Kyla Scanlon
Its the attention economy, stupid
On a recent episode of Ezra Klein’s podcast, I was introduced to Kyla Scanlon, a content creator, author, commentator, and educator who specializes in making the economy more accessible and understandable.
I was fascinated by her theory on the attention economy. If you want to learn more, I recommend listening to the Ezra Klein podcast (or reading the transcript) and reading a couple of her recent essays on Substack:
Trump, Mamdani, and Cluely - Part 1: Attention and speculation as primary economic drivers
From Dollar Dominance to the Slop Machine - Part 2: China, energy, and extraction versus creation
Here is my summary/teaser of Kayla's theory:
The basic inputs to the economy have traditionally been things like land, labor, and capital - what is needed to produce goods and services. However, there is a new foundational input: attention.
There is a new supply chain: Attention → Speculation → Allocation. Some more details:
A growing part of our economy is is sucking up capital to draw attention rather than creating something or providing a service. Compare this to China, which is focused on building things—the U.S. economy is increasingly focused on extracting value (for example, cryptocurrency and social media). In contrast, China is focused on creating value (for example, an EV for $15K that is competitive with an $80K Tesla).
Trump is the master of drawing attention. Kayla calls him the first algorithm president who governs via Truth Social and market reactions. Ironically, Trump, the master of the attention economy and using attention to extract value for himself, is also focused (whimsicaly) on reindustrializing the U.S. economy via tariffs (fighting a war lost 20 years ago).
I am still processing Kayla’s ideas, but I feel like she's onto something. It feels like we are on the precipice of massive change in our country: Trump's agenda and style of leading, AI, the amount of time many of us are spending scrolling vs. doing, etc. I don’t know where we are going, but I agree with Kayla when she says, “Not all progress is progress.”