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Yeah, they've been explaining away inflation for decades by averaging housing with electronics. Yes your rent has tripled, but your TV is also 3 times as big an

by inigyou 3mo ago

Yeah, they've been explaining away inflation for decades by averaging housing with electronics. Yes your rent has tripled, but your TV is also 3 times as big and your gamebox has 1000 times the CPU so really, things have only gotten 2% more expensive, says the CPI calculation. Now the politicians don't even have that excuse. I suppose they'll have to add AI tokens to CPI. Used to cost $1000 each, now $0.000002 each, average inflation is 2%. Except they don't even have that because the recent FOMC meeting pretty much admitted inflation is 4% and they don't feel like doing anything to reduce it, but they're definitely committed to reducing it, they swear.

rustcleaner 3mo ago
There is a limit on production efficiency, life is full of logistic curves which feel exponential at first until the inflection and leveling off phases. It's going to hurt when agriculture does not see the efficiency gains it has been receiving for the last century or so. We might be at the inflection or leveling off now.
- 650 3mo ago
  Ponzi scheme stock market is also relevant here. Productivity will max out if RSI AGI doesn't pan out.
- rainsford 3mo ago
  Sure, but this particular issue isn't because we're hitting some plateau on computer cost or performance efficiency where instead of paying less money for more performance like we've gotten used to you're paying the same to get similar performance. Instead for probably the first time in the history of computing devices as a consumer product, you're paying significantly more money to get the same thing you could have paid much less for months or years ago. If you bought a computer in 2025, it's unexpectedly an appreciating asset.
- ethbr1 3mo ago
  > It's going to hurt when agriculture does not see the efficiency gains it has been receiving for the last century or so. Could go either way. Advanced robotics + AI could finally break more agriculture free from the "tied to people's time" limitation. Or all the growable land could be in use, so that simply decreases prices a bit. Expect world population leveling off will be the biggest determinant.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    People's time isn't a significant restriction on agriculture. It used to be, but now it's all giant corporate robotic industrial processes and the bottleneck is on land.
    - ethbr1 3mo ago
      Not in the sense that there aren't enough people to work, because there are, but because there isn't enough human labor willing to work at economically sustainable prices. There are categories of foods (e.g. many vegetables) that aren't economical to grow because they (1) require manual labor and (2) the price of that manual labor must compete against alternatives (soybeans) that require less. If robotics + AI provides working people-less solutions, then suddenly those crops become economically viable to grow again, which also opens up the land that might be unsuited for heavy-mechanized farming (flat, rectangular).
toomuchtodo 3mo ago
With regards to inflation, there is evidence central bankers were simply lucky over the last forty years, provided a global demographic dividend leading to disinflation that has now ended. They may not be sufficiently equipped to manage inflation in such a novel forward looking macro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1ISaLwzm4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1ISaLwzm4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvsDmwZWdM?t=1786 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvsDmwZWdM?t=1786 https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbea597263a88f27075bd6eb49_17385_suerf.pdf https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbe...

by inigyou 3mo ago

rustcleaner 3mo ago

There is a limit on production efficiency, life is full of logistic curves which feel exponential at first until the inflection and leveling off phases. It's going to hurt when agriculture does not see the efficiency gains it has been receiving for the last century or so. We might be at the inflection or leveling off now.

650 3mo ago
Ponzi scheme stock market is also relevant here. Productivity will max out if RSI AGI doesn't pan out.
rainsford 3mo ago
Sure, but this particular issue isn't because we're hitting some plateau on computer cost or performance efficiency where instead of paying less money for more performance like we've gotten used to you're paying the same to get similar performance. Instead for probably the first time in the history of computing devices as a consumer product, you're paying significantly more money to get the same thing you could have paid much less for months or years ago. If you bought a computer in 2025, it's unexpectedly an appreciating asset.
ethbr1 3mo ago
> It's going to hurt when agriculture does not see the efficiency gains it has been receiving for the last century or so. Could go either way. Advanced robotics + AI could finally break more agriculture free from the "tied to people's time" limitation. Or all the growable land could be in use, so that simply decreases prices a bit. Expect world population leveling off will be the biggest determinant.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  People's time isn't a significant restriction on agriculture. It used to be, but now it's all giant corporate robotic industrial processes and the bottleneck is on land.
  - ethbr1 3mo ago
    Not in the sense that there aren't enough people to work, because there are, but because there isn't enough human labor willing to work at economically sustainable prices. There are categories of foods (e.g. many vegetables) that aren't economical to grow because they (1) require manual labor and (2) the price of that manual labor must compete against alternatives (soybeans) that require less. If robotics + AI provides working people-less solutions, then suddenly those crops become economically viable to grow again, which also opens up the land that might be unsuited for heavy-mechanized farming (flat, rectangular).

toomuchtodo 3mo ago

With regards to inflation, there is evidence central bankers were simply lucky over the last forty years, provided a global demographic dividend leading to disinflation that has now ended. They may not be sufficiently equipped to manage inflation in such a novel forward looking macro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1ISaLwzm4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1ISaLwzm4c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvsDmwZWdM?t=1786 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvsDmwZWdM?t=1786 https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbea597263a88f27075bd6eb49_17385_suerf.pdf https://www.suerf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/f_fa99ccdbe...