61–70 of 71 posts
If enough capital has been installed before learning removes the wedge, the economy lands in the high-capital state, I’m gonna need an honest caveat on the load-bearing assumption here.
Interest rates in fiat currency, these days, are not due to scarcity of lendable funds. Saving rates by consumers actually are just a low-risk or high-risk form of rent seek8ng., depending on the economy.
There's no world these days where a vast amount of collected wealth by a few makes credit suddenly cheap for all consumers.
All wage earners will still be able to drive up inflation if they demand goods that are not able to keep up easily... therefore pressure to save (to not take out debt) will raise interest rates fine by itself.
Unless we are talking about fiscal-based government spending (and interest on fiscal debt), no increased access to credit will become "better for all". Businesses can absorb all the credit offered during good times and consumers may see none.
Business failures will suddenly dump some assets on the market at fire sale prices, but a lost job makes those fire sales of little solace.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"In a K-shaped recovery, different parts of the economy move in opposite directions at the same time following a recession or downturn. One segment—the upper arm of the K—experiences an increase in wealth due to rising asset values or incomes. The lower arm faces increasing financial strain due to declining purchasing power along with stagnating or decreasing wages." (source: Britannica) So you have it exactly backwa…
If all that drives you is a desire for religion and freedom from empirical and mathematical thinking, then you are right there is no point arguing with you. I hope you find that which you seek. And the K in K shaped economy came from turning the K 90 degrees so that the left arm (representing the low wage service sector) and the right arm (representing rising asset prices) were elevated while the middle was depressed…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you tell us more?
not OP, but i believe the commenter is referring to how GFC in '07 had wide ranging negative effects for a lot of people who had nothing to do with investments in mortgage backed securities
GHC '07 can be directly traced to a (in retrospect) failure of regulations AKA the government AKA "we".
Our democratically elected government has the ability to strike, what they think, is the right balance.
The companies and investors cannot be expected to take the broad view, so it is the WE who are responsible in a way, are we not? In a way, "the people" have, on balance, decided what level of regulations.
We would be tempted to complain that the lag and fidelity of choices by "the people" cannot be faithfully represented by the government. However, there's no better solution than what we currently have that I can think of, but I would love to hear about a scalable approach that caters to more individuals' specific wishes on a very very long list of policy decisions and that has short turnaround time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, if traffic were billed rather than free, we would only get traffic that was deemed to be worth the bill. Most spam, for example, has a very low rate of return. If it cost to send - even a little bit - much of it would become unprofitable. So in that world, we would have fiber, but not (much) international spam.
Ah, I understand :)
Really cheap fiber backbones are make a pure datagram Internet work. We still can't handle congestion in the middle of the network. Congestion has to be forced out to the edges. There was a period in the late 1990s when MAE-EAST and MAE-WEST, the big peering points, routinely went into congestion collapse and only about 30% of packets got through
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connectionless-mode_Network_Se...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most data centres connect to the grid, they don’t connect to a single power station, except in scenarios where there’s a uniquely low cost power supply nearby, like a small Hydro Plant. Utility scale power stations have outputs measured in GWs. Data centres are measured in MWs, although people are trying to build GW scale data centres at the moment. But even then a data centre will want a proper grid connection, othe…
The premise I was responding to was that the energy infrastructure would be built during the rise of the AI "bubble" and subsequently be repurposed after the collapse. If we're just connecting data centres to the grid then I don't see how that is providing any new infrastructure whatsoever. On the other hand, if we're building lots of new power plants to power the data centres (and connecting them to the grid) but th…
Building new power plants immediately isn’t really required to serve data centre, they’re huge amounts of spare capacity in most grids that only exists for extreme situations. The hard part is making sure any existing capacity can actually be delivered to the new data centre. New power plants will get built to rebuild spare capacity over time, or more likely, solar and wind will get built to reinforce that spare capacity over time.
Datacentres are useful grid loads because they all have backup power on site capable of powering the entire site as an island. Which means grid operators can ask them to disconnect quickly if they need to extra power for short periods of time to handle power spikes, or local grid faults. So it’s possible to connect quite a lot of extra data centre type load before generation capacity becomes a serious issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The premise I was responding to was that the energy infrastructure would be built during the rise of the AI "bubble" and subsequently be repurposed after the collapse. If we're just connecting data centres to the grid then I don't see how that is providing any new infrastructure whatsoever. On the other hand, if we're building lots of new power plants to power the data centres (and connecting them to the grid) but th…
You can only get grid connections if the grid thinks they can support your demand. That’s why grid connections take so long, they’re not just plugging in a massive cable, they’re reinforcing other parts of the grid to make sure your massive cable won’t cause a blackout if use all the power it can provide. Building new power plants immediately isn’t really required to serve data centre, they’re huge amounts of spare c…
Really, now? Yeah, they can ask, but do data center operators just go "oh grid needs our power! Let's switch to backup!"
That seems unlikely. Why would a data center (or any large consumer of electrical power) be forced into a backup/contingency plan, when no crisis exists at all? Other than drilling/practice runs, I cannot see them readily agreeing to this. Is it actually a routine occurrence?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, I understand :)
The Internet could have worked very differently, with virtual circuits instead of raw datagrams. That's what the telco people wanted. See TP4.[1] Although there's a connectionless TP4 mode, one plan was that you'd only be connectionless within your own organization. If you wanted to talk to the larger world, you'd have to dial up a billed virtual circuit via your telecommunications provider. Really cheap fiber backbo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can only get grid connections if the grid thinks they can support your demand. That’s why grid connections take so long, they’re not just plugging in a massive cable, they’re reinforcing other parts of the grid to make sure your massive cable won’t cause a blackout if use all the power it can provide. Building new power plants immediately isn’t really required to serve data centre, they’re huge amounts of spare c…
> Which means grid operators can ask them to disconnect quickly Really, now? Yeah, they can ask, but do data center operators just go "oh grid needs our power! Let's switch to backup!" That seems unlikely. Why would a data center (or any large consumer of electrical power) be forced into a backup/contingency plan, when no crisis exists at all? Other than drilling/practice runs, I cannot see them readily agreeing to t…
Of course they do. The grid is going to load shed regardless, better to disconnect in an orderly fashion (especially as the grid will pay you to do so) than wait for your local substation to disconnect you.
> That seems unlikely. Why would a data center (or any large consumer of electrical power) be forced into a backup/contingency plan, when no crisis exists at all?
Because they get paid to do it. This is pretty basic demand side management that’s been the bread and butter of grid management for decades now. Grids will offer discounts to large loads that allow themselves to be disconnected at short notice, and will then pay those loads for the periods they’re disconnected. There’s usually multiple tiers of discount and payment depending on how fast a load can disconnect, and how often the grid expects to call upon that facility.