[palmotea]

> Maybe I have too much imagination and stretched the rules a bit. But, if superstition is 'any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural', I'd argue that financialization is a consequence of an irrational belief in the power of the 'invisible hand' and that the shareholder-theory-of-value is a similar belief in the power of abstractions over actual human needs.

I think it's too much of a stretch to label anything "irrational" as superstition.

I think both the purported benefits of the shareholder-theory-of-value and fictionalization rely on plausible-but-false belief in the outcomes created by the 'invisible hand'/selfishness-at-scale, but I wouldn't call it superstition, just wrong.

Also, I think the connotations of words are pretty important, and there are a lot of words that for the most part mean the same thing with different connotations. If I had to describe the connotation of superstition, its an action believed to have an effect, but that effect is a total non-sequitur. At least with what we're talking about, there's at least a plausible basis for believing the effect will happen, even it that basis is wrong.