I'll try to break it down. So orthodox neoclassical economics, at least before modern caveats, roughly says that the "financial recession" should be transitory

I'll try to break it down. So orthodox neoclassical economics, at least before modern caveats, roughly says that the "financial recession" should be transitory -- the economy should hum along according to it's "real, material" characteristics, and something like a "mortgage crisis" is an accounting book gimmick which should only create a transient shock, after which things should "return to normal" But if you look at the graph, it didn't bounce back. It just didn't. Regardless of any normative statements about GDP (is it progress itself? is it evil anti-environmentalism incarnate?) the graph shows something that doesn't accord to the theory. Also, whatever one's true measure of "the future" is, it probably correlates with GDP absent some interesting things like big massive environmental regulation, which we plainly don't have. Or put differently, perhaps "plain old capitalism doing it's thing" delivers the future as a "byproduct" of GDP growth. That sounds about close enough for me. If you're a Post-Keynesnianist like I think I am, this sort of a "well, duh", moment. The economy is like one big gnarly awesome disgusting internal combustion engine, and things like fuel/oil ratio, chokes, starter moters, friction, should all yield some interesting mental images and analogies. We fuck with the thing, overcome inefficiencies, and give it constant maintenance, rather than sit back and just let the platonic forms manifest themselves or whatever. ---- Where this starts to matter for HN is whether technology is viewed as exogenous or endogenous to the economy. The same orthodox neoclassical economics says it's exogenous. We have some genius doing their thing, stuff may or may not happen, and the economy reacts. The other, more (post-)Keynesian view is: Demand expectations (our people clamoring to buy things and do you think that will roughly continue?) -> Investment -> the future -> investment pays off In some sense the technology always "out there", and it's up to use to discover it and make it a thing. As someone that has long been into functional programming, and now sees the mainstream kinda adopt it (react, typescript, go generics finally, etc.), but also kinda miss the big point (use types to improve collaboration at hitherto impossible scales). This makes sense. The whole SV VC ideology of "let's just go push out the technology the normies can't justify investing in" looks like an attempt to escape the dynamic Keynsianism describes, but it has limits. Like "pushing a string", doing supply before demand is inefficient (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_law is horseshit) and has limits. likewise, SV getting into UBI makes me happy. Put demand first again, so we are pulled not pushed. The rhetoric about a coming jobs apocalypse is false --- there is no reason to automate when deparate labor gets cheaper and cheaper --- but it is true that productivity increases beyond consumption increases for the last 50 years have already deflated demand. So do UBI not for the problems we will have, but the problems we already have. Hope people to work work less and charge more, make automation thus look good to the least imaginative bean-counter, and let's get on with the future already!