Well sure..., but what might be less obvious is that a can of beans, a tank of gas, a wig and a chair can all inflate at 2% a year while stocks and land inflate much faster.
The way we measure inflation is focused on consumption goods that everyone depends on. It doesn't take into account the stock market.
In other words we could stay around 3% in measured inflation but see ~30% annual equity inflation...
So my point is that the most valuable companies in 20 years could be worth hundreds of trillions while the cost of a can of beans is like $5, not $200.
Zimbabwe type inflation happens when the economy doesn't get more efficient at producing stuff as fast as the government prints money. If the economy increases efficiency very quickly and the government prints money to peg at 2% inflation, the products we consume only increase a little bit while scarce assets increase a lot.
This is why in the time I took a can of beans to increase in price 3x a house increased 20x.
Something tells me not all of that debt is going to turn out quite as high quality as it appeared at the time of issuance.
The mere success of “AI” won’t be sufficient to repay those loans. Many of them only make sense in a world where AI is wildly transformative and profitably successful.
It sounds like you don’t understand the problem very well. Forgive me if that’s an incorrect interpretation.
One way to prevent this type of crime is to ensure that it is never profitable. The downside is that there will be losses until the message is thoroughly communicated.
Who cares if criminals have nice things, Id rather innocent people dont die. Most criminals tend to find ways to ruin their own lives at some point anyways. Peoples lives > pieces of paper.
Its like you're proposing a trolly problem where you choose the 5 people on a track to die because you don't want the single guy on a track to have nice clothes.
"Criminals having vacations and nice things" wasn't a great framing, "criminal enterprises continue to have revenue to reinvest in more crimes" is the better one.
Seriously. It’s pretty clear that the new Roadster is not intended to be a practical car for the masses. And that’s Ok. There’s room for a “halo” product in any lineup.
It’s interesting and valuable, imho, to consider that people have always tended to think things are falling apart, and that perhaps now is no different.
That said, all societies rise and all appear to eventually fall. It’s equally reasonable to consider that the US/Western Civilization/humanity might actually be nearing a fall.
I guess if you take a wide enough lens, the west lives in the civilization founded in Rome. There's no political continuity, but there's a reasonably coherent cultural trajectory going back a few thousand years.
Do we think that there is going to be a major break from that?
Western Civilization saw its start in Rome, and continued through the rise and fall of the Roman Empire when it contracted. The core of Western Civilization reemerged in England in the 15th century and expanded again, with the core moving to France in the early 19th century, before moving again to Germany in the middle of the 20th century. Post-WWII the core moved once again, this time to the United States, and after the expansion of the US Empire, we now see Western Civilization faltering and contracting under unpopular wars driven by a long series of self-serving poloticians. Whether Western Civilization can reorganize and expand (with the core migrating once again) or wither and die under the expansion and invasion by other civilizations remains the great question of the present day.
That's fair, but I would argue that Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire was the genesis of the Eastern Orthodox Civilization, with the core now in St. Petersburg (or maybe Moscow.)
If you go that way, then there is definitely a civilizational split between Protestants and Catholics, as well as between Europe and America.
Looking from a Finnish perspective, Sweden and Estonia are culturally closest to us, but Russia is also pretty close. Britain and France already feel less familiar, not to speak of something like Italy or the US.
Other than the senate, eagle statues, architecture, philosophical/intellectual tradition?
Not as much of a parallel as people tend to think, but the Roman empire fell apart partly because it was based on the theory of constant outward expansion. If your model, say economic, is based on infinite expansion in a finite arena you'll have trouble.
The European colonies in eastern North America were started by the successor states of the Roman provinces of Gaul, Hispania, Batavia and Britannia. Two of these spoke Latin derived languages, and the other two spoke languages heavily indebted to Romance languages. (Much of English core vocabulary is either French or Latin in origin — 60% according to one estimate.)
Other Roman influences on the USA include Christianity and to a lesser extent Judaism (since the major US versions come out of post-Roman Judaism.)
Are you actually saying that a particular aspect of the Roman economy/society is applicable to something entirely different and completely irrelevant in the modern day?
The USA is the product of the British empire which consciously modelled itself on Rome. It was influenced by various European countries, including England and France, which mostly developed in the Roman Empire's former territories.
The European Renaissance and the Enlightenment both used Roman and Greek ideas as inspiration. You can see this in early US architecture, and the models for some institutions such as the Senate. Some of this was ironically as a revolt against English institutions (even though England and Wales were successors of a Roman province).
The early USA's language(s) and Judaeo-Christian heritage are partly products of the Roman Empire. (Spanish most definitely is, and French is. English is heavily influenced by French and Latin.)
Turkey is an inheritor of the Eastern Roman Empire tradition/influences. So is Russia. It depends on your historical influences and political role models.
There was a prophecy in the Koran that Islam would conquer the Romans and Muslims see the capture of Byzantium/Constantinople as its fulfilment.
Byzantium was certainly a continuation of Rome and its subjects called themselves Romans. It all depends on whether you consider the Ottoman Empire to be a continuation of Byzantium or not (there are arguments both ways).
When it fundamentally changes? It's hard to imagine something else while living in this. The Chinese formula might be different enough since so few in the west can even superficially understand what they are doing. Over there wealth and power are trying to be two separate things.
Something more dramatic than the fall of the Roman Empire then? I doubt it. But we definitely have a potent cocktail on our hands.
The scariest ingredient as I see it is AI. Overproduction of elites is always a destabilizing factor, and much of the well educated workforce may now turn out to be overproduction.
Civilizational collapse occurs when society runs afoul of its basic contract and cannot provide its foundational services anymore. That can mean starvation, it also is given e.g. in the situation of elites running low on trust. Leading to social unrest spinning out of control, or former allies refusing to play along with political shenanigans.
In order to evade catastrophic civilizational collapse, you need viable and timely avenues for course-correction or adaptation. Those are presently being blocked by the very elites profiting from the system they bleed dry.
I believe it is the ratio of people who collectively do constructive things vs those who don't. Constructive deeds require things like vision, planning, curiosity, knowledge, experience, networking, tools, resources and empathy too
People who lack enough of those req will actively get in the way.
Things like building a house for little Jimmy in it self isn't hard at all. You can also give him some [digital] textbooks, answer his questions and create a position as an apprentice wizard. There is nothing hard about doing that.
Sure, some people will try to get in the way but one unmotivated saboteur vs an army of millions isn't going to change anything.
Sometimes constructive is to preserve and protect. Don't argue with those trying to stop sensible efforts and don't pay them to get out of the way. You put them in cages or otherwise ruin their everything until they get out of the way.
But if you fail to do that and their numbers grow there is no alternative but to wait until they've destroyed enough of the good stuff for them to become miserable enough to change sides. It might take a thousand years but we will build a new glorious civilization and it will sit there waiting for people to stop caring again.
We are of course far over that hill already but destroying everything takes quite a bit of time.
I think breaking the social contract is a symptom. One that produces destructive effects, but not a root cause. It's been a couple decades since I read Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies, but my recollection of his thesis is societies collapse because the cost of continuing to operate (resolve challenges, keep the various internal processes going) is too high; i.e. either you pay (in resources) more than you get back/save, or the cost of fixing systems it impossible to avoid collapse.
Assuming that you mean dramatic in the sense of a sudden, singular event in time which many societies and value systems were upended, why do you think that was the case for the Roman Empire?
Elite overproduction I think refers to the unemployment rate of people who graduated from elite universities. I think that rate is probably still not high enough to be concerning for now.
My point is that any such metric may turn out to have been wildly off in a post-ASI world. Ten years ago or even today it may have seemed fine to educate a large part of the population for ”elite” jobs, but after ASI that may instead be looked at as a massive overproduction of ”elites”.
> Overproduction of elites is always a destabilizing factor, and much of the well educated workforce may now turn out to be overproduction.
If society decides that it doesn't want science, disease control, or software engineering, and gets rid of the jobs those people were doing up until two years ago, and then calls them "overproduced elites" and tells them to get "real jobs" (when many of their jobs weren't even automated, just abandoned at the cost of their output), that is a political decision.
But not necessarily an explicit one. It may turn out to be the natural path forward and the political decision is then to not do anything to prevent it.
It's also true that as the scope of power humanity has over itself and its environment, it equally manages to create ever larger crises, and it seems like we truly are reaching the ecological and environmental limits of what the planet's life support systems can give us before breaking down.
Present levels of environmental degradation due to human actions far exceed Earth's capacity to self-heal.
People struggle with judging that, after all, at best you get a bunch of numbers and the claim, they would show this (or not). Without actual scientific background, what are you supposed to do?
Human society is based on trust. You depend on "experts" on a given subject to give truthful accounts of things. When you don't have that, society breaks down sooner or later: nobody adapts anymore to reality.
There are a few ways to disable/hide shorts. One day I said to a friend, “man I wish I could block these things, they’re insulting to my intelligence and just encourage clicking around” and my friend said “I’ve been blocking them for a while, just do this.” And while I can’t remember what “this” was, it’s worth a quick google.
Shorts are like the video equivalent of snacking on Doritos all day long.
At first I bought used cars because I was young and didn’t have any money. Later, I bought used because of the savings, and because it made getting a manual transmission easier. Now we still buy used, but avoiding this kind of thing is top of mind.
Our three family vehicles are 2016, 2016, and 2007. Somehow we live without built-in nav, CarPlay, and hundreds of square inches of screen space. At the rate things are going, I’ll probably live out my life without getting anywhere close to a new vehicle.
Think about it please, everyone. Do you need this stuff? Really need it?
By the time Starship carries humans (assuming that it will, which I do), it will likely have flown uncrewed more times than Shuttle + all prior American programs together.
They know it’s going to be tricky to make landings safe for crew. Nobody’s in a rush to fly people.
Agreed! But just as airliners eventually had a disaster, Starship will eventually have one too. Maybe it will be earlier and kill only single-digit number of astronauts. Or maybe it will be later, when it is transporting 100 people at a time.
The only way Starship won't kill people is if it's phased out earlier than expected (earlier than I expect, anyway).
And, of course, I very much hope I'm wrong and no one ever dies on a rocket again.
The Embraer ERJ family is currently at 0 deaths over the whole lifetime if you exclude the Wagner crash, which probably wasn’t really a fault of the airplane.
The economics work out just fine. Their actual target business model is replace every knowledge worker. Their thought process is "look at all these people making 150k+, we can do their jobs for 10% of that, think how much money that would be if we had all of it"
Sure, the next step is complete regression to feudalism, but they aren't thinking that far ahead, they just want to take every job in existence that isn't physically turning a proverbial wrench.
the moment AI is capable enough to replace every knowledge worker and all knowledge workers are fired and/or dead the AI companies will just hike up the price for access to their bots until every company is paying at least as much if not more than what they were on human workers.
It doesn't work out for the owners of the capital. Their wealth is entirely based on their claims on future production that is consumed by people with money.
Then it's on to centralization of the "human" components of the workforce into company towns, robot armies and competition for natural resources that will be processed from raw.
It’s wild to me that anyone can have that thought and yet not think about what happens to everyone whose job you took. Especially in a country with citizens known for owning guns.
Especially after seeing what the “learn to code” movement has brought people into, I can’t imagine those people will just roll over and peacefully enter homeless encampments..
> Especially in a country with citizens known for owning guns.
This has always been a story Americans tell themselves to sleep better at night that has zero relation to reality.
The US is a country that has seen many injustices perpetrated by the government. From concentration camps for people of a certain descent to legal racial discrimination (and slavery before that) to wanton violence by security forces against innocent people (pick your favourite police/ICE/etc murder here).
When have armed Americans ever risen up against a government injustice? Best I can think of is the Oklahoma city bombing and I'm pretty sure that's not what you're all refering to.
Your list is embarrassing. Since 1973 (I'm not going further back because the recent examples are too bad to bother), there have been:
* 2 land disputes between federal land management and individuals that thought they deserve more rights over federal land. Hardly fighting against an injustice here, were they
* The BLM protests/unrest started by the murder of George Floyd. I don't recall Americans taking up arms against murderous cops, or anyone, really. The closest to arms taking I can remember is an underage guy going to a protest to "protect" against rioters, getting attacked and killing people in response. Hardly anyone fighting against government instilled injustice with their right to bear arms, is it?
* January 6, where a bunch of mentally challenged individuals tried to overturn the election results at the request of the loser of that election. There was no injustice done against the people in question, and they didn't use their arms against it, they just stormed a barely defended building. One of the shittiest coup attempts of all time, and if anything, for furthering injustice and government overreach than anything else.
Your fixation on "injustice" makes your point unfalsifiable. Any rebellion could be construed as righteous or treasonous. The point is that people really do take up arms against the govt all the time, and that fact has historically had major effects on the conduct of police and politicians
Hunger and desperation are really powerful motivators. And violence and rioting are basically socially transmitted diseases.
You don't need everyone to wake up someday and think "Hey, I think those Jacobins in France had a good point" to have a revolution. You only need a few detonators.
If the societal conditions are ready, nobody can really stop the masses once they are ignited.
Like a bunch of guys with guns couldn't defeat the well drilled and maintained British regulars that are backed by massive warships.
Or a bunch of dudes with guns in the jungles of Vietnam couldn't beat a modern military with fighters and bombers and tanks.
Or a bunch of dudes in the mountain wilderness with guns couldn't beat a modern military with satellites, smart missiles, night vision and drones
Or a bunch of dudes in the deserts of yemen couldn't defend against a modern military with aircraft carriers, realtime control of almost all communications, autonomous drones and missiles and 5th gen fighters
History and current events seem to be disagreeing with you.
They said it every decade since invention. My father who worked in IT since the 60s told me to become an electrician when I was kid as computers will replace all jobs soon. I did become an electrician, welder and have two doctorates; math and cs (which was part of the math dep then). But this time does feel actually different; cheap LLMs are good enough to do advanced work, better than most colleagues I worked with over the decades. Sure you need humans still, just not many. Robots are crap still mostly but we are just starting out… I will not have to worry in my lifetime, but if I had kids or grandkids, I would be worried. But I guess all generations, like my father, have that anyway; we will see.
Even your back of napkin optimistic math doesn't work.
The median white collar job in the US (picking it on purpose because it's a country with high wages, your math would be even worse in a France or Italy) is in the $60-70k. Yes you have to add benefits and etc, but we're still pretty far off 150k.
How much tokens does $80k buy you and do you think it's capable of replacing a human's output? For some, definitely. For plenty, I doubt it. Currently token costs are subsidised by the bubble frontier labs and already we're seeing tightening of budgets because it's costing more than expected
I think you never worked with ‘plenty’; most people I worked with in the past 40 years in IT I am suprised when they actually can walk in on their own. I would say most can be replaced by deepseek flash now, let alone Astra or Fable. I never know in what heaven HN people work, but my company is doing some fixing for a multinational with 20k ‘devs’, most outsourced and they are quite literally morons, far behind even bad LLMs. Their trick is basically to schedule as many calls with as many people as possible to look busy and make their timesheets somewhat plausible. And these are mostly devs. When you see the questions to jira tasks you worry about if they don’t forget to eat or go to the toilet randomly. Oh yeah, most are classified as seniors. An we visit many companies like this. So I am definitely confused how people on HN seem to think most humans can do something worthwhile.
But they haven't replaced every knowledge worker. The unemployment rate remains unaffected by all the AI progress. At some point the bill comes due, and if most of those jobs are still around, then what?
If the need is driven by a bubble economy, when the bubble pops the demand disappears too. This can even lead to a separate bubble popping (see: the dotcom and telecom bubbles).
Yes, datacentres can be reused for other purposes but dark fibre didn't save the telecom bubble and the utility of train tracks didn't save the railway bubble.
well, according to finance bros, shovelling cash into a furnace to power a boiler to steam some eggs is considered a wild success. Economics is for normies.
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