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The dead economy theory

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Re: The dead economy theory

#511

Post by bbor »

Animats wrote: post #248

India has the problem with farming that the US is starting to have with AI. Farming in India is still far too labor intensive by world standards. 43% of workers still work in agriculture. [1] For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily. This inefficient agricultural system is not by accident. It is supported by heavy subsidies. Attempts to cut the subsidies resulted in riots…

  How that took place may provide more useful info than philosophy.
Data is always nice, but empirical results are literally useless without philosophy to understand and apply them.

That is unless 'we all move to south korea 20 years ago' is an option, I suppose!

Re: The dead economy theory

#512

Post by hibikir »

thisisit wrote: post #494
Animats wrote: post #248

India has the problem with farming that the US is starting to have with AI. Farming in India is still far too labor intensive by world standards. 43% of workers still work in agriculture. [1] For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily. This inefficient agricultural system is not by accident. It is supported by heavy subsidies. Attempts to cut the subsidies resulted in riots…

You have to look at the population split between urban/rural. In China it is 67/33 and India it is completely reversed at 30/70. And agri continues to be the number one occupation. Additionally, lack of opportunities is also a problem. India has been focused on services and trailed behind on industrialisation. The current government has been pushing for more industrialisation but they are behind in the curve.

Note that China is where it is because of efforts to do this, on purpose, over decades. 20 years ago, their urban percentage was somewhere in the 40s. We are even seeing more migration to cities in Europe and the US, even though it's unplanned, and it leads to big changes in cost of living thanks to this lack of planning.

So if China took 30 years, give or take, to get to where it's at, with its state capacity, I suspect India will take quite a bit longer.

Re: The dead economy theory

#513

Post by whall6 »

Galanwe wrote: post #300
rootusrootus wrote: post #226

I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…

I thought about that a lot too, and in the end I think it just comes down to stupid economics: What do you want them to do with all this money? 1) Most top US tech companies are flooded of money. Everyone dumps money in the SP500. 2) This money has to go somewhere. You can't just redistribute it as dividends, otherwise it's an admission that you won't grow and giving you more money would be a 0 sum game. 3) So you ha…

Money that people “dump” into the S&P isn’t going to the company’s bank account. It’s purchasing shares on the market that were owned by other third party shareholders.

For example, in 2025 Meta was a net purchaser of their own stock ($26 Bn).

These companies are awash in cash because they’re generating revenue in excess of their costs. Nothing to do with the amount of money people put into the S&P 500.

Secondarily, this is exactly why I agree that LLMs likely won’t have the impact OP believes it will. Companies hire not just for output, but for

1. Training (future management, future architects, future bankers, future developers) 2. Generally adding smart people to their teams, capturing a cornered resource 3. Showing governments and shareholders that they have created “jobs”

And a plethora of other reasons that I can’t think of.

John D. Rockefeller (pioneer of the modern corporation) is quoted as saying: “Nobody does anything if he can get anybody else to do it. As soon as you can, get someone who you can rely on, train him in the work, sit down, cock up your heels and think out some way for the Standard Oil to make some money.”

Re: The dead economy theory

#514

Post by bigfishrunning »

threetonesun wrote: post #423
marshray wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk chopped an awful lot of headcount at Twitter, right, and proved it was overkill, has that panned out? Has X-Twitter released a single new feature since?

You can buy blue checks, I guess. On the other hand they shut off embeds and access to replies unless you were signed in so it's functionally dead as a "website". Oh and sometimes there's child porn? So I guess it was overkill unless you care about things like moderation and safety. Anyway, excited to see how it very fairly handles the next US elections! I'm sure most of the remaining devs have invested their time th…

If the site is dead, why would it have any influence on elections?

Re: The dead economy theory

#515

Post by staticcaucasian »

llbbdd wrote: post #455
rootusrootus wrote: post #226

I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…

I don't doubt that they were a bit overstaffed, but it doesn't seem unreasonable when you consider that "Messenger" is an umbrella that includes video calling, payments, games, integrations with business chatbots, Uber/Lyft integrations etc, across web/iOS/Android/Quest, internationally. If you took every feature Messenger has and multiplied it by even ~3 engineers for each one you could fill a few floors pretty quic…

messenger is an absurdly popular app that keeps users in the platform and also increases the intensity of their usage, ultimately leading to more eyeballs, ads and revenue. If you look at it that way, relatively small features, and by association, improvements to the effectiveness of those features by a couple of SWEs each, gets you tons of business impact.

Re: The dead economy theory

#516

Post by hunterpayne »

kqp wrote: post #105
spongebobstoes wrote: post #15

this whole blog post is basically "people need jobs to be happy, so we should design our society such that they need jobs" not only is the premise wrong, but forcing people to work is not a good or ethical way to address this problem most people like the social aspect of work, but not being beholden to their boss we can give people meaning, community, culture, growth, without relying on employment and money we can do…

I agree in theory, but this is so extremely far from the US political and social system that I think no nation has ever changed so much without being overthrown. So unless you’re talking about plans for a post-US world, this idea will always be theoretical and not how “the world” works.

"a post-US world"

I see, so you like large scale warfare then. Did you run out of WWII docs and want some more history for content?

Re: The dead economy theory

#518

Post by selimthegrim »

mr-wendel wrote: post #405
rootusrootus wrote: post #226

I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…

Maybe a low value comment in the context of the article, but structurally I think it's a great comment that strikes a nice balance between curiosity, doubt, hope, and concern. I think a huge amount of SWE resources are tied up in the entertainment (broadly speaking) industry that drives an astonishing amount of money but little social utility. I think it also touches nicely on what appears to be the take away of the…

Indeed the earth librating would be noticed

Re: The dead economy theory

#519

Post by bluGill »

jijijijij wrote: post #427
Animats wrote: post #248

India has the problem with farming that the US is starting to have with AI. Farming in India is still far too labor intensive by world standards. 43% of workers still work in agriculture. [1] For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily. This inefficient agricultural system is not by accident. It is supported by heavy subsidies. Attempts to cut the subsidies resulted in riots…

> 43% of workers still work in agriculture. For the US, that number is under 2%. China is at 22% as of 2023, and dropping steadily. Don't you have to contrast these figures with import and export of produce, and environmental/ecological factors? Technology is one thing, but increasing yields by wasting resources (e.g. water, phosphorous, soil erosion, ...) may increase nominal productivity, but not efficiency. Not sa…

In the US case the large industrial farms are the ones more concerned with things like soil erosion and fertilizer runoff. Both are things we measure and put a number on what is washing away. Smaller farmers know it can be measured but either are stuck in their ways, or just see that they are making money so they don't care.

Re: The dead economy theory

#520

Post by what »

Galanwe wrote: post #300
rootusrootus wrote: post #226

I know this isn't exactly related, so maybe a low value comment, but it itches in my mind. Years ago I talked with a recruiter at Facebook and they bragged about how many floors of developers they had working on Messenger in just one location (Seattle). What on earth do you do with that many devs on a project like Messenger? I mean, really? I feel like in a way, AI just adds to that weird situation of overcapacity. M…

I thought about that a lot too, and in the end I think it just comes down to stupid economics: What do you want them to do with all this money? 1) Most top US tech companies are flooded of money. Everyone dumps money in the SP500. 2) This money has to go somewhere. You can't just redistribute it as dividends, otherwise it's an admission that you won't grow and giving you more money would be a 0 sum game. 3) So you ha…

> Most top US tech companies are flooded of money. Everyone dumps money in the SP500.

That’s not how it works? The company doesn’t make money every time someone buys SP500 or a share.

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