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The dead economy theory

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Re: The dead economy theory

#271

Post by Zigurd »

BeetleB wrote: post #246
Zigurd wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> later this year One can hope that reality intrudes before the bubble gets even more dangerously inflated, but how many years has Tesla had a ridiculous P/E ratio. Even after growth stagnated and market leadership was lost in Asia and Europe. Number still goes up.

I hate Musk, and I'm not going to justify Tesla's crazy stock valuation, but consider the following: Outside of China, Tesla's probably the only company that can compete on battery prices. I don't know how accurate it was, but a news report was comparing the cost the manufacturer's pay to build the battery. Chinese companies were around $6000. Tesla was at $7000. Everyone else was around $12-15K. This is why a number…

It's not depressing because it's not true. Tesla isn't investing in battery technology. Tesla also isn't developing new models at the same rate as VW, BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai Kia, etc.

Re: The dead economy theory

#272

Post by asdff »

philipkglass wrote: post #111
CM30 wrote: post #89

I think the thing companies forget is that a lot of them can't remain functional if a shrinking percentage of the population can afford their products. Yes, you can try and appeal to the rich and sell products/services aimed at their needs. But does that work for most companies? I'd say no. The rich won't buy millions of food items or works of fiction or go to every service available in real life. So, many of those c…

Most of the world's democracies don't have influential AI companies, so if the voters want X and companies want Y, X will win. There's little reason for Indonesian politicians to prioritize the interests of American or Chinese AI companies over domestic voters.

>There's little reason for Indonesian politicians to prioritize the interests of American or Chinese AI companies over domestic voters.

You kidding? They have every reason to because the leaders of Indonesia make investments into these companies. No matter where you are on the globe, the oligarchy does not give a crap about the little man. They care about the profit angle. Indonesia readily hands out mining rights to foreign companies for example.

"However, Chinese firms have dominated Indonesia’s nickel sector thanks to significant investments. In 2023, Indonesia was the single biggest recipient of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, receiving $7.3 billion in investment. Chinese companies have also constructed over 90 percent of Indonesia’s nickel smelters. Chinese firms operating in Indonesia include Tsingshan Holding Group, Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Ningbo Lygend (part of CATL Group), Wuling Motors, and China Molybdenum Company."

https://www.csis.org/analysis/diversifying-investment-indone...

Re: The dead economy theory

#273

Post by hylaride »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #134
10xDev wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does every business scale that way? Sure video games for example have only required more people and resources to develop games as the ability to create larger scale games have increased. But does that really apply to accounting? Not a rhetorical question.

Does it need to? 99% of people used to work on farms. Now they don't. Maybe ~99% of engineers won't write code in the future. They'll do some other engineering like thing... Maybe ~99% of accountant type people won't do accounting things. They'll do some other financial thing... We haven't even seen a rounding error in total unemployment directly attributed to AI, despite people saying the sky fell 24 months ago, and…

I remember sitting is a business class in school. The professor gave a story of how computerized spreadsheets changed the nature of accounting. Spreadsheets used to be done by hand on boards/paper. If a mistake was discovered, cascading recalculations needed to be done by hand. It was perfectly normal for large companies to have multiple teams duplicating work, then reconciling differences.

When computerized spreadsheets came about, mistakes could easily be fixed and cascading recalculations were almost instantly done. This was a game changer. Over the short term, accounting departments shrank or stagnated until the industry caught up and more sophisticated accounting started to grow the industry again. It's not coincidental that the 1980s brought in huge change to the financial industry when it did. Deregulation played a role, but so did the fact that computers exploded the productivity of the industry.

I'm not saying AI will do the same with developers, but there will always still be developers with a different set of skills, much like the way accountants don't necessarily need to be able to count in there head anymore.

Re: The dead economy theory

#274

Post by jjkaczor »

harimau777 wrote: post #31
esafak wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we can give people meaning, community, culture, growth, without relying on employment and money What's your proposal if not traditional work? The realistic outcome I see is shifting labor to unautomatable sectors like hospitality. That will keep people employed, but unhappy as they increasingly find themselves unable to find jobs they enjoy, or at comparable levels of income. edit: I realize many people are unhappy…

A couple of options off the top of my head: art, research, athletics, the humanities

AI is already coming for "art" and "research" - by "slop metrics" it's already there for "art".

Re: The dead economy theory

#275

Post by daxfohl »

> [CEOs] expressed more extreme concern about the labor market impacts of A.I. in private conversation, but suddenly became optimists once I turned on the mic.

At some point once the rate of investment capital starts to decline, they'll make a hard pivot from the investor-wooing method of "blaming AI for layoffs", to the more politically expedient method of blaming minorities and immigrants. That'll be the signal for the transition from power grabbing to power ossification, and the point at which change becomes a lot harder.

Re: The dead economy theory

#276

Post by Ancalagon »

krapp wrote: post #254
Ancalagon wrote: post #243

What's the endgame here? Like the group of psychopath capitalists own everything, automate everything, and devise ways to separate themselves from or un-alives the remainder of the population and live, trade, and war amongst themselves with their armies of robots? Edit: Also this article has so many AI-generated images. I hate that I can't tell if the words themselves are AI-generated or not as well.

This isn't tik-tok. You don't have to use terms like "un-alive" here. Comments on HN aren't policed for maximum advertiser appeal. And yes, that's more or less the endgame.

I was being a little facetious with the "un-alive" term - seemed funnier than "massacre".

Re: The dead economy theory

#277

Post by warkdarrior »

czhu12 wrote: post #251

This article describes a vicious cycle: Layoff of workers -> Workers stop spending -> businesses suffer This is not a foregone conclusion. Laid off workers could find other jobs, with higher incomes, due to productivity increases from AI. This narrative falls into the trap of zero sum thinking, taken at the limit, you can advocate for jobs programs and helicopter money where people get paid to do nothing to keep the…

> workers could find other jobs, with higher incomes, due to productivity increases from AI

From a business point of view, this does not follow. Why would a business offer higher wages to a person to work alongside/with AI, when the business also has to pay the cost of AI?

Re: The dead economy theory

#278

Post by Ancalagon »

BlarfMcFlarf wrote: post #256
Ancalagon wrote: post #243

What's the endgame here? Like the group of psychopath capitalists own everything, automate everything, and devise ways to separate themselves from or un-alives the remainder of the population and live, trade, and war amongst themselves with their armies of robots? Edit: Also this article has so many AI-generated images. I hate that I can't tell if the words themselves are AI-generated or not as well.

Endgame assumes intentionality. Maybe the economy is just people responding to much shorter term incentives and the whole thing is a misaligned runaway process.

So dark. I don't understand why it seems like civilization now seemingly follows short-term incentives so much more than it did even 20 years ago. Is it just power concentration or lack of education? Like we have lost the ability to long term plan and collaborate it feels like.

Re: The dead economy theory

#279

Post by cestith »

echoangle wrote: post #26
Alex-C137 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author never claims otherwise?

Did the public fund googles research?

The public of the US, China, Japan, the UK, and Canada at the very least contributed to every precursor to transformers in the history of AI. Public and private universities, government grants to them, government projects, prizes to government contests, direct government investment into and subsidies for companies doing commercial research, tax breaks to operators designed to encourage the growth of the field, and large government contracts to use things the government might not even have good uses for yet all add up to government assisted funding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_artificial_intellig...

Re: The dead economy theory

#280

Post by warkdarrior »

asdff wrote: post #260
CM30 wrote: post #89

I think the thing companies forget is that a lot of them can't remain functional if a shrinking percentage of the population can afford their products. Yes, you can try and appeal to the rich and sell products/services aimed at their needs. But does that work for most companies? I'd say no. The rich won't buy millions of food items or works of fiction or go to every service available in real life. So, many of those c…

>Feels like if there's enough pain from unemployment and declining living standards, someone will run on that and win, whether those in power like it or not. The issue with this is that the game is fundamentally rigged. You might have good ideas, you might be that person we need. But, too bad, you are being outspent by the oligarchy, who put forth a candidate that is blatantly lying to get elected, who knows the publ…

> Do it like Cuba where campaigning is illegal; they elect actual engineers and domain experts there as a result, not professional politicians.

The US military is preparing to fix this issue in Cuba's political system.

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