Parallax Views w/ J.G. Michael The FTX/SBF Crypto Scandal & Elon’s Twitter Takeover w/ Mike Swanson/A Critique of Psychedelic Capitalism w/ Daniel Pinchbeck
On this edition of Parallax Views, in the first segment Wall Street Window's Mike Swanson returns to the program to discuss the FTX/Sam Bankman-Fried crypto scam scandal as well as Elon Musk's buy out of Twitter. Among the topics covered in the course of our conversation:
- Sam Bankman-Friedman, Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried's apology letter and his claim that what happened with FTX was a bank run, and whether what happened was a case of an inside job fraud or not
- The high-risks involved in the crypto exchange; how these crypto exchanges aren't banks and are not regulated in a meaningful way; the damage that the FTX scandal has done to people
- Relating past events like the Enron and WorldCom scandals and the the stock market's Dot-Com Bubble of the 1990s to the present day
- The influential American venture capitalist firm Sequioa Capital and the FTX scandal; Sequioa Capital's failure in relation to the FTX scandal is symptomatic of a bigger problem; firms not wanting to miss out on the hot new "Thing" or fads
- Reports that Sam Bankman-Fried ran FTX as his own personal fiefdom
- The political Left, the political Right, and the economy
- The divide in the Libertarian movement over crypto currency
- Karl Marx, Peter Thiel, and the possibility that the capitalist system itself is producing too much capital in ways that drive down interest rates; the issue as being more than the Fed just making mistake (ie: a problem with how the 21st century capitalist system itself operates currently); new money influxes as slowing down the bear market
- The lowering of interest rates and the creation of bubbles
- Jacob Silverman and Ben McKenzie's upcoming book Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud; elements of the libertarian world agreeing with leftist critiques of crypto currency arguing that it's just a bubble or scam
- Gold and silver, the stock market, Robin Hood, and "meme stocks"
- Younger people becoming wary of stock trading
- Elon Musk's buying of Twitter for $44 billion; Musk wasn't able to back out of the deal; Twitter losing money
- Meta, Facebook, the Metaverse, and Mark Zuckerberg losing money; the layoffs at Twitter, Facebook, and Amazon
- Casino capitalism, carny tricks, and social media misleading people on issues like crypto
- Social manias, the madness of crowds, financial bubbles, and not falling for hype
In the second segment of the program, Daniel Pinchbeck, author of a number of books on psychedelics including most recently (w/ Sophia Rokhlin) When Plants Dream: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Shamanism and the Global Psychedelic Renaissance, joins the show to discuss his recent WhoWhatWhy article "Why Psychedelic Capitalism Sucks". Among the topics we cover in this conversation:
- The rise of psychedelic corporations/psychedelic start-ups
- The demonization of psychedelics in the 1960s and the cultural thaw that's led to a psychedelic renaissance through groups like MAPS and the Beckley Foundation; the reconsideration of psychedelics by society today and contemporaries studies on psychedelics related to alleviating depression, etc.
- Festivals like Burning Man and how resource-rich elites and entrepreneurs became interested in psychedelics
- Predatory practices and the critique of patents in regards to psychedelics and psychedelic therapy
- Compass Pathways and patent laws
- Downsides of psychedelics and psychedelic use
- The ecological crisis, today's profound social inequality, and psychedelics as a way to inspire social and structural change
- The contemporary psychedelic movement's focus on medicalization that fits psychedelics
- Psychedelics, creativity, and pattern recognition
- Psychedelics, temporary bliss states, and a possible 1984/Brave New World scenario
- Pioneering psychedelic researchers Sasha and Ann Shulgin's approach to psychedelic research vs. the approach of psychedelic corporations
- Psychedelic use and messianic delusion
- The positives of psychedelics and psychedelic usage
- The question of consciousness
- The climate change crisis and transforming how we live our lives; the importance of storytelling
- Shifting away from industrial agriculture
- And much, much more!