# Where's All The Action? (Part 2 of 2)

*As neoliberal drift accelerates desperation, the right seizes the language of risk while the left folds at the table, as predicted a decade ago by Marshawn Lynch*

By [The Degen Condition](https://paragraph.com/@thedegencondition) · 2025-09-11

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/b748488a729a3a204d0d1cd148bff0a008cac67fcbcbd0f6f7ecdd0be49c8b02.jpg)

Enter **The Degen Condition**.

**Are you ready to invest** time reading something that will give you **+1000% ROI**, but in your soul? Read on.

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Here is the first part of this two-part essay, in case you missed it:

[Where's All The Action? Part 1 of 2](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-1-of-2?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web)

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/4a9da382341797fb8e0076be366626e089408a7f286e4215f22721b26347dd9f.jpg)

The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012)

on degen action and political urgency
-------------------------------------

> _“Now if you talking bout it, it's a show.  
> But if you move about it, then it's a go.”_
> 
> _\- Palaceer Lazaro (Ishmael Butler), Shabazz Palaces - ”Swerve… the reeping of all that is worthwhile (Noir not withstanding)” (2010)_

When the economy crashed spectacularly in 2008, the neoliberal apparatus, hanging by a thread, called for newly-elected US president Barack Obama, to press the reset button. So he did. The players who lost the biggest bags (many of whom were responsible for the crash) were not only made whole, but were given extra chips, all subsidized by the taxpayer. The rest of us small -baggers who collectively footed that $700 billion bailout had to bail ourselves out somehow. The gig economy was born. Hustle culture proliferated. Some zeroed out of the game completely.

As the economy “recovered” through state intervention, the already prosperous prospered even more prosperously while the rest of us struggled to stay afloat or stopped playing. Some got a little bread just for sticking around, like the comp meals as a casino if you hang around and lose enough. The working class, joined by a precariat of debt-ridden petit bourgeoisie and extremely-online lumpen pros, began learning quickly and instinctively that this house called neoliberalism, run by both parties, is rigged by design against them. That inequality and exploitation are actually features, not bugs. Socioeconomic mobility, debt-freedom, home ownership—this is lore for the newer players. As global capital slow-rugs us all, a spectacle is made of rare epic legendary jackpot stories—supposed proof that our turn to hit it is just around the corner.

#### back to the action

In this historic moment, where the fall of wages is feeding the rise of wagers, where genocide is happening right before our eyes, where uncertainty is at an all-time-high, there is one thing above all else that we want and need: action. A sharp movement in a direction—any direction—away from where we are now.

One thing political action, sports action and degen action all agree on is that the action is only really real if at least one of the following is present: a risk, a goal, a potential payoff or resolution. Action can be desperation-driven, risk-seeking, a leap of faith, or a friendly wager. Rarely is it a well-conceived or flawlessly executed plan.

For most of us having come up in a hyperindividualist culture, in place of class consciousness has emerged instead a casino consciousness. Each of us is The Main Character in a single-player PvE[1](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-1-173297076) creating a critical mass of players on tilt now pushing their entire sorry stack to the center of the table. The subsequent financialization of everything, the memecoins, the housing crisis, the decoupling of the stock market from GDP, the prediction markets, the brazen grift of crony capitalism: all have contributed to exposing the economic system as a global casino. The house has been winning for decades, and anytime it glitches, it just changes the rules. Because it can.

Across time and space, action tells the story of how our species, homo sapiens, evolved to confront uncertainty collectively and individually. Some actions are hardwired biological impulses, like the fight or flight response. Some actions are learned habits. Marshawn Lynch, explaining his preference for action over talk, said he just “was raised like that.” That action—the one that he was about—the one that wins things talk can’t—was seemingly modeled for him, held as an ideal growing up in Oakland, CA, the birthplace of the founding chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. There, and in othe places, action is a learned language.

Much is made about an action’s causes and effects. Occasionally, someone will explore the class interests and dynamics underlying our actions. But I suspect we don’t see action enough through the lens of risk and reward. This dimension of action is a key element to understanding the right-populist insurgency and left-bureaucratic implosion over the last decade or so, in the US and abroad (but especially the US).

#### the profound spirit of the L

To truly get it, one must first understand the depth of the loss. Or the L, if you will. If you’ve never been poor, never lived paycheck-to-paycheck, never experienced the anxiety of wondering how to pay for rent or groceries this month, never racked up high-interest debt, the L is a more abstraction than reality. For those who know this reality all too well, action isn't about a quick get-rich come-up. It's about recouping losses, achieving basic security, or simply just breaking even. Once-modest goals now feel like a long-shot bets. Back against the wall, we’re feeling intense, visceral demand for a new strategy. One that promises different outcomes than the ones we keep getting.

It’s unnerving watching those on a winning streak catch W after W while you catch L after L. With real Ws unattainable, those of us in this reality learn how to let that dream slide and begin instead to chase _the feeling of a W_, by any screen necessary. We’re all becoming Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber; gleefully, unironically grateful that that a lottery-odds chance is still a chance. Degen energy abound, who wants to slow-play for incremental, dwindling returns? Ok, boomer. Risk-aversion not only feels inadequate for this moment, but also feels like it’s _how we got here_. A growing mass of risk-seeking players are stampeding the casino asking _where’s all the action?_

#### revisiting Marx and Smith

The dynamic between action and inaction is powerfully illustrated in the clash between Karl Marx and Adam Smith. Marx literally concluded The Communist Manifesto with a call to action, “Working men of all countries, unite!” For Marx, humanity's primary role was to become an agent of history and forcibly change the world.

In direct contrast, Adam Smith advocated for a form of systemic "inaction,” a non-forced process. For him, societal well-being emerged not from collective action or revolution, but organically from individuals pursuing self-interest within a stable framework, his "invisible hand." He valued order and gradual reform, believing the most beneficial outcomes arose spontaneously from this complex system, not from deliberate political upheaval.

Thus, their divide perfectly encapsulates the philosophical tension: Marx champions a decisive act to rupture a flawed system, embodying the belief that the time for action is now. Smith champions prudent restraint, trusting in an organic process, embodying the wisdom that often the best action is to allow a system to function without forceful intervention. A crucial conflict between conscious deed and unconscious process.

Between Marx’s “now” and Smith’s “wait and see” is a choice that haunts every protest, every policy meeting, every social media outburst. Do we resist, or do we let the algorithm do its work? There are no clean answers. There’s the ghost of Karl, a specter haunting your social media feed, whispering rebellion. There’s the ghost of Adam, sipping tea in the cloud, still believing the market will always correct itself, eventually.

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/4f9532c2656279078988578a13342c4982c802d921da8817d4751e5de48ed299.jpg)

[“Jesus Flipping Over the Tables in the Temple”](https://x.com/RickLeeJames/status/1703033445545378163) (2023, Rick Lee James/AI)

the flippening
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Over time, the ideological descendants of Karl Marx (“communists” and their comrades) and Adam Smith (“capitalists” and their friends) learned how to speak each others’ language. For the second half of the 20th century, a so-called Cold War was fought along these ideological lines, then thawed, and ultimately melted away as Francis Fukuyama declared Capitalism and Western Democracy (aka neoliberalism) the victors, and that history was over[2](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-2-173297076).

From WW2 until then, risk-seeking and rebellion had been hard left-coded, while risk-reduction and obedience was hard right-coded. This coding was then baked into the two modern mainstream political camps—“liberals” and “conservatives,” which then got attached to the Democrats and Republicans (this, despite the reality that the Overton Window these parties have operated within historically represents a center to center-right dynamic that has shifted to the right over the last 30 years)[3](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-3-173297076).

Around the time the Cold War ended, a shift began. Democrat Bill Clinton’s ascendance to the White House in 1992, just a year after the the Soviet Union’s collapse, resulted from a calculated strategy to abandon the Democratic party’s New Deal politics to align with Neoliberalism, while paying lip service to identity politics[4](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-4-173297076). Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich pushed further right while adopting a more combative approach toward Democrats, calling them fascists and such. Both parties were moving right while punching left, and the seeds were being sown for the moment we are reaping now.

For the following two decades, Dems and Repubs played light tug-of-war on social issues while remaining mostly in lock-step during the Bush Jr. & Obama years over everything else: economics and trade, foreign policy, geopolitical military strategy. In hindsight, the manufactured patriotism following the 2001 9-11 terrorist attack may have slowed down the polarization we see now from happening sooner. It all came to a head after 2008, during the Great Recession as an increasingly aggrieved populace grew disenchanted with both parties.

#### the seduction of reaction

Out of the 2008 economic crisis grew an urgency for new types of reimagined _action_—an energy nascent in the emergence of Bitcoin, which hashed its genesis block in early 2009. The short-lived Occupy Wall Street movement in late 2011 saw a mainstreaming of class-consciousness not seen since the prominent labor movements of generations past. The urgent militancy of early Black Lives Matter (before it was co-opted for corporate virtue signaling) reminded the world that Obama’s presidency was not, in fact, the “end of racism.”

Sometime around 2012, the left/liberal/ = rebel and right/conservative = conformist alignment began to show cracks. How and why this happened would require it’s own deep dive, but what is obvious in hindsight is that the people wanted action, and were presented with two options.

On one end, there is the moderate, the institutionalist. The careful hedger and responsible portfolio manager. In the political realm, their strategy is incremental change, the slow strengthening of norms, the building of consensus. It is, in its own way, a form of action, but the action of a square instead of a shark. It is the playbook of what Catherine Liu derisively calls the professional managerial class, shielded from the urgency that surrounds them but somehow entrusted with the answers.

For the player who has watched their bankroll shrink season after season, this type of action increasingly feels like no action at all. It has come to represent an inevitable, but managed, decline. A boring bet on a system whose crookedness feels like a fundamental law of nature.

On the other end: the populist, the one willing to risk it all. Their genius lies not in economic theory or savvy careerist maneuvering but in semiotics and vibes. They are fluent in the vernacular of the casino floor. They do not offer better odds but validate the player’s deepest suspicion that the game is fixed. Their politics resembles an all-in bet.

The very recklessness of their action against an unjust system (so they say) is the whole appeal. Marx understood this in ways Many Marxists don’t. The reactionary’s moves feel like action because it preys on the gambler’s desperate, romantic faith in a single throw of the dice. It is a politics of catharsis over solution, speaking directly to the people’s desire to simply stop losing.

The mainstream left invested in institutions while the right invested in insurgency. The former promised to manage the casino better while the latter sold the fantasy of beating the house. They were more keen on the plebian discontent and how to effectively play it. While pretending to smash the tables and roulette wheels, they built a newer casinos to extract more wealth from us and bunkers to escape to when there’s nothing left to grift.

#### the center is an actionless void

So, the great handicap of the left today is basically a miscalculation of action and their base’s demand for it. An underestimation of how much and a misunderstanding of what kind. The right’s narrative of “wokeism” being aligned with the interest of elites in academia and public institutions gained much traction at a time when most Americans lost trust in their government—a phenomenon David Graeber observed about in The Utopia of Rules (2015)[5](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-5-173297076). While the right gained mindshare in the “the system is the problem” realm, the dominant centrists who supposedly represented leftist interests were becoming the system.

They gambled on painting the other side as degens in hope of appearing more reasonable, more trustworthy, more “realistic.” It used to work but it turn out there’s degens across the political spectrum, and especially among the working class. They gambled on the dying concept of a “strong middle class.” They gambled on watering down resistance. They gambled on geopolitical dominance, even if the price was genocide. They gambled on Liz Cheney, chasing validation from the opps instead of listening to their own base. They went all-in on the neoliberal center, victims of the sunk-cost fallacy, punching left to cope. Most of all, they bargained their constituents’ demands down and gambled on prudence in a time of crisis, a time demanding boldness. It was a void easily, and gladly, filled by edgelords, opportunists, and grifters among us.

As the house now declares war on its own players, there are signs of action. But there is supreme irony in seeing a party that refused to take risks for so long finally understanding the current casino meta, but making all moves a noob degen would make: chasing losses, spreading bets with little strategy, doubling down (on a limited bankroll).

Perhaps this Democrat crashout has presented an opportunity. While the suits and their donors run back to the ATM to re-up, new players have come flip the table. Greta Thunberg is still out here doing and saying what grown folk are afraid to do and say, relentlessly reminding us that we can either: keep asking what is to be done, or do what needs to be done. She, like he who shall not be named, _is_ action, a walking prediction market with whom we’re all either betting for or against. Zohran Mamdani’s New York mayoral campaign exudes a similar boldness that plays well in the algorithm.

But more important than charismatic individuals are the collective actions we rarely see in our feeds or headlines. An action of plurality, a plurality of actions. It remains to be seen whether the current waves of resistance and refusal swimming against the authoritarian current finally come together in decisive moments. Or, like many other previous attempts to take action, will it all end up being absorbed into the system and neutralized? There’s only one way to find out. We aint ever seen no talkin’ win us nothin’.

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time for some action, or nah?
-----------------------------

Before I conclude, let’s pause this excursion and appreciate these two songs, two sides of the action/inaction coin.

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#### addendum

Mark Fisher ended _Capitalist Realism_ on a warning sprinkled with hope. Capitalism, he wrote, survives by convincing us that no alternative is possible. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” is now an oft-quoted sentiment around these parts.

Our addiction to action—for some, the cause of our woes—may be a path out. Or a way to cope. But the urge to take risks, whether in a casino or in the streets, is not merely pathology, or compulsion. It is proof that we find the shit we’r in intolerable. Surely, we have the fuel we need to move about it, if only channeled towards imagining and building alternative structures. Ones that fit our localities and their people’s wants and needs.

The rent is climbing, the debts are endless, the grocery bags are shrinking, the promises, no matter which side they’ve come from, have all rang hollow. Individual action may be helping us survive but collective action is the only way to get over. The right offers counterfeit action: reaction dressed as rebellion, risk in the service of hierarchy. To the extent that the liberal center offers any action at all, it’s to keep punching left.

But Fisher would remind us: inevitability is never total. Even in the desert of bureaucracy, the carnival of reaction, something else is possible. Action can still mean what Arendt believed: the unpredictable beginning of something new, born from the plurality.

Marshawn Lynch said it better than all the pundits and philosophers when he said he was _“just ’bout that action.”_ He even threw the “_boss_” at the end as if talking directly to the professional managerial class. He refused to explain further, because his game explained it all. The stakes are the highest they have been in our lifetimes. Whatever action we take (or don’t take) determines if there will even be a new season. Maybe there’s a new game is around the corner. If so, only action will get us there.

[1](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-anchor-1-173297076)

A gaming industry/culture term where players interact with the game mechanics such as competing against [computer-controlled enemies](https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&hs=GKE&sca_esv=cb1e697b99ad7555&sxsrf=AE3TifPDJN4nGc9vPc--gNrzdrE-xd89rw%3A1757626001918&q=computer-controlled+enemies&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjx9PeL09GPAxWnl-4BHVREEZsQxccNegQIKRAC&mstk=AUtExfCHtT-8oooJ8RabVOjPGlZhlw728c2COEDoW6opyUJsA6SAzfV081RI3MtWBcBpsYcfmAp8AAZCn7DvcXpzaOPhlp4pK1q0nLcH7_iT15Z_0qiWlW_r3okrfyu0YLdoq_0qblyONcAxRh-545IMFB8E4Qgosrnf9ytOsS_EWTyLEF_0hqD1gLxC4TTTznkBYVD0LRIFeLexHJwG7DZmOI9ZJCuFdd4ymb8eXwz9Zm40JhPX-3RKmA9SnWX20ceS3nXar9C4BcpsrZuHJei2g5TEBn7I1SATeY_A43nYL7V4iw&csui=3) (NPCs) or completing quests, rather than competing directly against other players ([Player versus Player](https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&hs=GKE&sca_esv=cb1e697b99ad7555&sxsrf=AE3TifPDJN4nGc9vPc--gNrzdrE-xd89rw%3A1757626001918&q=Player+versus+Player&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjx9PeL09GPAxWnl-4BHVREEZsQxccNegQIKRAD&mstk=AUtExfCHtT-8oooJ8RabVOjPGlZhlw728c2COEDoW6opyUJsA6SAzfV081RI3MtWBcBpsYcfmAp8AAZCn7DvcXpzaOPhlp4pK1q0nLcH7_iT15Z_0qiWlW_r3okrfyu0YLdoq_0qblyONcAxRh-545IMFB8E4Qgosrnf9ytOsS_EWTyLEF_0hqD1gLxC4TTTznkBYVD0LRIFeLexHJwG7DZmOI9ZJCuFdd4ymb8eXwz9Zm40JhPX-3RKmA9SnWX20ceS3nXar9C4BcpsrZuHJei2g5TEBn7I1SATeY_A43nYL7V4iw&csui=3), or PvP).

[2](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-anchor-2-173297076)

Fukuyama’s 1992 book [The End of History and the Last Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man), published a year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, argued that Western liberal democracy was civilization’s final form. He has since [revised his stance to be more critical](https://pages.ucsd.edu/~bslantchev/courses/pdf/Fukuyama%20-%20End%20of%20History.pdf) of neoliberalism.

[3](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-anchor-3-173297076)

Several studies have observed this phenomenon, including a 2024 report from the Ethics & Public Policy Centre titled: [Into the Vortex: Unraveling the Fabric of American Extremism](https://eppc.org/publication/into-the-vortex-unraveling-the-fabric-of-american-extremism).

[4](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-anchor-4-173297076)

[https://jacobin.com/2022/07/democratic-party-neoliberalism-dlc-clinton](https://jacobin.com/2022/07/democratic-party-neoliberalism-dlc-clinton)

[5](https://thedegencondition.substack.com/p/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2#footnote-anchor-5-173297076)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Utopia\_of\_Rules](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Utopia_of_Rules)

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*Originally published on [The Degen Condition](https://paragraph.com/@thedegencondition/wheres-all-the-action-part-2-of-2)*
