The price of truth. Finance, misinformation and the battle for reality

Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou
UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies, University College London

13 November 2025, 5.30 p.m.
Seminarraum 1, ÖAW Campus
Bäckerstraße 13, 1010 Vienna

REGISTRATION required by 7 November 2025

Language of presentation: English

How did truth lose its grip? Why do citizens reject experts, doubt science, fall for conspiracies, and elect authoritarian populists? Scientists, journalists, and former political leaders offer a familiar warning. If facts collapse into fictions, the marketplace of ideas, and democracy itself, cannot survive. The usual remedy is to fix the information system: more fact-checking, stronger institutions, renewed expert authority. This lecture makes a more radical claim. To understand the present truth crisis, we must confront the role of finance. Today’s markets trade not only in money but also in truth. From venture capital to cryptocurrency tokens, from Exchange Traded Funds to hedge-fund algorithms, finance reshapes credibility and redefines what counts as real. It leverages volatility to project uncertain futures into the present, sustain conflicting narratives, and inject a “fake it till you make it” logic into political life. These dynamics reach far beyond trading floors to shape how democratic institutions, policymakers, and citizens assess credibility and navigate instability. The price of truth, in other words, is being set through finance. Seen in this light, the lecture reframes the challenge of democratic repair in an age of populism. It argues for institutions built to govern uncertainty rather than chase it, and asks how reclaiming the price of truth can renew the very foundations of democracy.

ARIS KOMPOROZOS-ATHANASIOU is Professor of Economy and Society at University College London, and Founding Director of the UCL Centre for Capitalism Studies. He is the author of "Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World" (University of Chicago Press, 2022) and "Real Fake" (Forthcoming with MIT Press). Aris's research traces the impact of financial markets on everyday life and on our political imagination. His widely acclaimed theory of capitalism has developed a critical vision that connects speculation, politics, and progressive futurity in the struggle for financial justice and social solidarity. His work has been featured in The New Yorker, London Review of Books, Bookforum and the Locarno Film Festival, and his public writing has appeared in Die Zeit, The Guardian, El País, The Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications.