Labubu isn’t just the next blind box toy collectible. It serves as a perfect specimen of a broken economy — where the only game most people can play is speculation, and everything is for sale.

Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky figured out the psychology behind why people do such bizarre things with their money decades ago in their widely-cited paper “The Psychology of Preferences.” Here’s what their research discovered:

• Losing feels worse than winning feels good.
  
• Certainty is overvalued.
  
• We twist regret to fit whatever keeps us “in the game.”
  
• We put money in mental boxes so spending feels rational.
  
• We romanticize long shots and ignore sober odds.
  

This is the behavioral wiring behind speculative manias. Now in 2025, it’s the operating system for what Kyla Scanlon calls the Labubu/Fartcoin economy. This is the third branch of what she calls a bifurcated American economy, with speculation around AI being the first, and healthcare/social assistance being the second “real” economy. If you can’t buy into the first two, you buy mystery boxes, meme coins, or speculative stock plays. This is symbolic participation: a badge that says I’m here too, even if the “win” is only betting on volatility and hope you can sell while you’re ahead.

Labubu are more than vinyl figures that come in blind boxes. They are yet another parasocial anchor — proof you were in the “winning circle.” Like highly price chase Pokemon cards or one-of-one sports rookie cards, they are an attainable trophy in a world where the real milestones (housing, security, institutional trust) are locked away for most folks. In the Memes economy, the chase matters more than the sustainability, and ownership is mostly performance for your peers.

The danger isn’t Labubu itself. They are just harmless toys that come in blind boxes; they’re nothing new. The key is that they’re novel, and that’s what’s driving the hype. Really, they are no different than Beanie Babies; although, honestly, I find these dolls kind of creepy and Beanie Babies are adorable. The real problem is that everything is being pulled into this cycle. As Kyla writes, when markets are the last functioning system for coordination at scale, everything gets financialized — trading cards, sneakers, you name it. Every object becomes a potential trade. Every hobby becomes an asset class. The result is that the skills and capital that could build something durable get siphoned into games designed to end in zero. Every market becomes a race to the bottom, then people just move onto the next new market to bet what cash they have away hoping they can be among the winners.

Meanwhile, other nations, especially China, are spending their energy on the boring, foundational work: infrastructure, scientific research, and technological capacity. Meanwhile, here in America, we’re perfecting the art of trading symbols while losing the race to build realities.

Labubu is just the current shiny object. The blueprint is already set for the next one. And until the three economies connect — until there’s something real to believe in — the Memes economy will keep us chasing wins that were never meant to last.

~ A.D.