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by edouard-harris 1963 days ago
> I wonder if there's a way to marry "efficient market hypothesis" with "reflexivity on the edges" somehow.

The key to this synthesis is that there is sometimes genuine, fundamental value to be had in creating a Schelling point for a resource or a certain kind of transaction. This is (part of) why online marketplaces are valuable and defensible businesses, for example.

"Reflexivity" is simply what it looks like when a Schelling point is in the process of forming. There are some very rare but very real cases in which a bubble really does create its own reality, and that reality sticks around because a shared delusion turns out to create enough real value to justify its existence. There is an art to identifying those cases, and that art is as well-compensated as one might imagine. (Most of the time, though, a Ponzi is just a Ponzi.)