Off the Record: Do space barons dream of electric fleets?

We could have been sitting on the banks of the Euphrates eating figs. That is, until someone got the bright idea to maximise shareholder returns. Now, we sit in web browsers making wagers as to when exactly the current round of bloodshed in nearby waters will come to an end.The stock market has long drawn criticism from those on the outside who view it as an economic machine ruled by investor sentiment and untethered to everyday life. Guy Debord offers us a critique of this estrangement in his The Society of the Spectacle. Debord posits that “the society which rests on modern industry is not accidentally or superficially spectacular, but fundamentally spectaclist. In the spectacle, the goal is nothing, development everything. The spectacle aims at nothing other than itself.”Yet one could still argue that the stock market is not pure spectacle. However distorted it becomes, it still retains a material tether. Well-functioning secondary markets help capital flow toward productive uses and are only made possible by real people spending real dollars. However imperfect, the market is still connected to its people.Enter, prediction markets. While the stock market still attempts, or appears, to serve production, prediction markets don’t even bother, instead monetising anticipation itself.If you have managed to remain blissfully unaware, prediction markets allow users to trade on the likelihood of future events. Bets on the platform range from issues like Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by end of April? What will Trump say in April? Will the US confirm that aliens exist by…?The object of exchange is the event itself as a probability. It’s a market solely concerned with hype, or as Polymarket would call it, wisdom.Polymarket Note on Middle East Markets: The promise of prediction markets is to harness the wisdom of the crowd to create accurate, unbiased forecasts for the most important events to society. That ability is particularly invaluable in gut-wrenching times like today.I first heard of prediction markets when US Rep. Ilhan Omar was attacked during a town hall meeting. Online, people were betting on the substance that was sprayed on her. Now, traders bet on missile strikes in Iran and insults flying out of Trump’s mouth.Proponents of prediction markets argue that they aggregate dispersed information into forecasts about uncertain future events. Even where they are reasonably accurate, what they trade is not an enterprise producing goods or services, but an anticipated outcome.Unsurprisingly, prediction markets have begun to elicit bouts of paranoia. For the market, insider trading and corruption are major concerns. For me, the concern is the grotesque estrangement of real people from tragedy as we load currency onto spectacle with little concern for impact. On Polymarket, crises are no longer lived realities; they are odds to watch and positions to take.Proponents of prediction markets argue that a major benefit could be derived in the form of an aggregated universal truth. By engaging individuals across the world from different stations, beliefs and backgrounds, diverse and dispersed information is synthesised, and users are delivered a supposedly more accurate probability for any given situation. Rather than relying on news sources, investors, politicians or other figureheads, a broader swath of public opinion is accounted for, adding more data and insight to the probability equation.Polymarket Note on Middle East Markets continued: After discussing with those directly affected by the attacks, who had dozens of questions, we realised that prediction markets could give them the answers they needed in ways TV news and X could not.This, however, relies on incentivised truth-telling. Prediction markets hope that because individuals are financially motivated, they will place bets that align with their true beliefs. But conflating belief with truth does not produce accuracy. According to Polymarket, there is a 4% chance Jesus Christ will return before 2027.But it looks like prediction markets will miss their chance to disperse those fears, as they have already been undermined by corruption.US-based trading app Robinhood has reportedly begun excluding some prediction market contracts, with Robinhood UK president Jordan Sinclair saying the company is “very focused on market abuse, insider trading”.Remember when Trump issued his warning on Truth Social that “a whole civilisation will die tonight”? If I had taken a temperature check of public opinion at that moment, I would say the majority thought we were inching towards a point of no return rather than a ceasefire. There was even a countdown.And yet, just before the ceasefire was announced, newly created Polymarket accounts made highly specific bets on the outcome, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. The Associated Press reported that at least 50 wallets placed substantial bets before Trump announced the ceasefire, and that these were the first bets made by those wallets.This isn’t confined to Washington, either. In February, two Israelis were charged over alleged bets placed using classified military information, and later that month, Kalshi accused a MrBeast video editor of insider trading on markets tied to the YouTuber.The impacts aren’t only reactive, either. In March, a Times of Israel reporter said Polymarket users sent him death threats and pressured him to amend his report on a missile strike near Jerusalem which became central to a wager on the site.Beyond investor corruption, the real scandal of prediction markets is not just that they let people bet on the future, but that they sit within a culture that monetises crisis while moralising individual behaviour. A culture that turns public life into persona, sentiment and price. Governments increasingly redirect attention from corporate and structural responsibility to everyday conduct. Individuals are named and shamed for using plastic straws, eating meat, driving to work or consuming too much, while billion-dollar industries burn through fuel at scales beyond personal comparison.Last week, the Federal Government was in the hot seat over its ‘Every little bit helps’ campaign, a fuel-saving advertising push costing up to $20m and encouraging Australians to use less fuel where possible. Some cried out that it was like plastic straws all over again. But the idea was still valid: individual consumption of our resources is a beast worth taming or at least keeping an eye on.But the question remains: what about the industries using billions of litres of fuel each year? What about inadequate public transport systems that make commuting to low-paid office jobs inseparable from car dependence? What about the fact that the government, which wants us to believe its hands are tied, is one of the few actors with any meaningful power over the fuel crisis, and at least some responsibility for it?The problem is not that individual restraint is meaningless. It is that personal consumption is positioned as the moral centre of crisis management, while the larger systems shaping the crisis remains immune to scrutiny. Disjointed public transport, corporate fuel dependence and state policy failures do not disappear just because individuals are told to tighten their belts.At the pump or on Polymarket, we grasp at paper straws, hoping to grab a bit of control over our circumstances. The ugliness of this system is not only that tragedy can be watched and traded at a distance, but that responsibility for fixing the social breakdown behind conflict is then handed back to individuals as a series of choices. All the while, we are left completely disconnected from any real locus of control.Debord calls this the alienation of the spectator: the more you contemplate, the less you live. The estrangement is a surrender of our own lives. And when the stakes are high enough, it’s a surrender of our own humanity for the chance to make, or save, a quick buck.Luckily for those of us in Australia, prediction market platforms, much like single use plastic, are functionally banned.Off the Record is The Australian Mining Review’s weekly column. 

Humans innately desire predictability. During times of crisis, it’s only natural to seek a sense of control in an unpredictable environment.While the concept of preparedness is part of our basic survival instincts, it took root as a broader movement during the Cold War as fears of nuclear annihilation ran rampant.During this time, the US Government encouraged citizens to build fallout shelters and schools even ran bomb drills — not that there’s much anyone can do to survive a mushroom cloud.Out of this anxiety, a survivalist movement grew.Survivalists, or doomsday preppers, are traditionally associated with extremism in the form of right-wing conservatism and radical anti-government conspiracy theories.The stereotypical survivalist is a white, backcountry, conservative male who may or may not also be bordering on deranged. However, as anxiety about the state of the world rises, the number of preppers globally are growing and as a result, the demographic is changing.During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, prepping moved from a fringe culture to a mainstream response — and one that kind of seemed reasonable.With the cost of living rising and supply chains being frequently disrupted by geopolitics and extreme weather events, this movement is growing in popularity as everyday people seek self-reliance.Though the average person is unlikely to have months’ worth of supplies stockpiled in a bunker in case of complete societal collapse, they now tend to err on the side of caution.This is evident if you grab an extra carton of eggs when the shelves look a little sparse. Or if you decide to head down to the servo and fill up after reports that fuel prices are going to jump over night.These seem like perfectly reasonable decisions. The problem is when individual rationality morphs into collective irrationality.What starts out as a handful of somewhat sensible people taking minor proactive measures can quickly escalate into many people making the same decisions simultaneously. And when that feared scarcity is unfounded rather than genuine, panic buying can create the very shortages it is intended to insulate against as collective action overwhelms fragile systems.This is the panic buying paradox. And we are seeing it in real time with fuel supplies.People are rushing to buy fuel because they think it will run out, and it’s running out because they are rushing to buy it.At an industry event this morning, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called panic buying “pretty bloody stupid”. Despite this sentiment, when I see others filling up portable fuel tanks at the bowser, I am overcome with a nagging sense that those people know something I don’t.Present concerns are understandable with Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz driving crude oil prices well above US$100 a barrel.The Philippines have already declared a national emergency due to severe fuel shortages. And in Australia, fuel prices have increased by about 40% since the start of the war.Most Australians don’t panic buy or hoard supplies; they buy a little extra “just in case”. Are you buying an extra packet of toilet paper when the shelves look a little low? That seems reasonable when you remember the COVID-19 toilet paper crisis of the not-so-distant past. Are you a mobile business owner that just saw media coverage suggesting fuel could be 40% more expensive tomorrow? You might want to grab your keys and fill up. On second thought, grab your jerry can too.The problem isn’t that these decisions are irrational; it’s that these “just-in-case” purchases are combining with a “just-in-time” supply chain. This means stock is on trucks, not in back rooms. This keeps costs low, but it also assumes tomorrow will look exactly like today. Even a small shift along the supply chain can look like a complete system failure.During the pandemic, we saw what happens when supply chains fail to absorb external shock. Those wounds are barely healed. As a new crisis looms, it’s understandable that people want to take matters into their own hands.A perceived lack of transparency, fairness and compassion from decision-makers during unprecedented crisis eroded Australian’s confidence in their governments ability to protect them. Many Australians now are untrusting of the government to plan for times of crisis. Fairly so. The pandemic demolished public trust.Australia sits at the end of a very long and fragile fuel supply chain. Much of what we consume passes through the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran. The cascading effects of the war are now dramatically interfering with our supply chains.Rather than labelling people queuing at petrol stations as irrational, we should acknowledge that we don’t know their personal circumstances. We don’t know if their livelihood depends on their access to a vehicle. We don’t know if the fuel will be used to run essential generators. Possibly most importantly, we don’t know if they have the capacity to absorb a 40% rise in fuel prices.Even if you think doomsday preppers are batty and panic buying is “un-Australian”, the lesson isn’t that people are irrational: it’s that our supply chains are ineffective.Neither survivalism nor panic buying is inherently evil. But neither is virtuous if it comes at the expense of others. The goal shouldn’t be to outlast everyone else in a crisis — it should be to build a society where there is no need to stockpile in the first place.Although politicians are urging the public not to panic, they risk encouraging the opposite effect and further fostering fear. It seems the next plight the government faces is a crisis of trust.Off the Record is The Australian Mining Review’s weekly column. 

When looking for an answer, is the universal response not “just Google it”?Well, you may have noticed a rewiring of our curiosity instincts, with some now ditching the well-loved search engine for AI.In a world that worships productivity, AI is hailed by many as our saviour — increasingly automating boring and monotonous daily tasks, while humans reap the productivity gains.The internet era, ushered in by the likes of Google, expanded the breadth of information we can access at any given time. Like its predecessor, AI has revealed similar concerns around complacency and cognitive decline. The Google effect, or digital amnesia, is a tendency to forget information that is easily accessible on the internet. A 2011 study highlighted how this altered the way people process information: when we no longer use our memory to its fullest extent our neural pathways atrophy, resulting in shortening memory, reduced concentration and declining analytical skills. It could be seen as an erosion of critical thinking.The growing preference for ChatGPT as a search engine is taking this a step further. Instead of using these tools to free up space for thinking, some are now using it as a substitute.If you find that after less than a minute of mental effort your subconscious is nagging you to “just ask ChatGPT”, you may be letting go of your cognitive wheel and becoming a passenger to the “thoughts” of your LLM of choice.A recent MIT study, Your brain on ChatGPT, reported that excessive reliance on AI-driven solutions may contribute to cognitive atrophy like that seen in the Google effect. But the way people use generative AI is fundamentally different to the way they consume the internet. They aren’t looking up the definition of a word to use in an essay and then immediately forgetting it. They are outsourcing their thinking completely.Sure, cognitive outsourcing has its place. I’m from the generation that pretty much can’t get anywhere without a GPS. And I definitely don’t remember anyone’s phone number.But deep thinking was never meant to be efficient; it is a messy and often tedious process. That is what makes it so effective. When we problem solve, our brains traipse through complex challenges, wrestle with opposing sides, sift through possible outcomes and deduce the best course of action.Thinking is part of what makes us human. By removing this human element and streamlining this process with AI, we risk turning into passive consumers rather than active creators.Think of how Waymo, a self-driving car service in the US, is wreaking havoc for commuters.The AI can’t navigate basic — I mean, complex — scenarios like construction zones or how to not hit a cat crossing the street. When faced with such difficult manoeuvres, the cars end up blocking traffic or causing severe emotional distress for pet owners.From Google Maps to inbuilt assisted parking, anyone who drives a car these days outsources some of their thinking. I’m all for the added safety assists in my car, but I am far more comfortable in the driver’s seat than in the backseat of a driverless car.Though I do love my GPS, if the internet imploded today, I like to think I have enough critical thinking skills to read a map and follow street signs. And if world leaders decided to abolish AI tomorrow, I’d maybe be a little annoyed that I had to actually think about how to spell bureaucrat, but I’d get over it.Maybe it’s time we take back control of the wheel and get our brains to do the driving.I’m not suggesting that you refuse to interact with any form of AI and go off the grid. All that will do is isolate you from the future of the modern world. I am suggesting that if you’re struggling to make a decision or come up with an idea, try to remember you don’t need to ask the omniscient being in your computer to do it for you.And watch out for cats when you’re driving.Off the Record is The Australian Mining Review’s weekly column.