*original post can be found on the Contemporary Idiot Substack here*
Good morning! A couple of short thoughts on completely unrelated topics to kick off your day on this beautiful Sunday (68° and sunny in Miami)!
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SOCIETY
I’ve written before about how falling sperm counts/fertility rates and Gen Z’s refusal to have sex are a cause for concern, mostly because the human race can’t continue to exist if we don’t make babies by 👉👌 (duh!). We now know a little more about the issue thanks to a recent New York Times article that shed some light on the reasons why childless adults are choosing not to have kids.
An excerpt:
"Among childless adults in the United States surveyed by Morning Consult last year, one in four cited climate change as a factor in why they do not currently have children."
Clicking through to the Morning Consult survey cited in the article, we find that 11% of them consider climate change a major reason for not having kids:
This tells me that this 11% believe that not having kids is going to help improve climate change, or at the very least not make it worse. That would be like me taking a vow never to piss in the ocean again because I don’t want to contribute to rising sea levels.
Personally, I think the value that a child brings with it into the world will forever outweigh whatever positive environmental impact the denial of their existence could possibly have.
Science thinks so too.
"It is true that more people will consume more resources and cause more greenhouse gas emissions. But that’s not really the relevant time frame for actually stabilizing the climate, given that we have this decade to cut emissions in half.”
Kimberly Nicholas (climate scientist)
If we assume this statement is true and use it as a baseline for reality, then that means that roughly 1 out of every 10 childless adults in the U.S. are delusional. Another way to put it is that they are literally too woke to procreate.
This is troubling for many reasons, not the least of which is "that when 10% of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of society".
The good news: I have a feeling the 10% is going to have a tough time spreading their delusions without any offspring to carry them forward. Perhaps this is Darwin's way of eliminating wokeness? The delusional minority saving the rest of us by protesting themselves out of the gene pool.
Poetry in motion.
TL;DR: Cut the shit and make babies. Then teach them to be good to the planet and science and all that jazz.
FINANCE
Steve Cohen is the owner of the New York Mets — a miserable franchise (no offense) that hasn’t won a World Series in 35 years. Even my forever floundering Marlins have managed to luck into 2 titles in less time.
Cohen also owns a hedge fund called Point72 which is trying to do something that will effectively make all of us as miserable as his Mets. His fund is leading a financing round for a company called 24 Exchange whose goal is to create a stock market exchange that is open…forever.
Right now the stock market is open from Monday to Friday, 9:30am-4:00pm EST.
(Yes, there are the pre-markets, futures, etc, but for the sake of simplicity let’s agree that the stock market currently has open/closed hours just like a liquor store does [unless that liquor store is located in Florida — the crypto of the states] because these hours are when retail investors like you and me do our trading.)
Above is a chart of the NASDAQ’s performance on Friday. Why did the markets perform so poorly? LOL — how much time have you got? Fears include (but are not limited to) inflation, Omicron, lockdowns, supply chain issues, the job market, interest rates, etc. The list goes on. It could be any of those things, a combination of them, or none of them at all, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Do you know why?
Because there’s an end of the day! There’s a closing bell, which means market participants can step out of their exuberant states and regroup. Without that what’s to stop a slide like Friday’s from continuing further?
The same is true when the market is going the other way.
Look, there are a lot of things that work really well on the 24/7 model: McDonald’s, the hospital, 7Eleven, the strip club. The stock market is none of these things. Maybe you could make the case that it’s like casinos that are open round the clock, but the retirement funds of millions and the pensions of teachers, firefighters, and police are not sitting on the Roulette table.
I have no idea what the broader effects of such a change would actually be for the financial markets, but I know that I’d have to ask my therapist to up my dosage of Citalopram because no closing bell means the mind never gets to rest.
Is there a demand for a 24/7 stock market exchange? Sure. You don’t have to look any further than the cryptocurrencies market for proof. That doesn’t mean it should be created though.
TL;DR: The stock market needs an off switch!
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