What will our economic future look like? • Hacker News Board

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#391

Post by mikewarot » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 5:58 AM UTC

Nowhere in any of the scenarios they let you model, do they consider the cost of computation for inference, nor training of new models. It may be that after the subsidies can no longer be offered, most AI use becomes cost prohibitive.

This would lead to a much, much smaller "total addressable market", rendering the massive AI build out into a rapidly depreciating asset that can't even be operated without a loss.

Even if the hardware was effectively free following a market crash, and bankruptcy sale, the power required to run it might be more expensive than the compute it generates is worth.

At which point, unlike dark fiber after the .com crash, all the hardware becomes scrap metal.

Now factor in the macro picture, in which this AI bubble is holding up the stock market, and by proxy, the US economy. I think we're in for Global Depression II, worse than 1929.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#392

Post by lbreakjai » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 5:58 AM UTC

slopinthebag wrote: post #212

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it means you can pocket the cost-saving Right up until a competing hospital that charges substantially less for "close enough it doesn't matter" quality of service opens up in the same area? Or right up until an equivalent specialist sets up shop in the strip mall across the street from you, brings the GP in house and can see people in one visit. Oh, those things don't happen you say? From do-gooders regulating righ…

healthcare is one of the most highly regulated and state-controlled industries on the planet. surely that has nothing to do with it though. must be those damn capitalists!

We should remove the red tape and let Joe down the street operate, that will surely fix everything.

It has to be the regulation, not the parasitic layer of health insurance racket in the middle.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#393

Post by Ekaros » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:06 AM UTC

fhejfnenjdcn wrote: post #356

NickHirras wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the sections is: A profound economic transformation In the extreme scenario, AI is more productive than humans at the vast majority of knowledge-work tasks. It does nearly all of them autonomously, and it creates essentially no new knowledge tasks for people. This scenario would likely require recursively self-improving AI, adopted quickly for knowledge work. As AI diffuses, annual GDP growth rates reach 15% a…

Mass automation will be disastrous for GDP in service economies. Service economies exist to provide services to other people who also provide services. If the services themselves get automated, you don't need that massive inefficient system to support service-providing workers anymore. GDP goes to zero.

I believe lot of "service" jobs are fundamentally make up work. Or not actually productive. Just there because it can be afforded. Or someone decided that it is "needed". Some amount of it produces net negative value. Some neutral and lot probably value we could even manage without it. Actual productive value is probably not that big part.

Now replace all that and you still produce same overall. Not more actual physical stuff.

Re: What will our economic future look like?

#394

Post by leonidasrup » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:13 AM UTC

AuthAuth wrote: post #268

leonidasrup wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The central argument of Capital is that the motivating force of capitalism is in the exploitation of labour, whose unpaid work is the ultimate source of surplus value and profit. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital

Marx's labour theory of value is only a theory of where profits come from and is largely rejected. Return on captial investment is not restricted to factory owners. All workers get a share of the surplus value and have the option to increase that by investing.

"Capital stands as one of the most influential and controversial books ever written. Its legacy is multifaceted, shaping intellectual discourse, political movements, and the historical trajectory of the 20th and 21st centuries."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital#Legacy

My hypothesis is that if you go full socialism, you get stagnation, because no one is motivated to change anything. If you go full capitalism, you get Gilded Age, where wealth and political power is concentrated in the hands of few individuals, followed by Great Depression.

Healthy state is in the middle.