Disclaimer: I don’t have any understanding when it comes to finance/economics other than what I’ve experienced/read. However, it does seem hard to argue the fact that economics/finance are so divorced from reality that they ought to be viewed the same as the national debt.
I’m sure there are others in the same boat, but I’m still having trouble getting past the absurdity and ominous nature of everything happening in the corporate world right now. Almost every single conversation is boiled down to “just ask Claude” and it’s being used to slow down existing workflows to a comical degree. Who knows maybe this will self-correct over time, but it’s certainly a choice at the moment.
I’m not trying to be a doomer I’m really not, but these people live in a different reality than you and I. I used to listen to Ed Zitron’s podcast and tuned in to any number of his appearances on other shows to sort of shield myself from all the noise that encompasses this age of tech, but I’m slowly coming to the realization that the economics/financial picture of the situation seems entirely inconsequential. I’m hoping this is just my lack of knowledge when it comes to finance/econ, but fuck if I know. Maybe this post will make me look like a dumbass in a year or so (I hope it does).
I feel like all of us in corporate are all assets in a bet from the most evil people on the planet to see if they will be able to replace huge swaths of the population with a “good enough” solution that will slowly be de-valued and phased out of the workforce akin to IT jobs in the early/mid 2010s.
This shit really blows and I feel like LLM companies are going to come out on top, primarily because Claude has proven that it can generate passable output at lightning speed and that is more than enough to please C suites.
From every economic measure ive been seeing, most things are telling that a recesion is coming, and soon, the actual debt of AI is much higher than we are being told as they use shell companies to hide the debt and lease their data centers to them. AI is not making money, no return on investment, at most its goal is to replace workers, its not happening anytime soon at the rate they want, yet the stocks price is exactly dependant on that speculation. CAPE is at 1999 and 2007 points, just before the previous crisis. US debt is unpayable, they paid this level of debt once before only because ww2 made the US the only remaining intact economy and they owned the world. Now? They have no industry, still on trade deficit, dependant on the military industrial complex and venture capital money laundering. The petrodollar is breaking with the war on Iran, absolutelly ridiculous fumble, shooting themselves in the stomach. Bond market is starting to break too, goverments dont trust US to pay its debt so they sell US bonds, so interests are higher, so debt repayments are higher, leaving the government with even greater deficit. They are issuing new debt to pay old debt in a doom spiral.
Material conditions will worsen considerably, I hope US people can wake up and gain some class conciousness.
US hard power allowed soft power to work, now both hard power is failing as we see in Iran, so the already weak soft power is crumbling as they cant keep up their world order.
The only choice is to ask China for help lmao. Century of US humiliation is on its way.
Im an armchair marxist economist at best, if you know more than me pls tell me so I can learn, thanks.