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How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

economist.com

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Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#11

Post by fragmede »

Has it? Capitalism is based on supply and demand, and where those two lines intersect is where the magic happens. Except that we've never adapted it to the reality of, well, computers and the Internet. The price of duplicating a pile of bits, whether it be a Linux ISO, Windows 11, or the latest Disney movie is effectively zero*. Or textbooks to spread human knowledge around. A graph of supply and demand, where supply is a vertical line is broken! Copyright tries to be this end run around this basic fact, when what's really needed is a fundamental rethinking of the entire system.

* Hosting a file https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=number+of+humans+alive+....

Distribution costs via Bittorrent are even cheaper! I don't actually how much it costs to run a DHT node, or even who's paying for them today, but spreading a magnet link around is really close to free!

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#13

Post by davidhunter »

fragmede wrote: post #11

Has it? Capitalism is based on supply and demand, and where those two lines intersect is where the magic happens. Except that we've never adapted it to the reality of, well, computers and the Internet. The price of duplicating a pile of bits, whether it be a Linux ISO, Windows 11, or the latest Disney movie is effectively zero*. Or textbooks to spread human knowledge around. A graph of supply and demand, where supply…

The marginal costs of production are near zero effectively. The marginal costs of acquiring and retaining a customer are far from zero for a lot of overvalued enterprise saas companies.

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#14

Post by auggierose »

oldgradstudent wrote: post #9
givemeethekeys wrote: post #2

When the DotCom bubble burst, and after 2009, traffic in the Bay Area cleared up. Commuting time got cut by half. Homes in many neighborhoods, apart from the very best school districts, became attainable. This has yet to happen. Unemployment is still quite low. The music is just starting.

> When the DotCom bubble burst, and after 2009, traffic in the Bay Area cleared up. Commuting time got cut by half. Homes in many neighborhoods, apart from the very best school districts, became attainable. It was the same in 2001, BTW.

DotCom bubble == 2001

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#15

Post by hestefisk »

davidhunter wrote: post #13
fragmede wrote: post #11

Has it? Capitalism is based on supply and demand, and where those two lines intersect is where the magic happens. Except that we've never adapted it to the reality of, well, computers and the Internet. The price of duplicating a pile of bits, whether it be a Linux ISO, Windows 11, or the latest Disney movie is effectively zero*. Or textbooks to spread human knowledge around. A graph of supply and demand, where supply…

The marginal costs of production are near zero effectively. The marginal costs of acquiring and retaining a customer are far from zero for a lot of overvalued enterprise saas companies.

Indeed. The economics that OP stipulate, do not factor in interest rate and cost of labour (engineers).

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#18

Post by fosk »

birdymcbird wrote: post #8
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dominant narrative among investors and funds, at least in my domain (web3, tech investing) has been that "Fed will pivot soon, and the party will start anew". As long as that narrative remains strong, nobody will dump everything. New investment might stall, but no panic in the ranks. The real panic will set when the pivot does not happen. Or if it does happen and inflation comes roaring back, leading to a longer…

“Soon” is mid 2024 at the earliest. The start ups haven’t really even begun to trim fat. Big tech like amazon, meta, google will increase attrition targets in addition to actual layoffs. I could turn out to be wrong but id bet there’s many more waves of cascading pain before before things turn other way. Turning other way doesnt mean we immediately go back to excess hiring, empire building, lack of focus, free uber r…

Contrarian signal, for the sake of having a conversation:

- I think we will experience a massive deflationary bust. The inflation narrative is over, it’s all about a potential recession now.

- By Summer 2023 we will experience YoY deflation and the Fed will cut then, or even sooner in anticipation to that.

- We may see hikes pausing as soon as February, and cuts starting in the summer as a result of rapid disinflation (which may turn into deflation). Deflation is a lot worse than inflation.

- We find out that the bulk of inflation was indeed caused by supply chain bottlenecks. As China fully re-opens, those will be resolved.

- Russia’s war with Ukraine will end (Putin is now agreeing to potentially think about negotiations). Oil prices will ease

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#19

Post by Duplo »

fragmede wrote: post #11

Has it? Capitalism is based on supply and demand, and where those two lines intersect is where the magic happens. Except that we've never adapted it to the reality of, well, computers and the Internet. The price of duplicating a pile of bits, whether it be a Linux ISO, Windows 11, or the latest Disney movie is effectively zero*. Or textbooks to spread human knowledge around. A graph of supply and demand, where supply…

> I don't actually how much it costs to run a DHT node, or even who's paying for them today

By default all BitTorrent clients are acting as DHT nodes (if they can receive inbound UDP packets). You can disable it in the options, but most don't (unless for private trackers on per-torrent basis). I don't think anyone actually runs a DHT node like Tor exit nodes (except researchers and search engines like BTDigg).

Re: How tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end

#20

Post by mkl95 »

One of our non unicorn competitors just raised ~200M in a niche where 100M+ seed rounds are usually something you raise after you become a unicorn in a series D or something. There still are crazy investors out there but they are crazy about more specific things than say three years ago.
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