Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 51 posts

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#11

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

fra wrote: post #3
techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

The demand signals never allocated the resources, a small number of people always did. Those people react to the demand signals (and they still do). IMO a more important question is: what happens when the market power of a segment of society grows much greater than the rest? In a "K-shaped" economy, the top 20% have so much spending power (and even more future spending power) than their demand signals can overwhelm t…

If you in the top part of the K, this is a feature not a problem.

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#12

Post by skybrian »

techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

You can do a lot of central planning if you can convince investors to give you a large enough pile of money, but it still doesn't compare to what the US government can do. You're not going to fund social security that way.

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#13

Post by arjie »

fra wrote: post #3
techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

The demand signals never allocated the resources, a small number of people always did. Those people react to the demand signals (and they still do). IMO a more important question is: what happens when the market power of a segment of society grows much greater than the rest? In a "K-shaped" economy, the top 20% have so much spending power (and even more future spending power) than their demand signals can overwhelm t…

This doesn’t strike me as a problem. There are sufficient entrepreneurs that market need common to a total 20% of the population will be met. In the USA that 70 million is a sufficiently large number. After all, that’s $700 million of MRR at $10/month.

The things limiting provision of services are physical limits like the audience being widely dispersed or just characteristics like not all sharing the same needs and therefore not actually being addressable.

You obviously are well aware that addressability does not track with income category automatically but it does for many businesses. E.g. payday loans, rent to own, check cashing, dollar stores.

Since a large section of this group is in use of government credits, at the least businesses will evolve to meet the use of those. EBT grocers, Medicaid-focused care, etc.

The majority of the effort will be spent where the greatest economic opportunity is, but entrepreneurs will match their ability to address the market to their audience. It’s not possible for a dollar store to sell GPUs to Baseten. They don’t have the capability to do something useful there.

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#14

Post by subw00f »

NhanH wrote: post #7
techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

That is the entire Marx's Das Kapital. The main argument being free market will lead to concentration of power and then capitalism collaspe. He expanded on what he thought the not-capitalism could be. Then Lenin concluded that if you will always have concentration of power and some folks doing centralized planning, it might well be the state.

And ever since that and the supposedly marginalist “revolution” people keep pretending their sliced up tautological economics is a science separated from politics because it’s convenient to those who wield capital. Truth is Marx might’ve not made the best case for the general law of profit equalization and presented the transformation of value to price in the best of mathematical terms, but I’ll be damned if the empirical evidence makes up for everything he missed.

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#15

Post by arjie »

techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

That doesn’t sound right. Silicon Valley is clearly responding to massive demand for AI services. The reason Nvidia has so much money is that people are paying them for something only they can make. It’s not like they’re issuing stock into a meme stock spike or something. They’re selling hardware that companies are demanding in large quantities because those companies need the hardware to provide services that people and companies want so badly that every marginal hardware dollar spent earns a large number of service dollars.

This is probably the most demand-mediated response of all time. The natural form of that is that the guy who we give lots of money to for his stuff is going to have lots to spend.

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#16

Post by WorldMaker »

techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

There are old words for this: Monopolies and Trusts. The US around this point last century put a lot of work in Trust-Busting and Anti-Monopoly/Anti-Corruption work.

The other related word is Oligarchy, rule by a select few that think they know better than everyone else. Oligarchy seems to be a failure case of most modes of politics and economics. Capitalism and communism both fail over to oligarchy when left unchecked.

It's been argued that for as many centuries as humanity spent under feudalism that oligarchy is almost the "default state" of politics and economics and it takes great effort to avoid it. Adam Smith saw economic monopolies and knew they were a failure case of capitalism from early on. Capitalism was built on top of breaking apart monopolies like the East India Trading Company. We've always known that capitalism is just as likely to slip into oligarchy as any other "ideal" form of resource allocation/economics, especially because it started as oligarchy.

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#17

Post by Der_Einzige »

NhanH wrote: post #7
techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

That is the entire Marx's Das Kapital. The main argument being free market will lead to concentration of power and then capitalism collaspe. He expanded on what he thought the not-capitalism could be. Then Lenin concluded that if you will always have concentration of power and some folks doing centralized planning, it might well be the state.

Crazy how historically wrong Das Kapital is as a book. The labor theory of value has done enormous amounts of damage to humans world-wide with its lies. Watching Marx turn himself into pretzels to explain how to calculate the "Socially necessary labor time" is entertaining if it didn't have the baggage of motivating dozens of horrible, no good revolutions, useless, damaging revolutions.

If you want a good starting point book for an alternative to traditional capitalism and with a focus on the commons with none of this baggage, I highly recommend Henry George (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George) and "Progress and Poverty" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty) as it is a head-and-shoulders better read.

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#18

Post by 4rffs »

NhanH wrote: post #7
techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

That is the entire Marx's Das Kapital. The main argument being free market will lead to concentration of power and then capitalism collaspe. He expanded on what he thought the not-capitalism could be. Then Lenin concluded that if you will always have concentration of power and some folks doing centralized planning, it might well be the state.

"Then Lenin concluded that if you will always have concentration of power and some folks doing centralized planning, it might well be the state."

This is exactly where things are heading.

Theres no need for firms anymore at the extreme - the govt can own all.

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#19

Post by legitster »

techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

> Then I think there's Adam Smith's ideal form of capitalism

People have this idea that Adam Smith "idealized" capitalism or that the Wealth of Nations is some sort of manifesto. It's much more of an empirical research (by the standards of the time) with observations and findings. It's equally useful if you're a communist or a free-market capitalist.

Adam Smith himself was fairly skeptical of massive corporations capital accumulation:

> "The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company."

Re: Nvidia Insists It Can Keep Printing Money to Fund the AI Boom

#20

Post by 4rffs »

cousinbryce wrote: post #9
techblueberry wrote: post #2

I have a theoretical question. At what point does capitalism become the other side of the coin from communism. Like there's communism which is centralized planning and the state owning the means of production. Then I think there's Adam Smiths ideal form of capitalism that I think can loosely be described as independent demand signals allocate resources throughout the economy. What happens when a capital accumulates i…

Fun fact: Internally all corporations are organized by central planning

Yes its decentralised still. And the idea is that competition is the force that keep things in check - with shareholders interests taken care of with the focus of manager's being to optimise for whatever makes the owners better off.

At the extreme with 'AI' - there's no need for firms to exist.

'Power to the people' was always transitory - do you think the govt is dumb? Lets take a simple form of capital: cameras. Would cheap cameras exist without the private sector competing for shareholders interests? Probably not.

They aid and abet it. It benefits their own interests. This game goes on until the govt no longer see's the need for a private sector anymore.

Post reply on HN