At the micro and the macro – what is disclosed about me, by me becomes currency, becomes material for trading. A market is a forum for exchange in which we externalise risk, and open ourselves to exchange. We have already mused about our own internal markets. We think of markets as robust – yet they are also delicate ecosystems, dependent on – and defined by – relationships between the actors in them.
We tend to externalise risk – put it out there, register it, document it in a risk register…We develop forms of mitigation – to reduce either the likelihood of risks’ arising, or (were they to arise) to give the impression that we know what we would do to reduce their foreseen impact. We imagine there is such a thing as foresight. In order to imagine risk, we have to imagine a future in which predictable things happen.
What am I doing when I am taking a risk? Does the risk in some sense take me? In risk taking, there is a sense of heightened likelihood of harm, and heightened likelihood of benefit. In our economic dealings, we see risk-taking as something which should be rewarded – both in individual transactions, and more widely (as a social good). In our economic dealings, we counterpoise risk and reward with loss – the ‘down-side’. In our stock markets, we have created an imaginary world where the exchanging of risky positions is the currency. We insure against loss through trading and through hedging – and when we want to call in one of our insurances – our ‘cover’ – we rely on someone who is able to judge the loss, a so-called ‘loss adjuster’. We insure against loss through pricing mechanisms, balancing supply and demand. Intimate pricing mechanisms include:
- grief
- the felt extent of the loss – a loss of identity, rather than a loss of commodity, perhaps
- pain
- the impossibility – or uselessness – of all attempts at externalising
- helplessness
- passivity
- an appearance of compliance
- a sense of betrayal
- a sense of over-attachment to the former state of affairs (now idealised, by loss)
- a nostalgia that becomes a substitute for the promised of the future, the new
Slingshot