Not just US, seems to have happened fairly broadly across many countries. It's what I like to call "the financialisation of everything". "Everything" is perhaps a bit exaggerated, but it sounds nice.
On a lot of these issues I feel we're all stuck on some rollercoaster ride that almost no one really likes, but also no one really has the courage to stop. Stopping would mean large changes, and our political systems have become so risk-averse and voters have become so unforgiving that nothing ever gets done.
Right. Because it's exuberant margins. Starbucks and Delta both operate with their core businesses as adjacent to their financial business in accruing customer deposits now. Multiple corporations are now bundled loyalty programs - Amazon Prime, Uber One, Lyft Pink
> On a lot of these issues I feel we're all stuck on some rollercoaster ride that almost no one really likes, but also no one really has the courage to stop.
As Will Emerson says in Margin Call:
"Jesus, Seth. Listen, if you really wanna do this with your life you have to believe you're necessary and you are. People wanna live like this in their cars and big fuckin' houses they can't even pay for, then you're necessary. The only reason that they all get to continue living like kings is cause we got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off and then the whole world gets really fuckin' fair really fuckin' quickly and nobody actually wants that. They say they do but they don't."
I want to recommend two books on this subject, of contrasting if not tangential subject matter. “Debt: the first 5000 years” by David Graeber and “This time is different” by Reinhart and Rogoff. They differ drastically in perspective, but both discuss capitalism with a very long- term view. To respond to the posts above, I want to say that it almost always feels like a rollercoaster ride when up close, and that financial “innovation” and liberalization usually leads to corrections of varying degrees.
On a lot of these issues I feel we're all stuck on some rollercoaster ride that almost no one really likes, but also no one really has the courage to stop. Stopping would mean large changes, and our political systems have become so risk-averse and voters have become so unforgiving that nothing ever gets done.