51–60 of 98 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
what kind of digital service is worth that much ?
Most of the big ones. Only issue is the US is crap at collecting tax from them.
No - the growth today is capital expenditures, not productivity. To be fair, the industrial revolution was a 100 year period or so, computers, web, cloud, mobile and AI will likely be perceived in the same historical framework. AI will take some time to pan out in terms of productivity, but it will. A better comparison might be railroads.
Why is railroad a better comparison?
Early capitalism didn’t have steady growth because of technical advances. It had steady growth because it was early capitalism. When capitalism expands (be it by replacing older modes of production, or through rebuilding after a world war), it always has steady growth. When there’s nowhere left to expand to, the machine always grips. Technical progress doesn’t prevent this outcome, it accelerates it. More productivit…
> Early capitalism didn’t have steady growth because of technical advances. It had steady growth because it was early capitalism. The same technical advances created rapid growth in non industrialized non capitalist societies once they were introduced like the USSR or China. It's silly to say that orders of magnitude reductions in human labour needed to produce food, provide clean water, build sanitation and sewer sy…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Internet is the foundation of the global almost automated distribution networks and has brought the ability to target your consumers in a way that's cheap and effective. Usa exports tons of digital services that balance the trade ledger. I don't understand this stance.
The internet has certainly changed the composition of the economy a lot, so that a lot of services that used to be in-person are now available online. But GDP growth is about the difference in value production over time. Especially digital services that can be provided at high volume, because they're so cheap, don't add up to as much value when you multiply it out, and then you have to subtract the past value of the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's very myopic view. The gains by the rise of IT have been staggering in e.g. medicine. Modern drug discovery would be impossible without advances in computation, and we are getting breakthrough drugs all the time thanks to that. > We could already telegraph someone across Atlantic, we could extract knowledge in library, we could do accounting. The speedup is small compared to horses vs steam power for transporta…
Clearly written by someone who's never lived without steam power (semi tongue in cheek). But seriously, your ability to expediently research just doesn't compare to the ability to ship a metric ton of freight across the country without marshalling an army of people for months on end. As one example.
The complexity of supply-chains is overwhelming. Your fancy boat or train needs a boatload (!) of grease, oils, spare parts, maintenance, logs, not to mention fuel, accounting, insurance, the list is endless and it’s all either fully enabled by or extraordinarily simplified by digital networks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I believe that growth caused by the rise of IT, be it Internet or LLM, will be marginal, because the benefits for humanity are very marginal compared to that caused by steam engine, wing, antibiotics or telegraph. Everything IT does is slightly simplifying things we already could do. We could already telegraph someone across Atlantic, we could extract knowledge in library, we could do accounting. The speedup…
Speedup in communication is fast, but the real physical work still needed to be done. Machines were very powerful with this, but not flexible. AI powered robots will be flexible (once they work reliable) ..
Will we see any growth acceleration? The Internet doesn't seem to have had this effect. AI may turn out to nothing in terms of gdp growth or even be hugely deflationary.
Internet is the foundation of the global almost automated distribution networks and has brought the ability to target your consumers in a way that's cheap and effective. Usa exports tons of digital services that balance the trade ledger. I don't understand this stance.
Will we see any growth acceleration? The Internet doesn't seem to have had this effect. AI may turn out to nothing in terms of gdp growth or even be hugely deflationary.
Don't think in terms of dollars. Think in terms of stuff and services. You don't see the internet in terms of dollars because it often makes it cheaper to do something that was possible before. That looks like a negative, in terms of GDP. In terms of what people can do, and can afford to do, though, it opens enormous doors. Want some information? Don't need a library. Want to plan a trip? Don't need a travel agent. W…
This isn't as much of a positive as you seem to be implying. You can just go to a library. Or a travel agent. And it's probably better for you. It's not a downside.