kyla.substack.com/p/buying-fut...
12.02.2026 15:44
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Betting on Jesus returning by 2027 and the Backstreet Boys singing about crypto are kind of the same thing. Speculation and nostalgia are both exit strategies from the present, and neither provides answers.
New piece on what happens when the economy grows without… people.
HOW BETTING BECAME POLITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
In today's New York Times piece, I wrote about how prediction markets validate political events before Congress can respond, and how those market outcomes can end up deciding what's legitimate.
Audio version open.spotify.com/episode/2mGf...
New piece attempting to synthesize the past few weeks: media logic, market structure, geopolitical trust, and lessons from history. The bond market, the Fed, Japan, AI hype vs. energy reality, and what happens when the infrastructure that made the show possible starts changing channels.
NEW INTERVIEW
I sat down with San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly and Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin to talk about what really matters in 2026. Are we headed for the 1970s or the 1990s? Why does the economy keep not breaking? And why should we count cranes?
WHY YOUNG PEOPLE ARE BETTING ON EVERYTHING
In today’s Wall Street Journal, I wrote about how an economy with fewer stable paths is pushing young people toward low probability, high payoff bets in search of upside - even though this is not what people actually want.
In today's newsletter, I wrote about why everyone is gambling and why no one is happy
I wrote about the burning Waymos and gentle singularity and ragebait and how everything is coalescing into a giant contradiction kyla.substack.com/p/everything...
If anyone cares about the flight update, it got cancelled so I decided that I'd rent a car and just fly out of Nashville but turns out all the rental cars companies were out of cars (Even if you Reserved) so I have rebooked myself to fly out of this airport haha
But one could argue that the systems that profit by drowning us in information and platforms that make money by making everyone confused and angry are even scarier. The panopticon perhaps is less frightening than the slot machine.
Most dystopian narratives focused on authoritarian control like Big Brother watching, governments suppressing information, which we are increasingly experiencing.
I wrote about the burning Waymos and gentle singularity and ragebait and how everything is coalescing into a giant contradiction kyla.substack.com/p/everything...
In dialogue with Jon Cohen, the author of Losing Big, about sports betting in the United States of America. We talk about the past, the present, and the future, and how we increasingly are turning psychological vulnerabilities into financial infrastructure. Enjoy!
kyla.substack.com/p/gamblemeri...
From rubbery crypto steaks to disappearing universities in Rust Belt towns, from robots named Ruby that know where they’re going (Mar Vista, to deliver exactly one KitKat) to humans idling in parking lots - we are all living inside a phase transition right now. But what happens next?
We are living through massive technological change and are actively dismantling the very systems that are supposed to help us adapt.
kyla.substack.com/p/the-four-p...
Rejection, convenience, and predictability are all core parts of the economy - think college kids trying to get jobs right now, Klarna and DoorDash and the defaulting NACHOs, and the downfall of Cartoon Network. What would CS Lewis think about where we are now? kyla.substack.com/p/economic-l...
Sticker drop! All stickers designed by me! Put them everywhere. On your dog. On your friend. On your friend's dog. Enjoy! Proceeds support independent economics education (aka my next big project 🙂). Link in next post!
The American economy isn’t built to think - it’s built to comply. Risk aversion is reshaping our politics, our education system, and our global standing. We’re raising a generation that’s optimized for survival, not innovation - and it’s costing us everything. kyla.substack.com/p/compliance...
In NYT Opinion discussing (1) the viability of Trumponomics and (2) the increased warring among the MAGA populist, Wall Street conservative and tech futurist factions. We need an industrial revival in the US. But this isn't the way.
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/o...
I also talk about what policies would work better according to history and how you can think about your portfolios.
Ray Dalio has said that this is the 'Overall Big Cycle' and that this all had to happen - which maybe, but torpedoing the world into an economic downturn and kneecapping industry probably isn’t the best solution to fix it.
This isn't just Wall Street. Small businesses will get hammered by this. And - it won't bring that many jobs back, because automation is key. What we do bring back will be exorbitantly expensive, and we can't make things like coffee or bananas here.
And the goal of all this is to apparently bring manufacturing back, right? Well, manufacturers are already hurting. Microsoft has already cancelled $1b in data centers in Ohio and Haas Automation is pulling back in CA.
