Please pop soon please pop soon
Be careful what you wish for.
I’m no fan of AI, but the combination of swingeing tariffs and the 1929 crash lead to the Great Depression. We didn’t have that happen in 2000 when the dotcom bubble burst because adults were in charge of the American finance system. that is no longer the case.
The orangutan has already pushed the American economy to the brink, the inevitable bursting of this bubble is going to decimate the US, and unfortunately the size of the US economy means that will flow onto the rest of the world. Unless you are in a country that close enough to no trade with the US and limited international financial dependencies you will be severely impacted. North Korea fits the bill but I don’t really want to move there.
I get it, but at the same time, do we always have to let key douchebags be “too big to fail” and endlessly support their choices no matter what?
This time around, I anticipate massive inflation as they just try to print their way out of it. That’s the sort of financial disaster that seems to be a bit more on-brand for our current leadership.
I agree, there is too little accountability for the people who should be paying for their poor choices. I think the 18thC French solution is more instructive for the Epstein class than monetary fines though.
What’s the alternative? Keep it as it is? Pop it later when it grows more and causes an even bigger catastrophe?
I don’t think your premise that it is going to grow more in terms of impact size is valid. It’s already eaten the US stockmarkets (and a number of others).
So I don’t think anyone has the power to make that choice between keep or pop later, but if it was possible then slowly deflating the bubble and regulations to prevent this sort of thing happening in the first place would be my answer. Not going to happen of course.
Out of the bad alternatives of the bubble popping now, and the bubble popping later, later would be better for we non-americans if we had govt’s who would actually work through the things needed to reduce its impact.
So, here in reality, damned if it does now, damned if it does later, either option is ugly.
I’ve been telling all my friends to get themselves and their pensions out of shares (US in particular) for the last 6 months I doubt they listened but what else can you do ?
I don’t think your premise that it is going to grow more in terms of impact size is valid. It’s already eaten the US stockmarkets (and a number of others).
Stock market schmock market, this bubble is also doing damage to society and the environment and at least the part that comes from the lies and lobbying from “OpenAI” and consorts would be stopped by it popping.
It will pop anyway, because it is vaporware. That is fixed. Is later better? I don’t know, but my guess is it isn’t. The damage is ongoing, you see.
Best case scenario is a slow bleed until a Fed chair from the next admin is appointed, and they’re a strong Keynesian or better. Worst case is the crash coming at any point during this admin (including election fuckery, preventing transition of power). That’ll be the whole house of cards.
I could also see it being better if it happens during this admin. My fellow citizens seem stupid enough that if a major crash happens during a Democrat lead administration they would immediately blame it on them and then vote Republican next time no matter what.
To clarify, I was speaking of the immediate economic fallout. I partially agree on the “party holding the hot potato losses elections when it goes off” but wasn’t the angle I was talking in
Indeed, that will be hard. However, it seems to be necessary to have a depression (and perhaps even a civil war?) to reduce the power of the Epstein class and change the mindset of the American people. As a non-American, I see Trump more as a symptom. The real problem seems to be the American political system in general, and the morality of the people.
With this government, America has tried to be above everyone else and acquired power and wealth in a completely immoral way. Perhaps it can be understood that the rest of world doesn’t care if the US burns down at this point, even if it brings economical losses. It’s karma.
I hate to admit it, but you’re right.
It’s going to take global upheaval to claw power back from the billionaires. They live in a world where they are completely divorced from any kind of public infrastructure, and that wasn’t the case the last time this happened in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
I too don’t care personally if the US burns and it is entirely possible the world will be a better place for an enforced change there, however there seems to be an idea in this group that something like that can happen and it will only trivially impact the rest of the world.
Unfortunately modern economies are too intertwined for a meltdown there to not impact us here.
This isnt just “you might lose 10% of your pension fund” this is “your pension fund just became valueless, and half the people you know are now out of work”
Yeah people seem to forget that when the US economy crashed in 2008, unemployment rose in much of the rest of the world too.
The biggest risk would be the bubble holding together and the democrats getting into power, only for it to blow up in their face immediately.
While they might deal with it a bit better than trump, the damage he is already doing could tie their hands a lot.
We all know the right would get decades of mileage out of “look look, it was all awesome under trump, then the democrats broke everything”.
Dramatically increasing debt and letting Democrats up the mess has been the consistent Republican strategy since Reagan.
The worst bit is, it seems to work. At least if it blows up in trump’s face, it’s fairly unambiguous. I’m sure America’s right wing media would spin it otherwise, but it at least makes that harder for them.
economy to the brink
bubble burst
going to decimate the US
Please, stop, I can only get so wet
On a more serious note I think not only will this happen at some point, there is no way to avoid it. Either capitalism continues unchecked until we wipe ourselves out, or we fight to replace it. Even if we do keep capitalism and somehow don’t wipe ourselves out it naturally creates a cycle of societal abuse so these bubbles and depressions will continue
I think of hill climbing algorithms a lot. Basically you look in your immediate vicinity and if you see something better you go that way, and you keep doing that until every direction you look is down meaning you’ve reached the top of your hill. The problem is you can’t necessarily tell if you’re at the highest peak or not just that you’re at a peak. To get out of that local peak and to something better you have to go downhill. Most systems that seek incremental improvements have this problem. I think we did the peak capitalism already and it is time to go downhill in search of a better peak. “It gets worse before it gets better”
In my opinion, the best we can do at this point is prepare for the global shitshow as best we can. Build community, move away from capitalism and the US, then try and stay course toward something better while it is going to shit around us. It would be great if we could prepare enough to prevent as much suffering as possible but we’ve gotten backed into a corner and are on a very serious timer before the planet is broken for good; so I don’t know what the balance is between preparing and ripping off the bandaid
It would be great if we could prepare enough to prevent as much suffering as possible but we’ve gotten backed into a corner and are on a very serious timer before the planet is broken for good; so I don’t know what the balance is between preparing and ripping off the bandaid
Whole heartedly agree with the entire post.
If we start preparing for it now, we might just be able to prevent bloody insurrections in our countries, unfortunately I’m in the UK and have zero faith in our politicians being able to pull their heads out of the sand long enough to address. On the plus side our new PM is slightly less of a moron than his predecessor, but I doubt it is enough.
You’re right, I think most of the Western world politics is too dependent on the capital and that is dependent on the US markets. When the entire thing crashes, it’s going to be bad. I’m pretty sure I’ll be among those people affected, I’m in software, working (remotely) for an US firm. That was after recently losing my job due to failed investment. My wife’s job just got “restructured” as well, and it’s the second time in three years as well.
Not sure how we’ll deal. I should be making plans on what to do when I lose the house and everything else. I kinda know it but I’m not sure what can I do.
No worries, I’m not American. I’m sorry for the people getting screwed over, but the American people voted for zero government oversight for AI. Meet the consequences and fucking rid us of all this AI bullshit.
I’m not American either, but as noted above, unless you’re in a country like North Korea you’re not divorced from the fallout if the US economy collapses. It will definitely hit the developed world / western world / 1st world (whatever your preferred term is) hardest, along with those of the global south heavily reliant on trade with America or the EU (Bangladesh for example - heavily dependent on textile exports).
It basically goes US economy collapses, countries that export to the US go into depressions with massive economic upheaval, countries that export to the impacted countries then get hit with a loss of income throwing them into depressions.
I appreciate there’s pretty much no one left who remembers the great depression, and few who have studied it, but please don’t underestimate the impact on the rest of the world. It’s not just a US problem when they collapse.
unfortunately the size of the US economy means that will flow onto the rest of the world
Yeah, yeah, we’ll survive, just lance the fucking boil
You may well, millions won’t. When this boil pops the pus is going to infect a lot of innocent victims.
Having said that it WILL burst eventually, it’s not a question of whether, it’s a question of when. How much the rest of the world has done to immunise itself will determine how bad the impact will be. I’m afraid there’s not much hope left for America in my view, although I’d like to be wrong.
It’s a weird one for me, because it feels inevitable anyway, and I’m at the point where I just wanna get it over with 🫠
The longer the bubble goes without popping, the worse the pop will be.
I’ve felt the economy would inevitably crash since the pandemic, yet it still hasn’t come. I feel like many have felt this way. And yet this dumb economy keeps plodding along.
We (EU citizens) / you’re fucked either way. No reason not to wish those assholes do hit the bottom hard. Wishful thinking is that maybe at some point someone involved even is accountable.
But letting everything just run on as is is a very very slow painful death and while the pop hits hard, it’s moving on.
Aka fail fast!
Actually I’m not so sure about North Korea.
This is a “law” I just made up but: in any crisis the poorest are the worst effected.
NK does have some trade with China and Russia, and they receive aid from places. I presume the ruling class supports itself through offshore investments and so on.
Don’t know about a law, but there’s plenty of empirical evidence that you’re broadly right, it is I suspect what the Epstein class are counting on in the US - they’ll come out unscathed and the masses will wear the impact.
I did pick North Korea for a reason though - they have an economy with very limited reliance on even China and Russia and have basically spent 70 years preparing for this. I genuinely can’t think of a country less likely to be directly affected. Second order impacts such as say Russian (or even Chinese) rogue military units seizing areas and pillaging are possible, but even then they are already at subsistence level in the main, so impact should be minimal.
It will be poor countries like Bangladesh who rely on selling sweatshop clothing into the developed economies that will be in the biggest trouble - exports will be decimated and they are already on the breadline.
At this point I’ll gladly bake oat bannocks over the burning ruins of the US economy to survive.
Got a good recipe?
Oats, enough water to form a dough. Maybe some salt.
Tempted to try using an oat sourdough starter though.
AI is taking all the oxygen out of the room for anything else to survive right now. It has to die so that what remains can live. There is zero investment available for anything else.
that is the thing: it shouldnt need to pop if we did it right.
it would be amazing if AI was used practically for what its best at. and not shoe horned into the failure it currently is becoming.
and as a result its been vilified like plastic. so much potential to do good…so much misuse by fuckwits to make it a failure.
No no he’s right. If it wasn’t used to surveil people, control narratives through manipulation, used as an excuse to reduce headcount, used as an excuse to commit war crimes, used as an excuse to steal computing from the masses, used to create false evidence, used as an excuse to discount any actual damning evidence, built upon the stolen collective works of all of humanity, and sucking up all the natural resources around it and replacing it with drought, noise, and pollution in order to brute-force power it because those who need it for all the above things need it NOW or else they won’t fucking get away with it
Yeah it might be good.
exactly. it was misused. i thought i used that word correctly. whats happening
The issue is that the downsides are massive and the upsides pretty mid.
Oh look, I can whip up a pretty generic website or utility from natural language. That’s… something I guess… The more… ambitious applications of CodeGen I’ve found to be “different” rather than “better”, a different huge pain in the ass than the usual huge pain in the ass, and it’s a matter of taste which one someone prefers, and I don’t think the “All-in Agentic” flow actually is any faster when you get at this “pain in the ass” point.
On the downside, well pretty much his whole post.
Note that this specifically is the GenAI stuff, broader AI like machine vision is arguable more balanced (intrusive surveillance, but also useful for medical imaging, spotting wildfires early, stuff like that).
So I guess the concern is that by saying “if not for all the bad, it could be pretty good” may be fine, but in practice is used to provide cover for a lot of the bad, because they would argue to not risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Ahh yes, the AI bubble bursting at the same time the oil crisis is ramping up again, all the while tangerine Mussolini is doing his best to make it all even worse.
This should go well…
The more crises that happen simultaneously, the more likely it is that they all hit harder.
If AI was the only problem, then AI could just have a slight dip and recover. But since the global economy is getting hit from all sides at the same time… that’s when each individual part doesn’t have anything to fall back on. So each part is going to dip lower than it would have otherwise.
Absolutely. This one is gonna be a motherfucker that will make 2008 seem like child’s play
One day (soon) they will call The Great Depression “Great Depression I.”
The Lesser Depression
The Lesser War started when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.
I dunno, doesn’t have the same ring to it.
tangerine Mussolini
that’s a good one
I prefer Mango Mussolini. Better alliteration.
Haematoma Hitler?
Il Dunce
That’s better than The Don!
Alliteration is always awesome.
It’s the chance of a life time, they will never get another chance of losing that much money again.
Who will lose money?
Oh no!
Well cunts you’ve had a good few years now time to crash and burn.
Just 95% more for Tesla to fall until it’s somewhat reasonably valued.
