[somedude895]

This attempt to link a popular theory to a popular topic seems really shaky.

At first they explain the difference between imitation and mimetic desire:

> While imitation, on Girard’s model, refers to the positive effects of copying someone else’s behavior, mimetic desire—which desires the other’s desire—opens up a deeply violent dimension.

But later they mix up the two:

> A speculator wants to be the person who bought Amazon at the IPO; the en- trepreneur wants to be the person who took Facebook public at a twelve-digit market capitalization. Speculators can trivially emulate their mimetic models through leverage, i.e. through believing what the model believes, only more so. If you’re competing with someone who put 100% of their money into Bitcoin, you’ll never catch up if you make the same trade.

To me this is imitating anothers' investment, the underlying desire being making money. If anything, the memetic behavior here would be the much more fundamental copying of others' desire to accumulate money itself.

[zby]

Adding to this: mimetic desire works on a subconscious level, imitation in buying attractive stocks is entirely conscious.