Why I'm Investing $2k in Substack

A psychopolitical perspective

There was a time when I was living in Moscow and was paid by the hour at my American job. To keep track of finances, I used a Google spreadsheet. I’d put in the number of hours worked on each day, and that number would automatically convert into amounts in RUB and USD.

I also had some Bitcoin, because that’s how you buy drugs in Russia. The spreadsheet had a different line for my balance in BTC, which too translated into RUB and USD.

At the bottom, there was a line that read TOTAL.

One week, the work was very slow, and the drug intake was fairly high. I remember taking a drag of a joint while looking at my spreadsheet at the end of that week. I expected to be disappointed by the number I’d see under TOTAL. But the number was higher than it was on Monday—even though, during that week, my spending was as high as usual, and my income was quite close to zero. This was because the price of Bitcoin rose during the week.

I smoked some more and I wondered if I needed to reassess my understanding of money.

In my mind, it was always work that converted to money. There were different kinds of work: some required time, some skill, and some creativity. My thinking at the time was: the smarter I work—the better ideas I have—the less time I would need to spend working. But on that particular week, I hadn’t worked hard and I hadn’t worked smart. And still, I made money.

I tapped on the joint holding it over the ashtray.

The reason I made money was that I had Bitcoin, and it became more expensive. The reason I had Bitcoin was that I needed it to buy drugs. The reason I wanted the drugs was that I was a curious person. The reason Bitcoin is used to buy drugs is that it’s harder to track than conventional currencies. The reason for that, I suppose, has something to do with the ideology of its anonymous creator. And the reason Bitcoin became more expensive that week was that more people were buying it—for example, like me, to later buy drugs with it.

So it appears, I thought while taking another drag, that sometimes money is made not through labor, but by aligning oneself with ideas, tools, individuals, and institutions that gain power over time. And isn’t money itself a proxy for things like power and influence?

I thought, “That’s what all that jazz about stocks and investments must be about.”

I liked the idea that I made money by aligning myself, ultimately, with mushrooms and weed. I wondered if I could somehow invest in dolphins and octopi too, or in aliens, or in some trippy idea like the one about ideas being alive. I couldn’t find anything like that on the stock exchange app.

So I never invested, until now.

Substack is starting to accept investments from the public, prioritizing those made by Substack writers and their paid subscribers. I have no idea if that’s a good bet financially. In fact, I’ve considered the possibility that this move might be a bad signal concerning the company's financial status (as demonstrated above, my understanding of how money works is really quite foggy).

And yet, this is the next best thing to “investing in dolphins” that I was thinking about, only half-jokingly, all those years ago.

Substack is the only company I can think of that I’m actively rooting for. They’re doing good things to the Internet. I like their style. I like their values. I like the incentive system they have developed, and I think this latest investment move is line with all the above.

So I’m investing $2k, which is a big amount for me, because it will make rooting for Substack that more interesting. It’ll also affect the way I see my relationship with it—I’m already starting to feel like a tax-paying citizen of Substack (which is a much better feeling than being a tax-paying citizen of Russia). I’m putting faith, represented by money, into Substack and into my own projects attached to it.