@Daojoan Prediction markets OTOH operate on a radically different premise. They assume no inherent justice in outcomes, no guaranteed alignment btw virtue & success, no teleological arc to history. This is where your accusation of decadence gains genuine philosophical traction. A civilization that no longer believes in meaningful destiny may indeed begin treating its future as a stochastic game.

Oswald #Spengler would recognize this pattern immediately.

Quite arresting thesis, but also revealing.

Haque's essay belongs to a long lineage of civilizational lament. One hears the echo of Oswald #Spengler who described cultures exhausting their inner form & hardening into imperial machinery. One also hears the moral despair of Emil #Cioran, for whom decline was less event than atmosphere. Yet Haque's tone is different. Spengler diagnosed with glacial detachment. Haque warns, impores, accuses. He is apocalypse with a subscription link at medium.