Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
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Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
#2we, the people, are the ultimate mega project, and it's showing
Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
#3This tweet shows it as a percentage of US GDP:
https://x.com/paulg/status/2045120274551423142
Makes it a little less dramatic. But also shows what a big **'n deal the railroads were!
Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
#4This tweet shows it as a percentage of US GDP: https://x.com/paulg/status/2045120274551423142 Makes it a little less dramatic. But also shows what a big **'n deal the railroads were!
But doesn't that overstate it in the other direction? Talking about investments in proportion to GDP back when any estimate of GDP probably wasn't a good measure of total economic output?
We're talking about the period before modern finance, before income taxes, back when most labor was agricultural... Did the average person shoulder the cost of railroads more than the average taxpayer today is shouldering the cost of F-35? (That's another line in Paul's post.)
Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
#5I really dislike the term hyperscaler. Comes off very insincere. They came up with it themselves, didn't they? What's the official definition supposed to be now? Companies that are setting up as many GPU/TPU server clusters as possible for a demand that's yet to exist?
Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
#6This tweet shows it as a percentage of US GDP: https://x.com/paulg/status/2045120274551423142 Makes it a little less dramatic. But also shows what a big **'n deal the railroads were!
But doesn't that overstate it in the other direction? Talking about investments in proportion to GDP back when any estimate of GDP probably wasn't a good measure of total economic output? We're talking about the period before modern finance, before income taxes, back when most labor was agricultural... Did the average person shoulder the cost of railroads more than the average taxpayer today is shouldering the cost o…
That's the problem with going too far using "money" or "GDP" - you can roughly compare the WWII 45% of GDP spent with today - https://www.davemanuel.com/us-defense-spending-history-milit... because even by WWII much was "financialized" in such a way that it appears on GDP (though things like victory gardens, barter, etc would explicitly NOT be included without effort - maybe they do this?).
As you get further and further into the past you have to start trying to measure it using human labor equivalents or similar. For example, what was the cost of a Great Pyramid? How does the cost change if you consider the theory that it was somewhat of a "make work" project to keep a mainly agricultural society employed during the "down months" and prevent starvation via centrally managed granaries?
Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
#7This tweet shows it as a percentage of US GDP: https://x.com/paulg/status/2045120274551423142 Makes it a little less dramatic. But also shows what a big **'n deal the railroads were!
But doesn't that overstate it in the other direction? Talking about investments in proportion to GDP back when any estimate of GDP probably wasn't a good measure of total economic output? We're talking about the period before modern finance, before income taxes, back when most labor was agricultural... Did the average person shoulder the cost of railroads more than the average taxpayer today is shouldering the cost o…
I posted just that on the Twitter feed but then I realized that railroad started at the beginning of an industrial revolution where labor was a far larger portion of GDP compared to industrial production. So it kind of makes sense that the first enabling technology consumed far more GDP than current investments do, even on a marginal basis.
Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
#8I really dislike the term hyperscaler. Comes off very insincere. They came up with it themselves, didn't they? What's the official definition supposed to be now? Companies that are setting up as many GPU/TPU server clusters as possible for a demand that's yet to exist?
It always makes me think of a hyperactive toddler running around in circles, which oddly fits most thought leaders who use the term.
Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
#9I really dislike the term hyperscaler. Comes off very insincere. They came up with it themselves, didn't they? What's the official definition supposed to be now? Companies that are setting up as many GPU/TPU server clusters as possible for a demand that's yet to exist?
Nobody really uses the term in the Valley except probably C-level people talking to Wall street investors.
Re: Hyperscalers have already outspent most famous US megaprojects
#10This seems like a total category error. The Railroads are the only example that actually seems comparable, in being an infrastructure build out that's mostly done by a variety of private companies. Examples of things that would be worth comparing to the datacenter boom are factory construction and utilities (electrification in the first half of the 20th century, running water, gas pipes.)