The quick answer is that there is more bandwidth, more nodes, more complexity and more emergence for David to exploit against Goliath. The status quo has been repeatedly blindsided by events that seemingly came out of nowhere. It responds by creating ever denser and interlinked connections which never quite behave as they’ve modeled. 9/11, Brexit, Trump, the coronavirus were all bolt out of the blue.
Prediction: Wall Street will block up the attack routes the Gamestop insurgency used — and completely miss the next challenge from a direction they least expect. They will be surprised again and these surprises will occur with increasing frequency.
I wouldn’t worry too much about Gamestop. It’s the next David nobody has even heard of but implicitly out there that you’ve got to watch out for.
In a world of rapid, disruptive innovation establishment power and addiction to monopoly rents have become a trap. The ladder leading up to an unknown future consists of collapsing rungs upon which it is unwise to tread for too long. Rebel or die.
This display of spontaneous group power by a bunch of previous unknowns has frightened the Really Smart People™ and led to reactions that will make things worse, not better. Some discount brokers started displaying warnings and limiting trades. Discord, a popular online chat service used by the r/wallstreetbets group, shut down the group’s service, offering the usual contemporary excuse that the group was engaged in “hate speech” and “spreading disinformation.” Uh-huh. …
Prediction: We will see more Big Tech censorship, maybe even government regulators, set against the Robinhood crowd. But it won’t work the way the censors and regulators hope.