Everyone Is A Speculator

The rise of gambling and degen behaviour

Hello there,

We now inhabit a new kind of reality where everyone has 2 jobs.

One is the regular day job, where they most likely earn peanuts and it probably sucks.

And the other is doing all sorts of financial gymnastics to make sure the peanuts they make don’t evaporate over time- which sucks even more.

Why so? Why can’t people just save their money the way their parents did in good old Dhanlaxmi Bank FDs and chill the eff out?

Because inflation.

Because just like gravity and magnetism, an 8% annual inflation has somehow become an accepted law of nature.

And instead of wondering if that truly is a defining feature of the world, we’re forced to fight it.

But when you’re working your tits off, you most certainly don’t have time to ponder the macroeconomic shenanigans of our broken money system and wonder if the reality you inhabit is one gigantic scam.

Since that intellectual effort is not just difficult but not even something that occurs to most people just trying hard to build a decent life, there’s only one option: do what you can to swim against the tide.

And how do you do that?

By investing By gambling away what little stuff you save up to have a fighting chance of staying afloat so that one day, maybe you can buy a house and live peacefully.

That’s because most people instinctively realize something: given the way the current system is structured, the odds are stacked against them and they may never “make it”.

You don’t need to have an economics PhD to notice how brutally you’re getting priced out of the housing market. How the price of flats in your city is running away from you like your Bumble date did when she found out about your ED.

But it’s not just housing. Even saving up and growing a corpus is getting hard for people. Advertising and social media deserve part of the blame, sure. Despite those things, it’s not like the cost of living is static- it’s moving up fast.

And the worst part is that wages in our era, unlike those in our parents’ era, haven’t grown at par with the inflation numbers we deal with. That’s why our parents’ families were supported by a single working person, but today we struggle to stay afloat like that 6-year-old loser at the far end of an Olympic pool, despite having 2 incomes.

This isn’t a trend restricted only to India. The world over, young people are poisoned by this growing sense of malaise, and the realization that every year, you sprint harder only to find yourself stuck in the same goddamn spot (the Red Queen effect), is breeding a sense of financial nihilism, unlike anything we’ve seen.

The symptoms of this nihility are glaringly visible in the YOLO culture we’re witnessing everywhere.

Resigned to the fact that people may never end up saving and building a life like their parents, young folks are often thinking “Fuck it bro, saving is pointless and I might as well live the good life right now”.

Enter the purchase of useless consumer goods, a booming experiential economy (because the here and now is 10x more valuable than some vague future that’s gonna be shitty anyway), and a plummeting savings rate.

This isn’t just inflation at work—it’s a mix of rising costs, social media-fueled consumerism, and an economy where the finish line keeps moving further away.

Another telltale sign is rising debt levels. Indian households have now flipped to become net debtors as opposed to being cautious savers for so many decades, and the data shows that people are very comfortable taking multiple personal loans to finance purchases like a smartphone or a vacation.

Inflation ensures that simply saving money isn’t enough anymore. And when even hard work can't secure the future, the only remaining play is risk—whether that’s stocks, crypto, or the latest gambling app where your 3rd cousin won a freaking Rs 238 last weekend.

Tricked by the advertising, fucked by the inflation: that’s probably a good 8-word summary of the modern youth’s predicament.

And the most important canary in the coal mine: the parabolic rise of gambling.

It’s not just sports betting and poker apps.

I’m talking real, financial degeneracy: wherever everyone’s dabbling in F&O only to watch large hedge funds snatch away their money and say FO. Where everyone’s now a penny stock punter, a shitcoin speculator, and a dogcoin degenerate.

Whatever can get them a 100x and help them escape the financial rut they’re stuck in, because there’s no other option.

Sticking to the conventional path feels increasingly hopeless. That’s why literally everyone, including the respectable Sharma Ji from the 5th floor who was once a hardcore FD maximalist, is now a degen speculator.

Want a nice quantitative metric to support this thesis? Look at the Degenerate Economy Index, an investment index that invests in assets that drive retail speculation (think F&O platforms, crypto exchanges, sports betting, and gambling apps). The index has grown 2.3x in the last three years, a good signal that speculation is mooning.

It’s no longer enough to simply do your job.

You now have 2 jobs, and for most, it’s making the situation worse because gambling is a zero-sum game, and the whales love making a profit off of retail speculators.

And unless there’s a systemic fix to this rigged financial system we all have to deal with, I don’t see a way out.

Inflation isn’t a law of nature. When managed badly, it turns into institutionalized theft that’s slowly robbing us of our assets and transferring wealth to the ruling class.

When you break the money system, you don’t just break savings—you break dreams, stability, and dignity. And you break the people and turn them into gamblers.

The only way to rebuild? Fix the money, fix the world.

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Thanks for tuning in, folks.

I’d love to know if you’re seeing & experiencing this personally, and your thoughts on the rot. And don’t forget to share it with a friend who needs to read this.