The US elections of 2008 were decided on money (economy): 2016 were based on trust (identity)
Where 2008–2018 sparked the rise of fintech (and other capital-intensive techs, 2016 should accelerate the rise of privacy, identity and integrity)
New Yorker had a “Talk of the Town” column two weeks ago, outlining the sources of crisis in 2008 that we come ten years after to reminisce. The profligacy and reckless behaviour, remarked in popular economics detective with “Big Short” and economics-and-history literature with “Crashed” tilted the political divide as well.
It changed the sentiments that divided Republicans and Democrats in the US, turning the latter more to the socialist camp and radicalising the former and branching out the emotional crowd that started resenting facts and actually support people proposing alternative facts while carrying the banner of a frontierman resenting the establishement.
I am only using this point of a world where black and white can be equally cast as such through facts but also obfuscated through a web of half-truths cast in the haze of the moment — to say that the general drive towards facts that are built on verifiable profiles, eliminating rumours and dissalowing fake inputs of slander and lies, has never been more pertinent.
People carry less and less motive to analyse information: the general art of storytelling eradicated the need to study the gritty detail: the media constructs people use today, through the form and overall end scenario of selling emotions (the feeds all all over with post-processed pictures, check-ins, faked smiles and gestures) — produced a great platform for jesters who reduce facts to nothing.
This is somewhat contrarian to the statements of how data can distill facts from chaff: the calculus is employed actually to deceieve and distort — to amplify so that the bond for similar views would create a stonger urge to belong and return to the platform.
Where 2008 allowed the elections to be conquered by an black president with little experience of the establishement that has been vocally castigated by a profligate real-estate dealer 8 years after, the former administration was a hallmark of statemanship — professional teams taking nothing for granted and making decisions based on facts. The latter is in a void of conspiracy seeking and compensating only through occasional rants on Twitter and unpredictable policy decisions. It has to end.
The fintech part:
The need to restore faith in the economics, supported by the decision to flood the market with liquidity, allowed fintech to thrive, as money sought alternative and more efficient platforms in the world of depressed returns in classic assets. So is the realisation after 2016, amid the utilitarian innovations making transactions safer, that it’s now theft and forgery of identities that distort and destroy the world of commerce.
The compliance cost of data loss is growing and authorities enact strong regimes to protect user data: fraud prevention innovates not just in terms of stopping traditional methods of money theft, but of prospective means to mimic plausible behaviour.
Identity indeed becomes the new money.
Read more:
The Economist — The Minority Majority: America’s electoral system gives the Republicans advantages over Democrats
The Economist — What do Democrats and Republicans both like?
Adam Tooze — Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
