Everyone assumes they speak the same language in their interconnected sphere of activity, whether in the literal sense or in the way they share particular linguistic markers. Shared patterns and norms are the mechanisms through which financial markets become institutionalised, and through which specialisation develops. “A capital market entails security of property rights”[1], or as Ayache theorises in the moment of the conversion of credit to equity, the market entails a move away from a finite social process of start-stop exchangeability to an asocial process of contingency through continuous exchangeability. The processes of debt and credit are “past and passive”, while the development of convertibility (into bonds or stock) is an “infinity of processes”[2].

Following from Adam’s critique[1] of Matt’s post against covid libertarianism[2], and then Matt’s critique of the critique[3], I want to add some further clarifications and provocations to the mix. I find myself positioned between both Adam’s and Matt’s points, agreeing with both to some measure while also seeing some limitations that can be built out from.

Only hours after one of the dumbest debacles ever witnessed and the talk of coups, insurrection and the rise of fascism is already hot among the twitter blue checks[1] and media[2]. This apparently signals the fragility and/or destruction of democratic norms, all because a bunch of morons stormed a building with the most inept security arrangements, threw some papers, trashed some offices and took selfies. If this is the end of democracy then these rioters were already hitting a corpse. But of course this isn’t the end of democracy, which is little more than hot air thrown around by the press corps and politicians. Instead it’s the continuation of the same dynamics of 2020 and before.

Following on from Matt’s critique of the covid libertarian streak[1] seen on social media or aptly demonstrated during anti-lockdown protests in the US, the nature of these protests, the response to them, and the wider institutional response to coronavirus displays both the inadequacy of the libertarian subject as a means to understanding how to respond to the challenges of the pandemic, and the innate institutional stupidities which put their responses rightly within the firing line.