10 ms·

> non-productive Speculative investments tend to get punished at the end of the cycle by losing all value, thus punishing those invested in it and restoring ord

by ripe 4y ago

> non-productive Speculative investments tend to get punished at the end of the cycle by losing all value, thus punishing those invested in it and restoring order. To be precise, the investors who are left holding at the end of the cycle get punished. The early investors who got out make out like robbers. This system incentivizes pump-and-dump.

kurthr 4y ago
That is "the market" working for you! We could allocate resources to productive assets by fiscal spending, but that is prevented by politics. Only when "the market" gets its cut can any infrastructure be built in the US. That's also true for much of the medical establishment and pension/retirement systems. If the market was efficient, we wouldn't be complaining about it. Unfortunately, a "free market" and an efficient market (and you could argue whether infrastructure or medicine or income insurance even make sense as markets) are not the same. Most markets that have many individual consumers require regulation to be even close to efficient. Like political and financial enforcement they are too easy to manipulate and the consequences of malfeasance are substantially less than the profits to be made.
- Robotbeat 4y ago
  What sucks is that fiscal policy, ie government spending, is also often not very efficient. Even when rampant corruption doesn’t destroy efficiency, crushing bureaucracy or just plain incompetence will. (Is the DMV a model of efficiency?) So you need a smart balance. And you need competent, honest people in both business AND government. I don’t think that government necessarily is inefficient. The DMV could be a very efficient place. The fact that it isn’t should cause at least some pause for those advocating more government spending (such as myself). And the same is true for business. Comcast is terrible. But it doesn’t HAVE to be. Rent-seeking and anti-competitive behavior makes it terrible.
  - joebob42 4y ago
    I think by the time you're saying "my system depends on the people in it being honest and competent" you've kind of already lost. Some people are competent, most aren't. Many people are honest, but some aren't. You aren't going to change that so you have to be resilient to it.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      Every system works better with honest and competent people. That’s my point! Some systems are more resilient to dishonesty and incompetence than others. I suspect a mixed system is the most resilient. But we CAN change the behavior by choosing to reward competence and honesty by who we elect, who we hire, and who we do business with.
  - SauciestGNU 4y ago
    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 democratic institutions by removing the exercise of power from the people the population select to lead. Inefficiency to me can not possibly be more clearly demonstrated than by ape pictures losing hundreds of thousands of dollars for their purchasers. But we also have examples like Uber spending cash on hand to drive competitors under without having a plan to maintain their own services without heavy subsidy.
    - dangrossman 4y ago
      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 vehicle, waited 7 days, then cancelled my insurance policy on that car. A month later, I got a letter from the DMV that it is a crime to not carry insurance on my vehicle and I will have to reinstate the insurance and pay a $70 fine for letting it lapse. On the car I no longer own, that was now titled in another state and resold by Carvana already. It took 2 more months and 3 different forms to get the DMV to accept that I no longer owned the car and to stop pursuing me for this "crime".
      - api 4y ago
        California right?
        lanstin 4y ago
        I have bought 3 used cars and gotten 2 teenagers thru permit and drivers test and license. Never had any appointments except for the driving test, and never had any long waits. All waits were much shorter than when I transferred my out of state license to CA in 2008 or 2009. Impressively well run bureaucracy, I'd say. And this with covid precautions to work around. Much better than the several east coast states I had prior experience with. Now I do chose the office to visit with some care, and also (as an "elite WFH software engineer") time it so that the lines are likely to be shorter, so YMMV.
  - abathur 4y ago
    I think bureaucracies do tend to suck, but I also think there are often people who stand to gain from making a bureaucracy suck. For that reason, I suspect it's good idea to leave interpretive space for the possibility that a given bureaucracy has been intentionally hamstrung, or is Kafkaesque by design. I suspect calling Comcast is miserable because the process is designed to exhaust and manipulate you out of quitting, for example. I suspect it's possible to build systems that enable you to ensure an ER visit will cost $500 instead of $10000--but our insurance companies may feel like the uncertainty deters people from seeking care.
  - petra 4y ago
    The DMV outsourced it's service in some areas. Service improved. So it's possible to benefit from the benefits of public spending and private efficiencies. It's a pretty common method for governments to spend money.
    - more_corn 4y ago
      AAA DMV services is amazing. Phenomenally more humanized and efficient. My favorite example of public private partnership.
      - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
        They are pretty amazing. I had a trailer I assembled titled at a AAA office and it took about 30 minutes start to finish.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      I wonder if the DMV is a bit of a special case, not necessarily a good example of government bureaucracy. The customers are almost universally resentful, because they are paying the government money to let them drive. They're angry because it's slow, and it's slow because the process requires bringing in third-party paperwork (e.g. insurance, sales receipt, dealer paperwork, whatever) and there's a lot of opportunities to get it wrong. So it often involves more than one trip. If I had to deal with customers at the DMV, I think I'd be grouchy too. Another reason to try and get as much of it online as possible, which I think is most of it nowadays.
  - rhizome 4y ago
    This is due to tax policies reducing the revenue pool. This makes it easier to judge individual divisions of the total because there are necessarily fewer outlets, and since it's a smaller pool there's more reason to fight. The idle rich who can't find anywhere worthwhile to play with their nearly-free money (until recently ZIRPish) are a bug in the system. Oh, but lets pretend we are captains of industry by saturating the world with sure-failures. "I wEnT tO GsB!" And government is absolutely inefficient, which is a good thing actually. Despite the efforts of conservatives, government still has to account for many many corner cases and special needs. Ask any Agile TDD aficionado how this affects velocity.
    - Robotbeat 4y ago
      I don’t think the government being inefficient is good. It gives ammo to those who are ideologically opposed to government doing things. We should strive to improve government efficiency, especially those of us who think the government should be taking on more tasks.
      - briandear 4y ago
        Ideological opposition to extensive government is because government is inefficient. See the Laffer Curve. Actual demonstrated inefficiency is the proof, not the justification.
        rhizome 4y ago
        Laffer Curve, really? The inefficiency is neither proof nor justification, it's a side-effect of fairness.
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        It’s not. For a constant level of fairness, there’s a wide array of efficiency.
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        You see the moral hazard of electing people to run government who have a vested interest in being proven right about government being inefficient, don’t you? I am fine with people who are realistic about government being inefficient, but I insist that they nonetheless try their very best to improve that efficiency (fully considered efficiency, not just making life worse for government workers or people seeking government services). The problem is when you elect people who have an interest in making sure the government is inefficient because then they can use that as justification to enact their ideological goals of cutting government services.
  - NordSteve 4y ago
    I know people reactively complain about Comcast, but in my area they do a great job. It's not cheap due to lack of competition, but no complaints about service.
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      Their prices are high and punitive to existing customers. Their customer service is laughably bad. One of my requirements of a retirement destination is municipal broadband. No BS, just a fair price for a service that's actually treated like a utility.
  - ripe 4y ago
    What's with the hate for DMVs? Maybe they're bad in some US states, but in mine (Massachusetts), I really can't imagine a better-run business, private or public, that accomplishes so much with so little investment. You can do most things online with a much better UX than most commercial websites. No crappy ads or pop-ups. Plus when you do need to go in, you book a time slot at a DMV center online. Recently I had to bring my daughter for a driving license to the one in Brockton, MA. When you go in, they give you a token number. The currently processing token number is shown on a huge LED display on the wall. Hundreds of customers are in there, many of them don't speak much English, etc., but things move pretty smoothly and fast. Very efficient.
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  > We could allocate resources When you buy/sell crypto - money changes hands. That money wasn't really "allocated" to crypto, beyond miner fees, just redistributed. That cash still exists. The resources being allocated are graphics cards, human time, and electricity AFAICT. The power usage of crypto is relatively small compared to other active human endeavors. It's power usage doesn't approach other arbitrary value stores like gold and government backed fiat markets. Could it go somewhere else? Yeah - but could we reasonably produce enough to offset it in a positive sum game - definitely. As long as renewables are cost efficient (read: truly competitive with non-renewables) and are net-zero on emissions this misallocation of resources would be allocated to renewable power production in an efficient market. Graphics cards being misallocated... I'm not sure saying markets are inefficient because a financial market is outbidding video gamers is a compelling argument. Scientific use of graphics cards seems like a small part of the market, but I may be mistaken here.5
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    IIRC, the energy use for crypto as a whole is on par with the energy use of the fiat currency system, if not higher. I don't know how gold mining ranks, but it may be well below crypto mining in energy use or well above. Mining energy use depends a lot on asset price, and gold prices are comparatively low (compared to other asset classes). Silicon and other electronic parts also get dumped into this market, when the capacity used to build those devices could be used for other things.
    - r3trohack3r 4y ago
      A good reference to compare bitcoin to gold mining (and other human endeavors like brewing tea): https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index Gold mining and bitcoin are currently roughly on-par. But gold's energy usage isn't just mining. It's the entire supply chain from Cash 4 Gold stores, long term storage, smelting/recycling, etc. I don't have a good reference for the total cost of gold.
      - pclmulqdq 4y ago
- worik 4y ago
  > Most markets that have many individual consumers require regulation to be even close to efficient. That is not true from what I see (modulo contract enforcement and policing of anti-social elements). There are many examples of smoothly functioning markets. With my economics geek hat on the things required for a market include: * All participants must have choice, be able to enter and leave in the medium term. * There must be clear information available about the properties of the goods and/or services * There must be clear information about the prices. The first condition (choice) can be rough on suppliers. The "choice" for a coffee shop is closing or bankruptcy. But for the supplier of electricity from a hydroelectric dam the choice is different. There are no clear boundaries. For the consumer they can substitute potatoes for kumera but there is no substitute for food. Everybody must eat. So: Reticulated water and electricity are bad things for markets. Vegetables (except during famine) and entertainment services are good
- bogomipz 4y ago
  >"We could allocate resources to productive assets by fiscal spending, but that is prevented by politics. Only when "the market" gets its cut can any infrastructure be built in the US. That's also true for much of the medical establishment and pension/retirement systems" I'm trying to follow this but not understanding it. What do you mean by " Only when "the market" gets its cut". A you referring to public/private partnerships here or pork barrel politics? Something else entirely?
- jokethrowaway 4y ago
  But we don't have a free market. The government has heavy handed regulations distorting the market and spent the last years creating money out of thin air and killing small businesses. The government propping the market up during the pandemic kept alive the myth that the market is always growing but also caused a terrible inflation. Now that the market is going back to reality the government can't just print more money again - or inflation will kill the entire country. The incoming crash will hopefully pop some of the bubbles the government created in the last 20 years. But it will be painful.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    You are ignoring capitalists that abuse the government to distort the market in their favour.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Always has been.
formerkrogemp 4y ago
We don't need solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, water reclamation, on shore chip foundries, manufacturing, battery chargers, non-crumbling bridges, manufacturing, paved raids, public transit, or working airports. We need more crud apps and adtech! More stock options and stock buybacks!
- sidpatil 4y ago
  What's wrong with CRUD apps? They may be boring to develop, but they tend to be the most useful. Every single one of those industries uses multiple CRUD apps in the course of their business operations. The database is one of the most important technologies of our civilization.
- sankumsek 4y ago
  I loved me some paid raids! ;) Snark aside, it is bit disheartening to see all this capital being thrown into handwave-y Web3 verticals.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    > I loved me some paid raids! ;) I used to enjoy MMOs too. I stopped playing and took up gardening of all things :). I'm still not sure what the economic value of web2 is yet, but if you find out I'll attend your showHN.
- cableshaft 4y ago
  You're being sarcastic, but we probably don't need that stuff either. We're eventually going to run out of resources to make all that at some point (we're already starting to run out of sand[1], which we use in modern cement, for glass, and for the silicon in computer chips, for an example -- and before anyone goes 'deserts are full of sand!' they are, but it's the wrong type to make these things). Probably should start putting some energy into getting ready for pre-industrial age living again. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is-running-out-of-sand https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is...
  - 4y ago

by ripe 4y ago

kurthr 4y ago

That is "the market" working for you! We could allocate resources to productive assets by fiscal spending, but that is prevented by politics. Only when "the market" gets its cut can any infrastructure be built in the US. That's also true for much of the medical establishment and pension/retirement systems. If the market was efficient, we wouldn't be complaining about it. Unfortunately, a "free market" and an efficient market (and you could argue whether infrastructure or medicine or income insurance even make sense as markets) are not the same. Most markets that have many individual consumers require regulation to be even close to efficient. Like political and financial enforcement they are too easy to manipulate and the consequences of malfeasance are substantially less than the profits to be made.

Robotbeat 4y ago
What sucks is that fiscal policy, ie government spending, is also often not very efficient. Even when rampant corruption doesn’t destroy efficiency, crushing bureaucracy or just plain incompetence will. (Is the DMV a model of efficiency?) So you need a smart balance. And you need competent, honest people in both business AND government. I don’t think that government necessarily is inefficient. The DMV could be a very efficient place. The fact that it isn’t should cause at least some pause for those advocating more government spending (such as myself). And the same is true for business. Comcast is terrible. But it doesn’t HAVE to be. Rent-seeking and anti-competitive behavior makes it terrible.
- joebob42 4y ago
  I think by the time you're saying "my system depends on the people in it being honest and competent" you've kind of already lost. Some people are competent, most aren't. Many people are honest, but some aren't. You aren't going to change that so you have to be resilient to it.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    Every system works better with honest and competent people. That’s my point! Some systems are more resilient to dishonesty and incompetence than others. I suspect a mixed system is the most resilient. But we CAN change the behavior by choosing to reward competence and honesty by who we elect, who we hire, and who we do business with.
- SauciestGNU 4y ago
  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 democratic institutions by removing the exercise of power from the people the population select to lead. Inefficiency to me can not possibly be more clearly demonstrated than by ape pictures losing hundreds of thousands of dollars for their purchasers. But we also have examples like Uber spending cash on hand to drive competitors under without having a plan to maintain their own services without heavy subsidy.
  - dangrossman 4y ago
    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 vehicle, waited 7 days, then cancelled my insurance policy on that car. A month later, I got a letter from the DMV that it is a crime to not carry insurance on my vehicle and I will have to reinstate the insurance and pay a $70 fine for letting it lapse. On the car I no longer own, that was now titled in another state and resold by Carvana already. It took 2 more months and 3 different forms to get the DMV to accept that I no longer owned the car and to stop pursuing me for this "crime".
    - api 4y ago
      California right?
      - lanstin 4y ago
        I have bought 3 used cars and gotten 2 teenagers thru permit and drivers test and license. Never had any appointments except for the driving test, and never had any long waits. All waits were much shorter than when I transferred my out of state license to CA in 2008 or 2009. Impressively well run bureaucracy, I'd say. And this with covid precautions to work around. Much better than the several east coast states I had prior experience with. Now I do chose the office to visit with some care, and also (as an "elite WFH software engineer") time it so that the lines are likely to be shorter, so YMMV.
- abathur 4y ago
  I think bureaucracies do tend to suck, but I also think there are often people who stand to gain from making a bureaucracy suck. For that reason, I suspect it's good idea to leave interpretive space for the possibility that a given bureaucracy has been intentionally hamstrung, or is Kafkaesque by design. I suspect calling Comcast is miserable because the process is designed to exhaust and manipulate you out of quitting, for example. I suspect it's possible to build systems that enable you to ensure an ER visit will cost $500 instead of $10000--but our insurance companies may feel like the uncertainty deters people from seeking care.
- petra 4y ago
  The DMV outsourced it's service in some areas. Service improved. So it's possible to benefit from the benefits of public spending and private efficiencies. It's a pretty common method for governments to spend money.
  - more_corn 4y ago
    AAA DMV services is amazing. Phenomenally more humanized and efficient. My favorite example of public private partnership.
    - omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago
      They are pretty amazing. I had a trailer I assembled titled at a AAA office and it took about 30 minutes start to finish.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    I wonder if the DMV is a bit of a special case, not necessarily a good example of government bureaucracy. The customers are almost universally resentful, because they are paying the government money to let them drive. They're angry because it's slow, and it's slow because the process requires bringing in third-party paperwork (e.g. insurance, sales receipt, dealer paperwork, whatever) and there's a lot of opportunities to get it wrong. So it often involves more than one trip. If I had to deal with customers at the DMV, I think I'd be grouchy too. Another reason to try and get as much of it online as possible, which I think is most of it nowadays.
- rhizome 4y ago
  This is due to tax policies reducing the revenue pool. This makes it easier to judge individual divisions of the total because there are necessarily fewer outlets, and since it's a smaller pool there's more reason to fight. The idle rich who can't find anywhere worthwhile to play with their nearly-free money (until recently ZIRPish) are a bug in the system. Oh, but lets pretend we are captains of industry by saturating the world with sure-failures. "I wEnT tO GsB!" And government is absolutely inefficient, which is a good thing actually. Despite the efforts of conservatives, government still has to account for many many corner cases and special needs. Ask any Agile TDD aficionado how this affects velocity.
  - Robotbeat 4y ago
    I don’t think the government being inefficient is good. It gives ammo to those who are ideologically opposed to government doing things. We should strive to improve government efficiency, especially those of us who think the government should be taking on more tasks.
    - briandear 4y ago
      Ideological opposition to extensive government is because government is inefficient. See the Laffer Curve. Actual demonstrated inefficiency is the proof, not the justification.
      - rhizome 4y ago
        Laffer Curve, really? The inefficiency is neither proof nor justification, it's a side-effect of fairness.
        Robotbeat 4y ago
        It’s not. For a constant level of fairness, there’s a wide array of efficiency.
      - Robotbeat 4y ago
        You see the moral hazard of electing people to run government who have a vested interest in being proven right about government being inefficient, don’t you? I am fine with people who are realistic about government being inefficient, but I insist that they nonetheless try their very best to improve that efficiency (fully considered efficiency, not just making life worse for government workers or people seeking government services). The problem is when you elect people who have an interest in making sure the government is inefficient because then they can use that as justification to enact their ideological goals of cutting government services.
- NordSteve 4y ago
  I know people reactively complain about Comcast, but in my area they do a great job. It's not cheap due to lack of competition, but no complaints about service.
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    Their prices are high and punitive to existing customers. Their customer service is laughably bad. One of my requirements of a retirement destination is municipal broadband. No BS, just a fair price for a service that's actually treated like a utility.
- ripe 4y ago
  What's with the hate for DMVs? Maybe they're bad in some US states, but in mine (Massachusetts), I really can't imagine a better-run business, private or public, that accomplishes so much with so little investment. You can do most things online with a much better UX than most commercial websites. No crappy ads or pop-ups. Plus when you do need to go in, you book a time slot at a DMV center online. Recently I had to bring my daughter for a driving license to the one in Brockton, MA. When you go in, they give you a token number. The currently processing token number is shown on a huge LED display on the wall. Hundreds of customers are in there, many of them don't speak much English, etc., but things move pretty smoothly and fast. Very efficient.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
> We could allocate resources When you buy/sell crypto - money changes hands. That money wasn't really "allocated" to crypto, beyond miner fees, just redistributed. That cash still exists. The resources being allocated are graphics cards, human time, and electricity AFAICT. The power usage of crypto is relatively small compared to other active human endeavors. It's power usage doesn't approach other arbitrary value stores like gold and government backed fiat markets. Could it go somewhere else? Yeah - but could we reasonably produce enough to offset it in a positive sum game - definitely. As long as renewables are cost efficient (read: truly competitive with non-renewables) and are net-zero on emissions this misallocation of resources would be allocated to renewable power production in an efficient market. Graphics cards being misallocated... I'm not sure saying markets are inefficient because a financial market is outbidding video gamers is a compelling argument. Scientific use of graphics cards seems like a small part of the market, but I may be mistaken here.5
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  IIRC, the energy use for crypto as a whole is on par with the energy use of the fiat currency system, if not higher. I don't know how gold mining ranks, but it may be well below crypto mining in energy use or well above. Mining energy use depends a lot on asset price, and gold prices are comparatively low (compared to other asset classes). Silicon and other electronic parts also get dumped into this market, when the capacity used to build those devices could be used for other things.
  - r3trohack3r 4y ago
    A good reference to compare bitcoin to gold mining (and other human endeavors like brewing tea): https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index https://ccaf.io/cbeci/index Gold mining and bitcoin are currently roughly on-par. But gold's energy usage isn't just mining. It's the entire supply chain from Cash 4 Gold stores, long term storage, smelting/recycling, etc. I don't have a good reference for the total cost of gold.
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
worik 4y ago
> Most markets that have many individual consumers require regulation to be even close to efficient. That is not true from what I see (modulo contract enforcement and policing of anti-social elements). There are many examples of smoothly functioning markets. With my economics geek hat on the things required for a market include: * All participants must have choice, be able to enter and leave in the medium term. * There must be clear information available about the properties of the goods and/or services * There must be clear information about the prices. The first condition (choice) can be rough on suppliers. The "choice" for a coffee shop is closing or bankruptcy. But for the supplier of electricity from a hydroelectric dam the choice is different. There are no clear boundaries. For the consumer they can substitute potatoes for kumera but there is no substitute for food. Everybody must eat. So: Reticulated water and electricity are bad things for markets. Vegetables (except during famine) and entertainment services are good
bogomipz 4y ago
>"We could allocate resources to productive assets by fiscal spending, but that is prevented by politics. Only when "the market" gets its cut can any infrastructure be built in the US. That's also true for much of the medical establishment and pension/retirement systems" I'm trying to follow this but not understanding it. What do you mean by " Only when "the market" gets its cut". A you referring to public/private partnerships here or pork barrel politics? Something else entirely?
jokethrowaway 4y ago
But we don't have a free market. The government has heavy handed regulations distorting the market and spent the last years creating money out of thin air and killing small businesses. The government propping the market up during the pandemic kept alive the myth that the market is always growing but also caused a terrible inflation. Now that the market is going back to reality the government can't just print more money again - or inflation will kill the entire country. The incoming crash will hopefully pop some of the bubbles the government created in the last 20 years. But it will be painful.
- imtringued 4y ago
  You are ignoring capitalists that abuse the government to distort the market in their favour.

stjohnswarts 4y ago

Always has been.

formerkrogemp 4y ago

We don't need solar, wind, nuclear, hydro, water reclamation, on shore chip foundries, manufacturing, battery chargers, non-crumbling bridges, manufacturing, paved raids, public transit, or working airports. We need more crud apps and adtech! More stock options and stock buybacks!

sidpatil 4y ago
What's wrong with CRUD apps? They may be boring to develop, but they tend to be the most useful. Every single one of those industries uses multiple CRUD apps in the course of their business operations. The database is one of the most important technologies of our civilization.
sankumsek 4y ago
I loved me some paid raids! ;) Snark aside, it is bit disheartening to see all this capital being thrown into handwave-y Web3 verticals.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  > I loved me some paid raids! ;) I used to enjoy MMOs too. I stopped playing and took up gardening of all things :). I'm still not sure what the economic value of web2 is yet, but if you find out I'll attend your showHN.
cableshaft 4y ago
You're being sarcastic, but we probably don't need that stuff either. We're eventually going to run out of resources to make all that at some point (we're already starting to run out of sand[1], which we use in modern cement, for glass, and for the silicon in computer chips, for an example -- and before anyone goes 'deserts are full of sand!' they are, but it's the wrong type to make these things). Probably should start putting some energy into getting ready for pre-industrial age living again. [1]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is-running-out-of-sand https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is...
- 4y ago