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Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

economist.com

631–640 of 774 posts

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#631
post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The markets are efficient but they aren’t perfect. In any situation the markets will do the best to optimize but will always fall short of perfection . Since markets aren’t perfect that’s why you can make money by speculation.

> In any situation the markets will do the best to optimize but will always fall short of perfection The problem with markets is a "market efficient" outcome can be catastrophic for social welfare. During the Irish potato famine the markets allocated food away from Ireland because there were not many there who could afford it. They starved. The market functioned perfectly. Markets find equilibriums. Total collapse is…

I'm actually saying the reverse and agreeing with you that there are market efficient outcomes that should have been considered or done . In the Irish Potato famine around 1-2 million people left the country. Instead of preserving the workforce they opted for a short term market equilibrium of selling the food to people that could pay and not performing some kind of tax that would feed the needy. The previous Tory government tried to do some charity but then the incoming government did a more of a hands off approach which is an incorrect response. So yes the Irish Potato famine was the result of a market efficient equilibrium that shouldn't have been allowed to occur.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fell 30% because of Covid and recession in 2020. It was down as much as 30% yesterday of its peak but without either of those.

Not sure that’s the fully correct take. It only had time to fall 30 percent before the FED announced QE infinity which turned it around (FED solved liquidity issues). If that didn’t happen it would have likely fallen further. Now we are having similar liquidity issues / dollar strength but the FED is not rushing to the rescue. Context is important

there was the whole covid & recession thing too which factored into the fed's decision .

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#633
post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your project? $100k seems like an odd amount of money to ask for, to me. You can't staff up very much with that, but it seems like a lot of money to pay for AWS/hosting-type bills when you're just starting out ($10-30k should be more than enough). It only makes sense (again, to me) if what you really want is access to the VC and their network. But again, I don't know shit about VC and angel investing.

Don't know what YC's current deal is but $100k is in the range of what they used to offer.

They offer 500k now as they too saw that 100k is not enough these days to pay developers.

https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/ycs-500-000-standard-deal

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if I disagree but we were also in a really bad position if we didn’t do it. The stimulus did a lot of good, I saw the first hand benefits of what it did for people who really needed it.

False dichotomy. It should have been done, but to a much lesser magnitude. That is plainly obvious to any rational minded person. The Fed also should have considered velocity in employment gains. They basically waited until labor market was already overheated to do anything... which means many are likely to lose their jobs in the fight with inflation now. Unfortunately the basic law of economics and real productivity…

> That is plainly obvious to any rational minded person

No, it’s not. There was a real economic crisis, and hindsight alone allows you to take that position.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#635
post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DMV in my state requires you make an appointment 4-6 months out right now. Walk-in appointments are unavailable or only available during a few hours a few days a week, if they happen to have staff that day. Good luck if you have your drivers license stolen. I sold a car of mine to Carvana in October. I returned the license plate to the DMV immediately, which is how they're notified that you no longer own the vehi…

WTF? This must be because of willful political sabotage? The license plate should follow the car and ownership should be changed online as part of the transaction. It sounds incredibly wasteful that every time a car changes ownership the seller must hand over the plates in person to the DMV. And is there no national registry of cars or data sharing between states? Strange that a car can be registered twice. If your d…

> WTF? This must be because of willful political sabotage?

It's not sabotage, it's the fact that the government wants a leash on you. I had an experience in the past with the CA DMV where simply forgetting to "de-register" a broken, non-functional motorcycle resulted in the state levying my bank account for hundreds of dollars in registration fees. The FTB had the money debited right out of my account, no different than if someone committed wire fraud.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#636
post #7
post #2

I work for non-tech generating 100million+ in revenue. Cushy job, fully remote, good pay and full autonomy with flexible hours working as an IC. I recently talked to a startup, similar pay, culture would be a better fit since it was mostly techies and I'm a nerd by nature.....but things just got awkward as soon as I asked about their revenue....they were bleeding money and I was told they were being acquired by a big…

Across every investment class there has been a trend of buyers needing to become more financially irresponsible in order to participate in the market. Need to buy a house? bid 20% more than asking, if you don't - someone else will.. in cash. Need to build a ride-hailing app? prepare to pay people to ride indefinitely. Need to own a growth stock? prepare to pay upwards of 100x multiple on revenue. All around, there ha…

Best explanation I've seen of this phenomenon, why it's bad for all involved parties, and knock him effects. It's focused on place making/urban development, but it lines up completely. https://podcast.strongtowns.org/e/strip-mall/

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mean paying in full themselves, not backed by mortgage.

Even if you get the mortgage, it's the same as cash to the seller. The bank just cut's them a check right away. The mortgage is between the bank and the buyer.

No. In the US standard housing purchase agreements are drawn up contingent on financing - and standard bank financing has a lot of hoops and procedure to go through - it usually takes at least a month and of course it may fall through. During that time the seller is basically sitting on their ass and can’t advertise the property.

An all cash deal means the seller does not have to wait once the parties have a mutual purchase agreement.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#638
post #7
post #2

I work for non-tech generating 100million+ in revenue. Cushy job, fully remote, good pay and full autonomy with flexible hours working as an IC. I recently talked to a startup, similar pay, culture would be a better fit since it was mostly techies and I'm a nerd by nature.....but things just got awkward as soon as I asked about their revenue....they were bleeding money and I was told they were being acquired by a big…

Across every investment class there has been a trend of buyers needing to become more financially irresponsible in order to participate in the market. Need to buy a house? bid 20% more than asking, if you don't - someone else will.. in cash. Need to build a ride-hailing app? prepare to pay people to ride indefinitely. Need to own a growth stock? prepare to pay upwards of 100x multiple on revenue. All around, there ha…

> Need to own a growth stock? prepare to pay upwards of 100x multiple on revenue.

Depending on the growth rate, a 100x P/E may be cheap.

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#639
Will be great if anyone familiar with the tech start up market can chime in here.

There are a lot of companies still calling themselves startups but are almost a decade or more old that didn't go public. I wonder what happens to them. Instacart comes to mind.

Then there are actual startups that appeared really promising like Tide, Sivo etc. Am curious how they fare as well.

Is there a noticeable change in available startup funding?

Re: Tech bubbles are bursting all over the place

#640
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep using the DMV as an example of government inefficiency, but my state has made it run so painlessly I don't think I've spent more than 15 minutes in an office over the last 5 years. I think government can be efficient if you put technocrats in charge of implementation rather than elected officials who are subject to the electoral whims of the uninformed masses. The problem with the above is it weakens demo…

> People keep using the DMV as an example of government inefficiency, but my state has made it run so painlessly I don't think I've spent more than 15 minutes in an office over the last 5 years. It's totally baffling to me when there's 'the DMV' in US films/tv, because that's just not a place (nor anything equivalent) we have to go to, whether it's 'only fifteen minutes' or more. (Sure, when my driving licence expire…

That's why 'the DMV (groan)' is the meme it is in the US: it's one of the few interactions most upper-middle class individuals have with government services.

I've had other interactions with state/local government services over the past couple years, and they've all been pretty bad. It's like anything else: there are helpful, compassionate people you occasionally speak with, but it's easy to get buried in the complexity and ridiculous inefficacy.

Federal (and state for that matter) tax returns are a good example. Something that every citizen of working age technically has to deal with are incredibly complex.

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