Socialism is getting more popular in general these days — especially among younger people who are struggling to make sense of the economy. Look up "Chinamaxxing" if you want to know how deep that sentiment goes, especially as institutional trust in the West has been dropping to all-time lows.
It's very likely that in the short-to-medium term, Asian countries like China, Japan, and Korea will make big strides in the cultural landscape, simply because their societies are still somewhat functional, whereas the West is going through great changes that will likely be chaotic for a while. It's not the end of the world — but the end of an era. How quickly it recovers will largely depend on how smoothly the transition of power happens from one generation to the next. (Biden and Trump are the last exertions of control from that generation, on both the left and the right.)
What does that look like, exactly? White-collar tech work is shrinking rapidly right now (as seen in the massive layoffs), but there are still labor shortages in manufacturing, nursing, and blue-collar work that have opened up many high-paying jobs in those sectors. A lot of Gen Zers and younger workers are flocking to them right now to make ends meet. In these fields (at least in the U.S.), you can easily make a six-figure salary right out of graduation — assuming you can "unlearn" the propaganda you typically hear in schools that "white-collar jobs always pay better than blue-collar jobs," which hasn't been true for some time. This is something much easier for Zoomers to accept than their Millennial or Gen X elders, who had that idea drilled into them for most of their lives.
The renewed interest in socialism really is an indicator of shifts in attitudes toward labor. If socialism is about the working class, then it makes sense that doing blue-collar work is what you should ideally strive for as a career, rather than the bourgeois white-collar work of tech and finance, where you never end up doing any "real" work. As the joke goes: the guy doing your plumbing is probably making several times more than the office worker, who has the "status" of a "good job" but none of the money.
In a few years, socialists will likely be the ones holding both economic and political power — probably for a few decades at least — and we're starting to see signs of that happening already. It's ironic that "capitalism" itself is about to be dismantled by the markets themselves — the simple fundamentals of supply and demand, long forgotten in places like Wall Street, where fundraising and speculation reign over real returns and long-term viability. On the other side, socialism has become a lot more "viable" in recent years because that's where everything is moving — including money itself. An electrician making $300,000+ a year is much more likely to invest in future projects and ideas, simply because they have the funds and job security to do so right now, than the average tech worker making half that much, if that.
What does this mean for culture? The culture industry has largely ignored the blue-collar demographic — due to a combination of classism (the not-so-subtle disdain for those who do physical work), economic incentives (private equity was where the money came from — or used to), and force of habit. But as markets start to reach a new equilibrium, catering to the demographics that actually have real purchasing power will become more common. It's an opportunity largely untapped, especially in tech.
A cursory glance at what the average person typically sees — "high art" largely catering to the whims of the rich (artworks usually devoid of expression [i.e., criticism] and abstracted to the point of incomprehension) and the populism of "entertainment" (largely critical of the former, with narratives of apocalypse, dystopia, zombies, survival themes, etc.) — shows the two main drivers of the current political spectrum. But these are largely reactionary models that don't produce anything of value in the end, and are largely useless for anyone seeking real change. What's missing are the narratives and characters behind the "disappearing middle class" — which are starting to show slow but very real signs of recovery and are likely to be where the next growth cycles happen.
Of course, for someone who went to an elite school and never touched physical labor in their life, this notion is a hard sell — because they were taught their whole lives that they were "above" that sort of thing, even to the point where they end up on the streets because they were too proud to pivot or try a different approach. As they say, "pride kills" — sometimes literally. But this same concept applies to businesses too. A lot of places (especially in tech, which has become insulated inside of its own bubble) are trying to wring out the very last drops of money from already exhausted white-collar workers — when there's all this money (at least two to three times as much, objectively) just sitting around, waiting for someone to notice.
All of this is very messy — and we are already living inside the mess, as we near the end of an era that has probably gone on much longer than it should have. But these changes are still part of a natural cycle that has been going on since the beginning of time, and aren't likely to be all that different from others in the big picture. An industry grows, people come, things are great for a while, too many people come, the industry decays, then people leave. In a few decades, the same will happen to blue-collar work too, and the cycle will start anew.
Still, even knowing it's coming doesn't make the transition any less difficult. Crypto has been struggling in the markets for years, but it's always been "ahead of its time" — for better or worse. What we've seen are the worst parts: empty fundraising, get-rich-quick schemes, Ponzis, scams, hollow products, false advertising, grifts. Web3's reputation has been in the gutter largely because of its own choices — it took the worst of traditional finance and dropped it into an unregulated space where the worst actors got rewarded instead of punished. And now it's paying the price — quite literally.
But the idea that crypto is the "future of finance" still holds true. We just saw all the bad parts, because it's a preview of what's to come in traditional markets as well. DeFi is no better or worse than TradFi — the levels of corruption are probably about the same. The difference is that the latter has been around long enough to make it easier to hide. While a few people still hold onto the idea that the status quo is sound, that idea gets less believable each day, and at some point, there will be a "pop."
In the midst of this chaos, I have a strong feeling that NFTs will (somehow) play a crucial role in the "transition" because they are the only entities right now where money (crypto), culture (art), and politics (DAOs) are all connected to each other directly. This has never happened before in human history — and the technology itself is largely underutilized because culture hasn't been able to adapt to the types of possibilities it provides. But the options — and potential — are still there, if we ever decide to seriously pursue that path.
As a final point, the idea of "decentralization" itself is a working-class idea — because working people are the ones who need it most. The middle classes are neither on the top extracting things, nor on the bottom trying to collect the scraps that fall from above — they are the demographic most open to change and most likely to change. The biggest bottleneck isn't actually money or even economics itself, but people's feelings about pride and familiarity — the insanity of doing the same thing over and over, hoping for different results. But unlike physical blockades, feelings are not set in stone and can be changed if needed. And who are the true professionals who deal with feelings? Artists, of course.
The answer is art — it always was. Tezos will start picking up once the world realizes this is really the only way. Everyone knows at this point that the old worlds are disappearing - the question is mostly about who will adapt to new opportunities vs the ones who will go down with the ship. At least for me, I have no intentions of being left behind - if the future lies in the trenches of negative dialectics, so be it. Let's not be afraid to get our hands a little dirty, eh?