and like get
everyone to just not respond anymore because it is you know,
it's just one thing after another after another. You get tired.
But he's using very similar tactics, not on think, not
on purpose, but when he's trying to kind of place
all of these bets with the US economy on different
(23:09):
activities like levying tariffs. And I mean this is the
Taco effect, right, the fact that Trump will always chicken
out at the end where he says, oh, I'm going
to put one hundred percent tariffs on you I'm going
to do this. I'm going to do that. And as
a negotiating tactic, when you're trying to kind of take
this calculated what you think is a calculated risk, because
(23:30):
you're like, I'm never actually going to have to follow
through on this, because I know that this person will
back off first, right, I know that she will want
to negotiate with me because they don't want to get
into a trade war. I know that Canada will kind
of do what I want because they don't want to
get into a trade war, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It works until it doesn't, right, because what happens with
(23:50):
other countries is exactly what's happening with a consumer, where
like you've actually flooded the zone, right, and where you've
done this so many times, and you've been erratic so
many times, and you've made these threats so many times
and then pulled them back that at some point, as
a leader of a foreign country, might be you know what,
screw this, Like I'm tired, right, We're not going to
keep repeating this cycle, and I'm actually gonna, you know,
(24:12):
stand my ground. So it has a very different effect,
but it's the exact same sort of reinforcement mechanism that
we're seeing on a domestic level, but you now see
it abroad with very large economic circumstances where you kind
of you keep taking those risks, and then eventually the
risk calculus changes and you have to realize that what
(24:33):
was a calculated risk is now just a pure gamble,
probably a negative ev gamble. And unless you're a very
very smart player, you often, especially when you're in it
and you're so enamored and kind of in love with
your own success, right, and you're almost like you're riding
high because you think you've been successful at doing all
(24:54):
of these things, can be very difficult to have an
objective reality check and realize, hey, the risk has actually changed,
the risk proposition has changed, I should change the way
I'm betting.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
And look, when people feel like they've been manipulated for
a long period of time, right, and and then the
exit situation, they tend to I mean, you can probably
tell me if I'm if there's some studies here like
they rebel against that a lot, right, So like I
am so fucking through with this. I mean again, I
you know, I cover politics a lot, so I can't
(25:25):
help but make like politics analogies.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
But like, well we're talking about politics now, so it's
again you know, but.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Like I feel like people might have felt with the
you know a lot of people getting mad. I mean,
the Democratic Party has it's rebounding slightly now, right, but
has like lower voter registration numbers and lower party identification numbers,
and it has in a couple of decades, right, it's
toward toward a low point.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Part of it is like this is party, it's kind
of supposed to be upstanding, irresponsible, but like they kind
of fuck up some shit and they kind of like
Tony that they fuck up some shit, and like, you know,
if you like thought it was a bad idea, like
I did to run Joe Biden again and felt like
you were gas lit by the Democratic Party, which I
also did, Right, then it's very easy to say, fuck
(26:11):
these guys. They're wrong about immigration, they're wrong about trans rights,
they're wrong about economics, they're wrong about everything, because like
there's that reputational halo effect and then the rebellion effect.
They're probably better terms for this, right, But like, you know,
any relationship, and in a personal relationship, a business between
(26:33):
two countries, Like resentment building up, you can tolerate a
lot of it in the near tournament almost always comes
out in the long term, and often the the rebellion
afterward is worse than the Martians you would have lost
in a piecemeal base in the short run.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Yeah, and if you go even more globally, if we're
talking about kind of some of these risks for US
foreign policy, for alliances, for what the future of the
world order looks like down behind, like, that's actually not
very encouraging, right, because it's one of these things where
you casino ify, you know, the US government, and it
(27:13):
takes a long time for these effects to build up.
But then the resentment is such that the backlash is
much harder and undoes any economic games you might have
picked up in the immediate term, and your long term
economic future suddenly looks a lot bleaker. Now if we
if we think that that's what's happening in the US
government right now, we're not seeing some of these effects yet,
(27:33):
but we will, and they're probably the backlash is going
to be a lot worse than people imagine it's going
to be.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah, you know, the other suspicions people have is that
when you're gamifying things, that things are kind of subtly rigged,
and yeahs and vansage right, which they usually are, which
they often are usually are, Which is you know, all
these heuristics are basically correct, right that usually if there's
some complication then although some people might be able to
(28:02):
take advantage of that complication even just being you know,
price discrimination, being tiered into different regions. I mean it's
if you go to Europe, you notice there's less tiering
of different types of services. Right, you take business class
in Europe and all this difference there's the middle seat
is empty basically, and you board like slightly sooner. Right,
there's less tiering in general, there's more kind of nominal equality.
(28:24):
And whereas in the American economy there are so many
hyper dimensions. And you notice it in New York City especially,
Even people who are objectively really well off in New
York are like, why can't I have an even nicer apartment?
Or why can't a sushi place like cost four and
fifty dollars ahead or whatever? Right, Like, you notice it
a lot more. It probably works to make people like
(28:45):
extremely competitive, right, But it is a certain equilibrium that
creates cumulative fatigue and burnout and maybe maybe worse decision
making in the long run. I mean, we've both been
enough situations where like, you're playing poker terminal day, you
have a lot of other life decisions, and you're optimizing
some travel shit, and you're like, Oh, I'm just fucking
sick and tired of this, right, I just like to
(29:06):
sit down and have a nice, mildly over priced burger
and not have to make all these fucking decisions anymore.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yep. And it's one thing if you're you and it's
a burger and it's poker decisions. It's another thing if
you're a government leader and you've just had this stuff
kind of lobbied at you over and over and over.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
And we'll be right back after this break.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
By the way, as we talk about kind of the
downstream effects, it's both on a personal resentment level, but
it's also where like behavioral incentives will sometimes take a
long time for the math to play out. So, for instance,
with tariffs, you have kind of this situation where people
(30:08):
are like, oh, well, you know, inflation isn't going up.
It's not that bad, And it's because companies have the
ability to shield consumers. For some there's some buffer, right,
there's a period of time before it actually like we'll
start hitting. And so it's incorrect to say, oh, there's
no effect, no negative effect, just because you can't see
it immediately. And so too, I would say it's incorrect
(30:30):
to say that there's no kind of international order negative
repercussions of some of this kind of gamifications just because
we can't see all of them yet, because those are
going to take a longer time to play out. And
you have these institutions in place that have been in
place for decades and they're designed to kind of be
resilient and to be able to withstand a lot of pressure.
(30:53):
But at some point, like if you keep if you
keep hammering on it, like those cracks are going to
start to appear, and we're going to see some of
those effects, not now, but you know, in five years
or whatnot. But the problem with gamification is that if
you're the gambler who's making the risk now and you're
getting it a reward, you don't particularly care if you're
going to bring the house down five years from now,
(31:13):
if you're not going to be there to get the backlash.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
Gim Pooker. We have like long term equilibriums called game
theory optimal solutions or GTO, where like if everybody is
optimizing their strategy, what results And GTL strategies actually are
not supposed to be exploitive quote unquote, right, they're actually
kind of defensive. They're like, we assume that everybody else
is smart and playing optimally within the constraints of the
(31:36):
rule set, right, and so therefore here's where we wind up.
And it's kind of in some ways like a fair solution. Right,
you're bluffing but not too much. You can be greedy
but not too greedy, and if you debate from that,
then you can be exploited. Yeah, you know, I mean
how how customers feel when they're when they're disempowered in
our relationship by you know, I don't know, but like
(31:56):
all that algorithm, price discrimination, all that stuff is like,
you know, I think contributes to people feeling like they're
getting the short end of the deal, right, and that
you know, there's a big debate over inflation. People have
been spending down their paychecks more and more and more.
She look at nervous about the crimea actually decrease people
might save more if they're more nervous, right, but certainly
(32:17):
in the kind of the boomears after COVID, and there
are big debates about like how bad is inflation and
if you look at kind of like how much people
are spending per basket of goods, how the Bureau of
Labor cists define it, Inflation was already pretty bad, but
they're also spending more on shit they don't necessarily need
sir manipulated into purchasing it. And you remember that the
(32:38):
second time. I guess we're repeating ourselves, right. It's just
like you know, I, you know, I probably wouldn't endorse
everything in Kyla Scanlon's argument. I don't think she's guilty
of this. I think sometimes progressives can be really fucking
prudish about this stuff. But I directionally, I totally understand.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
The complaint, so do I, so do I, And she
actually I want to find this original quote because I
don't remember what it originally says. But she reminds us
and she doesn't have the original quote either. She paraphrases
what John Maynard Keynes, who is kind of one of
the fathers of economic thought, you know, free market economics,
(33:18):
et cetera. Et cetera. That he warned that markets can
stay irrational longer than most people can stay solvent. And
I think that that's a really kind of valid concern
and one of the reasons why sometimes kind of the
gamblers thinking doesn't actually work in the sense that, like
things work until they don't, they go up until they don't,
(33:40):
and you have to avoid risk of ruin in the meantime, right,
you cannot go broke. That's why the Martin Gale strategy
doesn't work for people when they're gambling. And by the way,
that Martin Gale strategy, which we've talked about before, is
you know, if you place ten dollars on a bet
and you lose, the next time, you need to place
twenty so that you can you know, get back your losses.
So basically, if you double all the time, you just
(34:02):
have to lose one. You just have to win once
and you'll be fine. But what happens if you're you know,
suddenly in the millions and you don't have that money,
like you're fucked. You don't know how how long that's
going to go. So, yeah, markets can stay irrational longer
than most people can stay solvent. And I think that
that's something that should be worrisome to us as we
look at all of these behaviors, as we look at
(34:22):
all of this increased pushing edges, risk taking, and see
that it's coming on the part of you know, our
commander in chief of the government, of the policies that
are being undertaken, and the fact that you know, we
have things that are actually kind of tied into highly
speculative ventures and if you're betting on all of them
to do well, you better hope that those are all
(34:44):
plus e V bets and that the calculus hasn't shifted
on you, which because of the way that you know,
we've seen the reinforcements changing and the behavior is changing,
and how kind of a ratic it's been. I think
that both you and I have raised issues on why
some of these bets may no longer be plus V
and why that risk calculus may have changed. And after that, Nate,
(35:08):
whether it's resent like you've been talking about, and like rebellion,
whatever we choose to call it, that might be a
bigger backlash than you bargained for. Let us know what
you think of the show. Reach out to us at
Risky Business, at Pushkin dot FM. Risky Business is hosted
(35:31):
by me Maria Kanakova.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
And by me Nate Silver. The show was a Cool
production of Pushing Industries and iHeartMedia. This episode was produced
by Isaac Carter. Our associate producer is Sonya gerwit Lydia,
Jean Kott and Daphne Chen are our editors, and our
executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Mixing by Sarah Bruger.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
If you like the show, please rate and review us
so other people can find us too, But once again,
only if you like us. We don't want those bad
reviews out there. Thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
Ka
Hosts And Creators
Maria Konnikova
Nate Silver
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