In defense of friction

This week on Tasteland, Francis was joined by financial content creator, educator and author Kyla Scanlon. Kyla’s work blends economic insight with real human experiences. Her book In This Economy was released in 2024.

Below is a condensed version of their conversation. Keep scrolling for the full episode.

Francis Zierer: You wrote this essay called “The Most Valuable Commodity in the World is Friction.” What did you mean by that?

Kyla Scanlon: The essay was written after I got stuck in the Newark disaster, the air traffic controllers not being able to even see the planes in the sky because their technology was breaking down. And this was the same week that the ChatGPT college essay came out from New York Magazine. I've been circling around this idea of friction for a long time. There's so much friction in the real world. And then in the digital world, you can escape all of this. The impetus of the essay was noticing these really big differences between the digital and the physical. Those who can afford to curate their physical experience to have the same frictionlessness as the digital. 

FZ: Tell me more about the “simulation economy” and why you think it's worth labeling it as a separate thing from the attention economy. 

KS: I think the simulation economy is just the next iteration of the attention economy. In my mind, the attention economy is scroll, scroll, scroll. You're glued to a couple of screens at once. You have Netflix designing shows that you can listen to instead of having to watch the actual dialogue so you can watch TikTok and hear Netflix at the same time. The simulation economy is you disappearing into this technology versus using it as a distraction. With AI, they want to help you cheat on everything, and their core thesis is that you never have to think alone again. That's a different version of the attention economy. It's one that is much more immersive. 

FZ: When you're richer and goods become cheaper, that's a form of frictionlessness. So is the American Dream a dream of a frictionless life? 

KS: I think some elements of the American Dream are elements of frictionlessness, like you don't want to have to worry about if you can afford going to the doctor. I think that smart phones and social media are just one of the most powerful drugs that we have ever had. I don't think that the American Dream is outsourcing your entire life to social media and living inside of an AI bot. I still believe that people like working hard. It's part of the reason that we have such intense populism right now, people want to bring manufacturing back because they want those jobs again. The American Dream isn't bonbons on a couch. It's having the opportunity to have that upward mobility, which often does come through working hard. 

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FZ: Tell me some of the basic principles in your work. 

KS: My book was designed to be a static place that people could go and hopefully have an accessible guide to the economy. It's illustrated, it's my drawings. It's meant to be fun and not overwhelming in the way that sometimes economics can feel to a lot of people. The main goal of a lot of my work is taking these core economic concepts and using both financial and media literacy to explain them to people. The foundation of understanding the economy is understanding how the economy is talked about in news and media headlines, and now the antics of the administration. It's attempting to translate ideas in a way that's applicable. When I go and buy a coffee, that's an economic transaction, or I'm in the workforce, that's an economic transaction, I am paying for my car. Every single thing we do is an element of the economy. We just pretend that people don't need to know about it. So that's the main driver of my work. 

FZ: People are referring to you as the Gen Z economy whisperer. 

KS: I think the Gen Z thing happened because I'm an ancient Gen Z. Everyone wants to understand younger generations and that's one part of it. But the whole goal I have is really like, “We have young people, they're feeling bad. What do we do about it?” It's not just going on shows and saying, “the young people are sad.” It's like, “how do we build a better economy for them?” I think the main goal is, if you're going to use social media as a tool and then also complain about how bad it is for people, you have to bring people somewhere. You have to get them out of the digital world somehow, whether that be through a book or through a video that brings them into the real world. So that's been a big effort. 

FZ: What are you most optimistic about right now?

KS: I'm always optimistic about the human spirit. I find a lot of hope in reading about the past and knowing that we've been here before. We have new demons and we have to figure out where they fit and how we're going to manage them. Right now a lot of people are just putting their heads in the sand. It's much easier to talk about it versus actually doing something about it. But I'm optimistic that if we can talk about these problems and begin to understand what they are, that means that the solutions are coming. 📈

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