Neoliberalism has eaten everything except the bet.
The current American economic landscape is defined by a pervasive, systemic shift toward speculation. This shift manifests in two seemingly disparate ways: the gambling scandals involving college athletes and the astronomical, often detached valuations of private aerospace firms like SpaceX. Both cases illustrate a core rot in the neoliberal order. The system no longer prioritizes the production of tangible value or the stability of the middle class. Instead, it rewards the ability to move numbers on a screen. The Texas Tech quarterback gambling controversy and the SpaceX valuation are not isolated incidents; they are symptoms of a broken capitalist system taken over by speculation in all forms.
The recent gambling controversy involving Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby provides a clear look at the micro-scale of this pathology. When individuals in these environments turn to gambling, they are responding to a world where traditional pathways to security and status have become opaque or inaccessible. It is a micro-expression of a society that has lost faith in steady, incremental progress. If the fairness of the labor market is perceived as broken, gambling becomes a logical, if destructive, substitute. It is the desperate attempt to “win” a game that the broader economic structure has already rigged against the participant. The student-athlete, in this context, is a participant in a secondary economy of chance, a direct byproduct of a primary economy that offers few rewards for conventional effort.
At the opposite end of the spectrum sits SpaceX. The complexities surrounding its valuation and its looming IPO highlight the macro-scale of the same impulse. We see a corporate entity valued in the hundreds of billions based on the potential for future dominance and the velocity of capital. This is hyper-financialization in its purest form. The value of SpaceX is not derived solely from its current industrial output or its immediate utility to the public; it is derived from its capacity to attract, hold, and multiply speculative investment. It represents a move toward an economy where the “asset” is the promise of future wealth rather than the reality of present labor. When a company’s valuation remains resilient despite a cooling market, it is because it has become a vessel for the collective belief in speculative growth. It is an economy of “what if” rather than “what is.”
This environment is the direct result of the neoliberal turn. Since the 1980s, the prioritization of shareholder value has eroded the social contract. The 2008 financial crisis served as a definitive break in the American public’s belief in the system. The bailouts for the financial sector while the housing market collapsed signaled to the majority that the rules of the game were flexible for those who could manipulate capital and rigid for those who merely worked with it. This is why a median worker often requires multiple jobs to achieve a basic standard of living today. The era of shareholder value-seeking has created a country where bankers and executives make billions while the median American continues to struggle. The disconnect between the productivity of the working class and the wealth of the owners is the primary engine of the current crisis.
The feeling that the economy is a casino rather than a community of production is a recurring historical signal. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, southern and western farmers organized to reform an economy that had left them marginalized by corporate interests and fluctuating markets. They recognized that the economic system was no longer serving the producer; it was serving the consolidator. Their movements eventually catalyzed the Progressive Era reforms, which sought to re-establish a degree of fairness in the distribution of wealth and the regulation of markets. Today, we see a similar alienation. The current era of speculation—from the college gambling ring to the multi-billion-dollar private IPO—represents a return to that same state of structural breakage.
The distinction between the “micro” and the “macro” here is a false one. They are two sides of the same bitcoin. The individual gambling on a game is trying to find a shortcut to wealth in a system that denies them a steady path. The institutional investor betting on SpaceX is trying to find a shortcut to wealth by moving capital into “future” assets that exist primarily as abstractions. Both behaviors are predicated on the belief that the current system is not designed for accumulation through labor, but for accumulation through the movement of value from one person to another.
This movement of value is the defining characteristic of the new neoliberal economy. When the economy is untethered from the reality of production, the results are increasingly volatile. The valuation of SpaceX is a bet on the future of human expansion, but it is also a bet on the continued ability of the financial system to create value out of thin air. Similarly, the gambling scandal at Texas Tech is a bet on the outcome of a game, but it is also a bet on the possibility of a “win” in a life that feels increasingly dominated by economic uncertainty. Both are expressions of a profound lack of faith in the “fairness” of the status quo.
The American media, as reflected in the typical experience of its audience, reflects this erosion of trust. When the public sees billionaires growing wealthier while the cost of living remains tied to the demands of a hyper-financialized market, the system’s moral authority collapses. This collapse does not lead to an immediate revolution, but it does lead to a state of chronic vulnerability. People become more susceptible to the lures of speculation because the “real” economy no longer provides a sufficient floor.
The SpaceX valuation is a testament to the success of the “finance-first” model. It proves that a company does not need to be profitable in the traditional sense to be considered a titan of industry; it only needs to be a compelling enough narrative for the next round of capital. This is the triumph of speculation over production. It is a world where the “asset” is the narrative, and the narrative is fueled by the same desperation that drives the college gambler. Both are looking for a way to escape the reality of a system that has prioritized the movement of money over the creation of community.
In historical terms, this is a period of profound misalignment. Just as the farmers of the Progressive Era saw their labor exploited by a system that favored the railroad and the bank, the modern worker sees their labor marginalized by a system that favors the algorithm and the IPO. The common thread is the decoupling of value from the human experience. When value is decoupled from human experience, it becomes a commodity that can be gambled, traded, and inflated until it no longer bears any relation to the reality of life on the ground.
The Texas Tech controversy and the SpaceX IPO show what happens when a capitalist system stops being about the production of things and starts being about mere risk management and speculation. Both are fueled by the same underlying fact: the American economy is primarily a machine for distributing speculative wealth, leaving the majority to navigate a landscape in which the rules of fairness have been replaced by the mechanics of the bet.