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"Supply recession" is a shortage of people willing to produce meaningful stuff for the going price. Majority of Gen Z wanting to become CEOs, youtubers and luxu

"Supply recession" is a shortage of people willing to produce meaningful stuff for the going price. Majority of Gen Z wanting to become CEOs, youtubers and luxury bloggers is very indicative of that. We kinda plugged the hole by letting China produce cheap trinkets, Saudis pump cheap oil and Russia get cheap gas, but it only kept working as long as that money came back to the West through various laundering schemes. Except now that Russia and China are showing military ambition, this arrangement is done with, so we truly need more domestic supply. Except now it's a cultural problem: if you give 10 youtubers and 1 baker one extra dollar, the price of bread will go up, but it won't convince a single youtuber to go stand in front of a hot oven all day. We won't fix it by printing more money. We could fix it by destroying easier ways to make money, but it will be painful and will take time.

aschearer 4y ago
Pesky lazy kids. Begs the question, though, why did they turn out that way? Or was there just something in the water 20 years ago?
- matrix_overload 4y ago
  Incentives. For the past couple of decades the deal has been "mom and pop have it all figured out, so get out of the way and we'll buy you off with some cheap toys". So yeah, we have a generation that knows how to throw a perfect tantrum to get their next Lego set and expects the store to somehow never run out of them.
pixl97 4y ago
Automation fixes the oven problem, and we've been doing it in the US for a long time in applications where low cost of energy in the US allowed. But thinking we're going to bring lots of jobs for $5 an hour so they can try to afford $3000 of rent per month is just going to get cities burned down in mass.
- matrix_overload 4y ago
  Automation creates a much bigger problem. If you had 10 independent bakers, the price of bread would be limited from both sides: * The bakers would rather quit than keep earning less that what easier jobs pay, pushing the prices up. * If the price went too high, someone would setup another bakery to get a market share, pushing the prices down. With automation and consolidation we have 1 corporation owning 1 automatic bakeries and 10 completely disposable bureaucrats on near-minimum wage. If the demand goes up, jacking up the prices is easier than setting up the 11th bakery (what if the demand goes down later? too risky!). If a new player enters the market, they will just sell the bread in that neighborhood at a loss until the competitor is out, then get the prices back. Rinse and repeat for a decade and here you go: assets prices are through the roof, salaries are stuck, there is a shortage of everything, prices are going up, competence is lost art, nobody knows what to do. Artificially created jobs won't pay for a decent house because they don't come with a bargaining power. We could print money and turn $5/hr vs. $3K rent into $50/hr vs. $30K rent, but it won't change the balance of power. If you want to change it, we need to crack down on centralization and make small businesses competitive again.

aschearer 4y ago

Pesky lazy kids. Begs the question, though, why did they turn out that way? Or was there just something in the water 20 years ago?

matrix_overload 4y ago
Incentives. For the past couple of decades the deal has been "mom and pop have it all figured out, so get out of the way and we'll buy you off with some cheap toys". So yeah, we have a generation that knows how to throw a perfect tantrum to get their next Lego set and expects the store to somehow never run out of them.

pixl97 4y ago

Automation fixes the oven problem, and we've been doing it in the US for a long time in applications where low cost of energy in the US allowed. But thinking we're going to bring lots of jobs for $5 an hour so they can try to afford $3000 of rent per month is just going to get cities burned down in mass.

matrix_overload 4y ago
Automation creates a much bigger problem. If you had 10 independent bakers, the price of bread would be limited from both sides: * The bakers would rather quit than keep earning less that what easier jobs pay, pushing the prices up. * If the price went too high, someone would setup another bakery to get a market share, pushing the prices down. With automation and consolidation we have 1 corporation owning 1 automatic bakeries and 10 completely disposable bureaucrats on near-minimum wage. If the demand goes up, jacking up the prices is easier than setting up the 11th bakery (what if the demand goes down later? too risky!). If a new player enters the market, they will just sell the bread in that neighborhood at a loss until the competitor is out, then get the prices back. Rinse and repeat for a decade and here you go: assets prices are through the roof, salaries are stuck, there is a shortage of everything, prices are going up, competence is lost art, nobody knows what to do. Artificially created jobs won't pay for a decent house because they don't come with a bargaining power. We could print money and turn $5/hr vs. $3K rent into $50/hr vs. $30K rent, but it won't change the balance of power. If you want to change it, we need to crack down on centralization and make small businesses competitive again.