My weekly read-around…

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ONE IMAGE: Growing Zero-Sum Thinking:

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ANOTHER IMAGE: The Reset of the Non-Managerial Pay Discount:

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ONE VIDEO: Sean Carroll on Fine-Tuning:

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ANOTHER VIDEO: We Need to Talk About BREXIT:

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Very Briefly Noted:

1. Economics: Larry Summers believes that I should not have ended my Slouching Towards Utopia <http://bit.ly/3pP3Krk> with: “a new story begins…” He believes I should’ve ended it with: “the story continues…” “The story” here is that techno-economic progress powered by the institutions evolved in the Dover Circle doubles humanity’s technological prowess every generation via Schumpeterian creative-destruction, with some large group of people every generation in the “destruction” bull’s-eye. We have to rewrite humanity’s organizational software code that runs on top of the techno economic mode of production hardware so that the system does not crash more often than it does. We have to do this on the fly. But we are tremendously aided by the enormous technological dividend we have to distribute to grease transformation. But what if people do not believe this technological dividend is actually there? What John Burn-Murdoch observes here is a vibe shift that is one of the major reasons I think that I am right, and Larry is wrong here:
   John Burn-Murdoch: Are we destined for a zero-sum future?: ‘A backdrop of slower economic growth may be shaping attitudes of tomorrow that cut across political divides…. A zero-sum mindset is not in itself clearly a good or bad thing, morally speaking. The same belief system that might drive one person to take care of the disadvantaged might lead another to pull up the drawbridge. But economically speaking, there is a growing body of evidence that such a worldview is associated with demotivating beliefs — the sense that extra effort is not rewarded — and in turn with lower rates of innovation at the societal level. <https://www.ft.com/content/980cbbe2-0f5d-4330-872d-c7a9d6a97bf6>

2. Economics: And where, at least in the United States, zero-sum thinking—and the belief that change is at least as likely to take from you what you have as to open opportunities—comes from:

   Sahil Chinoy, Nathan Nunn, Sandra Sequeira, & Stefanie Stantcheva: Zero-Sum Thinking and the Roots of U.S. Political Divides: ‘Zero-sum thinking – the belief that gains for one individual or group tend to come at the cost of others.,,, 20,400 U.S. residents, we measure zero-sum thinking, political preferences, policy views, and a rich array of ancestral information spanning four generations…. More zero-sum mindset is strongly associated with more support for government redistribution, race- and gender-based affirmative action, and more restrictive immigration policies. Zero-sum thinking can be traced back to… the degree of intergenerational upward mobility they experienced, whether they immigrated… or lived in a location with more immigrants, and whether they were enslaved or lived in a location with more enslavement… <https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/stantcheva/files/zero_sum_political_divides.pdf>

3. Economics: Here is a prominent example of current I above:
   Goldman Sachs Research: US Economy Is Poised to Beat Expectations in 2025: ‘Goldman Sachs Research predicts US GDP will grow 2.5% on a full-year basis. That compares with 1.9% for the consensus forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg…. While the expected policy changes under President elect Donald Trump may be significant, Mericle doesn’t project that they will substantially alter the trajectory of the economy or monetary policy. “Their impact might appear most quickly in the inflation numbers,” Mericle writes. Wage pressures are cooling and inflation expectations are back to normal. The remaining hot inflation appears to be lagging “catch up” inflation, such as official housing prices catching up to the levels reflected by market rents for new tenants… <https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/the-us-economy-is-poised-to-beat-expectations-in-2025>

4. Economic History: The problem with this—correct—argument about what the Primary Branch of the US government decided back in the 1930s, and what has worked since, is that at least five members of the corrupt Supreme Court do not care, and believe that a Republican president should be the Primary Branch:
   Gary Richardson & David Wilcox: Federal Reserve Independence and Congressional Intent: A Reappraisal of Marriner Eccles’ Role in the Reformulation of the Fed in 1935″: ‘Understanding what Congress intended when it designed the decision-making structure of the Fed requires a clear understanding of Marriner Eccles’ proposal for the structure of monetary policymaking in Title II of the Banking Act of 1935 and the Congressional response. Eccles’ proposal vested monetary policymaking in a body beholden to the President…. The Senate and House rejected Eccles’ proposal and explicitly designed the Fed’s leadership structure to limit politicians’—particularly the President’s—influence on monetary policymaking… <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5024269>

5. In the Chaos-Monkey Cage: there is a big gap right now in assessments of the forthcoming Trump Administration II. Some think that Trump wants to be the center of attention and make a splash – definitely does not want to do anything that makes the stock market go down – and to the extent that he does do chaos monkey things they said it will block him. Others take what he says seriously, and expect a substantial chance of catastrophe. The interesting paradox is that only if the second current is extra-strong can the chances of at least one of the many catastrophes that now threaten us be diminished:
   Maury Obstfeld: Trump’s Inflationary Triple Threat: ‘With unified Republican control of the White House and Congress, US President-elect Donald Trump is poised to pursue radical economic policies. By undermining the independence of the Federal Reserve, enacting massive tax cuts, and loosening cryptocurrency regulations, he risks triggering an inflationary surge…. The success of central banks over the past four decades stems directly from the independence that domestic critics of US monetary policy seek to strip from the Fed…. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Trump’s proposals would increase the federal deficit by nearly $7.8 trillion between 2026 and 2035, even after factoring in projections of increased tariff revenues…. The antidote to fiscal recklessness is not to undermine the Fed. It is for the political branches of government to recognize the unsustainable trajectory of US fiscal policy, avoid exacerbating it, and pursue sensible tax and spending reforms…. [The] third component of Trump’s inflationary triple threat is unprecedented…. Integrating cryptocurrencies into the US financial system without stringent regulatory oversight is a surefire recipe for crises, recessions, massive government bailouts, and even larger public debts… <https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/trump-economic-agenda-three-severe-inflation-risks-by-maurice-obstfeld-2024-11=>

6. Neofascism: I am being driven more and more to the idea that a functional “populist” politician promises and implements seisakhtheia—cancels the debts and redistributes the land in order to make the polis a genuinely better place, and in the process accumulates and maintains enough political support to draw the fangs from the combination of oligarchic wealth and clan-head patron-client networks that usually runs things. But Trump’s personalized version—because I look like your friend on the video, you will get some of the goodies from this—does not fit at all into that schema:
   John Ganz: The Shadow of the Mob: ‘Gangster Gemeinschaft…. As my friend Eric Levitz quipped on Twitter, Resistance Libs like to say, “Trump is a sociopathic gangster.” Pro-Trump swing voters respond, “Yes, exactly!” Trump talks and acts like a mafioso. He’s not trying to hide it…. “This is how things work.” Everything’s a racket: You’re either on the outside, a chump, or on the inside, making it…. What Trump offers is the clubbiness of the mob for the masses. He offers a big hug and a kiss. He brings you into his “family”… He’s “the guy who does bad things but does them on behalf of the people he represents.” He might kick the shit out of the other guy, but to you, the guy on his side, he’s warm, gregarious, and fun: he winks and slaps you on the back. For these voters, the “system” has failed, so we need Trump… <https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-shadow-of-the-mob>

7. MAMLMs: In my view—with the exception of Apple, that seems to have a strategy—the verdict on these attempts to gain “AI Independenc” is: too-little, too-late. And Apple too may be in the same position. I view the slow rollout of the software of Apple Intelligence as reflecting their knowing they also have a hardware gap—that Apple needs the Jade4C M4, M5, and M6 Ultra chips that it does not yet have (and may never have) to make a go of their “we will build and run our own privacy-secure data centers” MAMLM strategy;
   M.G. Siegler: The Race for AI Independence: ‘Today’s: Amazon steps up effort to build AI chips that can rival NVIDIA…. A few days ago[:]… Amazon/// dangling billions… [if] Anthropic… would commit to using these new chips…. Google was early in building out their own chips. Microsoft… working on their own chips…. OpenAI… also…. Apple is already using their own chips and building more…. Meta seems perhaps most wedded to NVIDIA given the love-fest between Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang on various stages around the world. But of course, they’re also working on their own AI chips…. [Right now] everyone (aside from perhaps Apple) is buying as many NVIDIA chips as they can get their hands on…. And the spend. Oh, the spend. Amazon recently said it’s going to spend $75B on capex this year, with much of it going towards the AI build up and out. The rest of Big Tech is in similar boats…. Wall Street is not going to like that too much. Probably sometime soon. And so, Operation: Independence is on. But these chips are just one element of independence…. Microsoft… decoupling from OpenAI…. OpenAI… trying to break their own dependence on Azure (and NVIDIA chips)…. Apple… to think they’re going to rely on third-parties for AI indefinitely is to think that AI is not going to be a big deal…. This cycle… everyone is quickly joining Apple…. The costs… ramping so fast with NVIDIA cornering the market so fast… Big Tech quickly realized they needed… to try to gain “AI independence”… <https://spyglass.org/the-race-for-ai-independence/>

8. MAMLMs: An LLM that is only as smart as your typical internet s***poster is not an asset to humanity considered as an anthology intelligence. And, no, putting a RAG layer on top will not fix the problem:

   Phin Barnes: The Real Value of AI Isn’t General Intelligence: ‘The market for artificial general intelligence is small. Founders should bet on specialized solutions instead…. The entire internet’s text content is estimated at about 100 petabytes, of which GPT-4 is already trained on a significant fraction. Where do we go from here?,,, [Not by] creating an echo chamber of artificial knowledge, and new models may resemble old ones.… The real opportunity lies in…. Low-hanging fruit… data that exists but needs muscle to extract…. Hidden treasures… offline and semi-private information… transaction data, targeting insights, and private social platforms… messy, fragmented, and extremely valuable. The experiential holy grail… that captures what it means to be human: the ambient conversation in a busy coffee shop… subtle dynamics of an office meeting. Whoever captures human interactions in ways that create genuine understanding will be able to build AI that understands humanity… <https://every.to/thesis/the-real-value-of-ai-isn-t-general-intelligence>

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SubStack NOTES:

<div class="comment" data-attrs="{"url":"https://open.substack.com/home","commentId":78995899,"comment":{"id":78995899,"date":"2024-11-26T21:55:47.000Z","edited_at":null,"body":"In the Chaos-Monkey Cage: An awful lot of what is going to happen over the next four years hinges on what, exactly, the organizational Congressional majorities are. The House is 220-213 R, the Senate is 53-47 R. But that is not the working Congressional majority. And a great deal hinges on what 50 Republican Senators and 218 Republican Representatives will allow their leaders to threaten to pass via Reconciliation so that they can then bargain back to non-Reconciliation passable policies:\n\nMatt Yglesias: Trump's economic team is on a collision course with reality: ‘Making the budget math work is really hard…. Donald Trump’s appointments reflect the highly personalistic nature of his politics… wildly under-qualified… impeccable credentials… all pretty eccentric… [without any] unified view on major public policy…. The big exception is the economic team, where Trump seems to have sweated his choices and where most of the players are big names…. Scott Bessent… a guy with… genuine right-wing views… who had to dabble awkwardly in Democratic politics for a while because Republicans were so homophobic… a very smart guy who likes to talk about things like Milton Friedman and free markets…. Bessent [has] assured [finance]… that Trump would not, in fact, destroy the world economy with moronic tariffs. Why not? Well, because if he did that, the stock market would crash and Trump doesn’t want the stock market to crash…. Howard Lutnick…. The Lutnick side and the Bessent side each accused the other of secretly disagreeing with Trump about tariffs, and in both cases the charges are true…. Russell Vought back as OMB Director…. It’s a team very focused on low taxes, cutting spending, and deregulation, just like Jeb Bush or Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney might have been…. When you strip away all the clowns and grifters and morons and hacks and other weird Trump-era cruft and just focus on smart conservatives who know what they’re talking about, this is what you find at the core: Guys who think that they’re Nietzschean overmen and that all this spending on people who are poor or sick or old or disabled is “waste” that holds the country back as we race toward Mars…. [They are] pulling off… [the] political balancing act… but that’s only sustainable so long as they don’t actually take office and make governing decisions…","body_json":{"type":"doc","attrs":{"schemaVersion":"v1"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"In the Chaos-Monkey Cage"},{"type":"text","text":": "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"An awful lot of what is going to happen over the next four years hinges on what, exactly, the organizational Congressional majorities are. The House is 220-213 R, the Senate is 53-47 R. But that is not the working Congressional majority. And a great deal hinges on what 50 Republican Senators and 218 Republican Representatives will allow their leaders to threaten to pass via Reconciliation so that they can then bargain back to non-Reconciliation passable policies:"}]},{"type":"blockquote","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Matt Yglesias"},{"type":"text","text":": Trump’s economic team is on a collision course with reality: ‘Making the budget math work is really hard…. Donald Trump’s appointments reflect the highly personalistic nature of his politics… wildly under-qualified… impeccable credentials… all pretty eccentric… [without any] unified view on major public policy…. The big exception is the economic team, where Trump seems to have sweated his choices and where most of the players are big names…. Scott Bessent… a guy with… genuine right-wing views… who had to dabble awkwardly in Democratic politics for a while because Republicans were so homophobic… a very smart guy who likes to talk about things like Milton Friedman and free markets…. Bessent [has] assured [finance]… that Trump would not, in fact, destroy the world economy with moronic tariffs. Why not? Well, because if he did that, the stock market would crash and Trump doesn’t want the stock market to crash…. Howard Lutnick…. The Lutnick side and the Bessent side each accused the other of secretly disagreeing with Trump about tariffs, and in both cases the charges are true…. Russell Vought back as OMB Director…. It’s a team very focused on low taxes, cutting spending, and deregulation, just like Jeb Bush or Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney might have been…. When you strip away all the clowns and grifters and morons and hacks and other weird Trump-era cruft and just focus on smart conservatives who know what they’re talking about, this is what you find at the core: Guys who think that they’re Nietzschean overmen and that all this spending on people who are poor or sick or old or disabled is “waste” that holds the country back as we race toward Mars…. [They are] pulling off… [the] political balancing act… but that’s only sustainable so long as they don’t actually take office and make governing decisions…

<div class="comment" data-attrs="{"url":"https://open.substack.com/home","commentId":78993549,"comment":{"id":78993549,"date":"2024-11-26T21:38:52.523Z","edited_at":"2024-11-26T21:40:25.249Z","body":"Journamalism: Grave moral fault attaches to anybody who boosts or funds the New York Times. Grave moral fault.\n\nScott Lemieux watches the latest Ross Douthat dumpster fire:\n\nScott Lemieux: Why did all this good economic performance happen under the Biden administration?: ‘Ross Douthat… “everything will probably be just fine”… at the end was this rather remarkable admission: Douthat: “America is a rich and stable country whose economy has outperformed all our competitors since the pandemic, whose start-ups and technology companies are the envy of the world…”. Whoa, what was that again? “America is a rich and stable country whose economy has outperformed all our competitors since the pandemic…”. Needless to say, this has not always been Douthat’s position. In September, he wrote a… pro-Trump column… around the idea that the Biden administration was a “policy failure”: “A historic surge in migration…. A historic surge in inflation…. The ‘ask’ is to ratify a record of substantial policy failure and conspicuous ideological fanaticism…”. Ideological fanaticism from Joe Biden, eh? Leaving that aside, it’s amazing how in 2 and a half months we have quietly moved from Biden being blamed for the inflation that happened everywhere after COVID with no mention of the performance of the economy otherwise, to a bland and accurate assertion that under Biden the American economy “outperformed all our competitors.” In other words, it’s not justs among low-information voters that Republican perceptions of the economy have radically improved now that Daddy Trump can spuriously be given credit for it… <https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/11/why-did-all-this-good-economic-performance-happen-under-the-biden-administration?__readwiseLocation=","body_json":{"type":"doc","attrs":{"schemaVersion":"v1"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Journamalism"},{"type":"text","text":": "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Grave moral fault attaches to anybody who boosts or funds the "},{"type":"text","text":"New York Times"},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":". Grave moral fault."}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Scott Lemieux watches the latest Ross Douthat dumpster fire:"}]},{"type":"blockquote","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Scott Lemieux"},{"type":"text","text":": Why did all this good economic performance happen under the Biden administration?: ‘Ross Douthat… “everything will probably be just fine”… at the end was this rather remarkable admission: "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Douthat: “"},{"type":"text","text":"America is a rich and stable country "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"whose economy has outperformed all our competitors since the pandemic"},{"type":"text","text":", whose start-ups and technology companies are the envy of the world…”. Whoa, what was that again? “America is a rich and stable country whose economy has outperformed all our competitors since the pandemic…”. Needless to say, this has not always been Douthat’s position. In September, he wrote a… pro-Trump column… around the idea that the Biden administration was a “policy failure”: “A historic surge in migration…. "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A historic surge in inflation"},{"type":"text","text":"…. The ‘ask’ is to ratify a record of substantial policy failure and conspicuous ideological fanaticism…”. Ideological fanaticism from "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Joe Biden"},{"type":"text","text":", eh? Leaving that aside, it’s amazing how in 2 and a half months we have quietly moved from Biden being blamed for the inflation that happened everywhere after COVID with no mention of the performance of the economy otherwise, to a bland and accurate assertion that under Biden the American economy “outperformed all our competitors.” In other words, it’s not justs among low-information voters that Republican perceptions of the economy have radically improved now that Daddy Trump can spuriously be given credit for it…

<div class="comment" data-attrs="{"url":"https://open.substack.com/home","commentId":78990831,"comment":{"id":78990831,"date":"2024-11-26T21:18:33.928Z","edited_at":"2024-11-26T21:31:14.268Z","body":"In the Chaos Monkey Cage: Presenting long-time Soros-affiliate Scott Bessent. We wish him luck. He will need it—as he has SOOOO much less power than a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and so many internal clowns that he must wage bureaucratic war against:\n\nScott Bessent: ‘A major financial news organization called me ‘the Man Who Broke the Bank of Japan,’ but that was not accurate…. Unlike many typical currency devaluations, it was not a fight against the central bank, and I was their willing messenger. Capital flows to where it is treated well…. Japanese assets regained their role in portfolios around the world…. Abe’s greatest foreign policy achievement was… developing a multilateral solution for containment [of China]. Abe proved that you can put your nation’s interest first, while still maintaining a strong alliance with your allies. It is unfortunate that Abe is not with us today as a sagacious voice in this multi-crisis world… ","body_json":{"type":"doc","attrs":{"schemaVersion":"v1"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"In the Chaos Monkey Cage"},{"type":"text","text":": "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Presenting long-time Soros-affiliate Scott Bessent. We wish him luck. He will need it—as he has SOOOO much less power than a Chancellor of the Exchequer, and so many internal clowns that he must wage bureaucratic war against:"}]},{"type":"blockquote","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Scott Bessent"},{"type":"text","text":": ‘A major financial news organization called me ‘the Man Who Broke the Bank of Japan,’ but that was not accurate…. Unlike many typical currency devaluations, it was not a fight against the central bank, and I was their willing messenger. Capital flows to where it is treated well…. Japanese assets regained their role in portfolios around the world…. Abe’s greatest foreign policy achievement was… developing a multilateral solution for containment [of China]. Abe proved that you can put your nation’s interest first, while still maintaining a strong alliance with your allies. It is unfortunate that Abe is not with us today as a sagacious voice in this multi-crisis world…

<div class="comment" data-attrs="{"url":"https://open.substack.com/home","commentId":78963079,"comment":{"id":78963079,"date":"2024-11-26T18:06:09.974Z","edited_at":"2024-11-26T18:06:24.352Z","body":"In the Chaos Monkey Enclosure: This seems to me to be smart. Remember! NAFTA was the worst trade deal in the history of America! USMCTA is the best! And the differences between the two are… minor, almost invisible. And, no, I do not know whether Lighthizer hornswoggled Trump and Trump thinks that there are big differences, or not between NAFTA & USMCTA:\n\nDean Baker: ‘Quick take on Trump's taxes on imports from Mexico and Canada. Trump, or at least someone with his ear, knows that his tax increases would be hugely unpopular, people are not anxious to pay higher prices for everything. This means that Trump does not actually want his import taxes on goods from Canada and Mexico to take effect. Instead, he is looking to make a deal (you know Trump, the expert dealmaker), where Trudeau and Sheinbaum pledge to crack down on fentanyl and migrants, kind of like they are already doing. Trump then declares a HUGE VICTORY. It will show what standing up to other countries can accomplish, as opposed to that wimpy Joe Biden who let everyone walk all over us. If that seems far-fetched (Trump declaring a huge victory when he has accomplished nothing), look at what he says about his huge mandate where his margin of victory was less than Hilary Clinton's in 2016. All the Republican politicians and Fox News will celebrate Trump's HUGE VICTORY. The New York Times and other mainstream news outlets will run he said, she said pieces, saying that \"Trump claims huge victory, but some experts question whether Trump threats accomplished much.\" All translates into a big political gain for Trump at zero cost, zero risk. Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?… ","body_json":{"type":"doc","attrs":{"schemaVersion":"v1"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"In the Chaos Monkey Enclosure"},{"type":"text","text":": "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"This seems to me to be smart. Remember! NAFTA was the worst trade deal in the history of America! USMCTA is the best! And the differences between the two are… minor, almost invisible. And, no, I do not know whether Lighthizer hornswoggled Trump and Trump thinks that there are big differences, or not between NAFTA & USMCTA:"}]},{"type":"blockquote","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Dean Baker"},{"type":"text","text":": ‘Quick take on Trump’s taxes on imports from Mexico and Canada. Trump, or at least someone with his ear, knows that his tax increases would be hugely unpopular, people are not anxious to pay higher prices for everything. This means that Trump does not actually want his import taxes on goods from Canada and Mexico to take effect. Instead, he is looking to make a deal (you know Trump, the expert dealmaker), where Trudeau and Sheinbaum pledge to crack down on fentanyl and migrants, kind of like they are already doing. Trump then declares a HUGE VICTORY. It will show what standing up to other countries can accomplish, as opposed to that wimpy Joe Biden who let everyone walk all over us. If that seems far-fetched (Trump declaring a huge victory when he has accomplished nothing), look at what he says about his huge mandate where his margin of victory was less than Hilary Clinton’s in 2016. All the Republican politicians and Fox News will celebrate Trump’s HUGE VICTORY. The New York Times and other mainstream news outlets will run he said, she said pieces, saying that \"Trump claims huge victory, but some experts question whether Trump threats accomplished much.\" All translates into a big political gain for Trump at zero cost, zero risk. Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?… "}]}]}]},"restacks":0,"reaction_count":2,"attachments":[{"id":"b95669cf-d5f8-42e8-8342-1b01ae967b6c","type":"link","linkMetadata":{"url":"https://bsky.app/profile/deanbaker13.bsky.social/post/3lbtxuujbtc2d?__readwiseLocation=","host":"bsky.app","title":"Dean Baker (@deanbaker13.bsky.social)","description":"Quick take on Trump’s taxes on imports from Mexico and Canada. Trump, or at least someone with his ear, knows that his tax increases would be hugely unpopular, people are not anxious to pay higher prices for everything."},"explicit":false}],"name":"Brad DeLong","user_id":16879,"photo_url":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea5ae644-9822-4ca5-ac6b-e18c017d8fbc_1189x1208.png","user_bestseller_tier":1000}}” data-component-name=”CommentPlaceholder”>

<div class="comment" data-attrs="{"url":"https://open.substack.com/home","commentId":78948972,"comment":{"id":78948972,"date":"2024-11-26T16:39:48.430Z","edited_at":null,"body":"Economics: Katie Martin—almost always excellent, but not this time, which is why I am picking on her—asks (or rather her headline writers do): “AI stocks: what if this time it really is different?” \n\nThe quick answer: It isn’t.\n\nOr, at least, it is very unlikely to be. But that does not mean “AI” is not very interesting. It is. As I see it, there are a number of things going on: \n\nThere are the giant Tech Oligopolists coining money in a rate that gives them equity valuations in the trillions who fear that they need to provide cutting-edge MAMLM services—natural-language interface, and more sophisticate ultra high-dimensional ultra-data regression and classification—in order to keep their current money flow going, and yet have no path to charging for “AI”.\n\nThere are all the up-and-comers hoping to create businesses people will pay serious money for, or at least to exit before investors wise up. \n\nThere are the Big Guys—highly overlapping with the Tech Oligopolist—selling cloud-digital shovels to (2).\n\nThere is NVIDIA, selling chips to (1), (2), (3) for all that the market will bear because only Apple dares to say: “We are going to build out a much cheaper tech stack where we do not have to pay the NVIDIA tax, and so we are going to be a year or two behind in this”.\n\nThere are the upstream TSMC and ASML, green with envy that a lot of the money which they think should be theirs going into NVIDIA’s pockets. \n\nThus as I see it, at the margin, NVIDIA’s revenues translate one-for-one into other tech companies’ future write-offs, With an operating margin of around 60%, that means an extra $1.00 of NVIDIA market cap ought to carry with it -$1.67 of other tech companies’ market cap, for a net value loss to the tech sector as a whole of $0.67 for every marginal dollar of NVIDIA market cap: \n\nKatie Martin: AI stocks: what if this time it really is different?: ‘Some investors worry we’re in bubble territory, but others think a new paradigm has arrived…. Our lived everyday experience of this technology remains, honestly, rubbish. No, I do not want an AI widget to rewrite my emails, or my LinkedIn posts, with material scraped from other emails and LinkedIn posts. Thanks, Mr Customer Service Robot, but I would like to speak to a human, please. It is still a leap of faith to imagine the potential productivity benefits are as vast as the tech bros tell us. Believing that the delightful ride higher in US stocks can keep on running does demand some pretty heroic assumptions…. Nonetheless, some market watchers are starting to wonder whether something fundamental has shifted here. One reason is that companies like Nvidia are walking the walk. The earnings match the hype, which means price-to-earnings ratios are still reasonably tame, in contrast to the dotcom boom and bust… ","body_json":{"type":"doc","attrs":{"schemaVersion":"v1"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Economics"},{"type":"text","text":": "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Katie Martin—almost always excellent, but not this time, which is why I am picking on her—asks (or rather her headline writers do): “AI stocks: what if this time it really is different?” "}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"The quick answer:"},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"It isn’t."}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Or, at least, it is very unlikely to be. But that does not mean “AI” is not very interesting. It is. As I see it, there are a number of things going on: "}]},{"type":"orderedList","attrs":{"start":1},"content":[{"type":"listItem","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"There are the giant Tech Oligopolists coining money in a rate that gives them equity valuations in the trillions who fear that they need to provide cutting-edge MAMLM services—natural-language interface, and more sophisticate ultra high-dimensional ultra-data regression and classification—in order to keep their current money flow going, and yet have no path to charging for “AI”."}]}]},{"type":"listItem","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"There are all the up-and-comers hoping to create businesses people will pay serious money for, or at least to exit before investors wise up. "}]}]},{"type":"listItem","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"There are the Big Guys—highly overlapping with the Tech Oligopolist—selling cloud-digital shovels to (2)."}]}]},{"type":"listItem","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"There is NVIDIA, selling chips to (1), (2), (3) for all that the market will bear because only Apple dares to say: “We are going to build out a much cheaper tech stack where we do not have to pay the NVIDIA tax, and so we are going to be a year or two behind in this”."}]}]},{"type":"listItem","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"There are the upstream TSMC and ASML, green with envy that a lot of the money which they think should be theirs going into NVIDIA’s pockets. "}]}]},{"type":"listItem","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Thus as I see it, at the margin, NVIDIA’s revenues translate one-for-one into other tech companies’ future write-offs, With an operating margin of around 60%, that means an extra $1.00 of NVIDIA market cap ought to carry with it -$1.67 of other tech companies’ market cap, for a net value loss to the tech sector as a whole of $0.67 for every marginal dollar of NVIDIA market cap:"}]}]}]},{"type":"blockquote","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Katie Martin"},{"type":"text","text":": AI stocks: what if this time it really is different?: ‘Some investors worry we’re in bubble territory, but others think a new paradigm has arrived…. Our lived everyday experience of this technology remains, honestly, rubbish. No, I do not want an AI widget to rewrite my emails, or my LinkedIn posts, with material scraped from other emails and LinkedIn posts. Thanks, Mr Customer Service Robot, but I would like to speak to a human, please. It is still a leap of faith to imagine the potential productivity benefits are as vast as the tech bros tell us. Believing that the delightful ride higher in US stocks can keep on running does demand some pretty heroic assumptions…. Nonetheless, some market watchers are starting to wonder whether something fundamental has shifted here. One reason is that companies like Nvidia are walking the walk. The earnings match the hype, which means price-to-earnings ratios are still reasonably tame, in contrast to the dotcom boom and bust… "}]}]}]},"restacks":0,"reaction_count":0,"attachments":[{"id":"cc87920e-2dbf-44b7-bbc1-ec7d415219d8","type":"link","linkMetadata":{"url":"https://www.ft.com/content/6e893618-d75e-4e67-9876-249540a27d13?__readwiseLocation=o","host":"ft.com","title":"AI stocks: what if this time it really is different?","description":"Some investors worry we’re in bubble territory, but others think a new paradigm has arrived","image":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e5950d69-6cd0-41d0-a775-107a84f11742_2289x1288.jpeg","original_image":"https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F264b5701-716f-45d5-8ba6-62321298dea0.jpg?source=next-barrier-page"},"explicit":false}],"name":"Brad DeLong","user_id":16879,"photo_url":"https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea5ae644-9822-4ca5-ac6b-e18c017d8fbc_1189x1208.png","user_bestseller_tier":1000}}” data-component-name=”CommentPlaceholder”>

<div class="comment" data-attrs="{"url":"https://open.substack.com/home","commentId":78675605,"comment":{"id":78675605,"date":"2024-11-24T19:29:57.158Z","edited_at":null,"body":"Political Economy: I try to escape back into the past in my time machine & I find myself writing on the Hellenic Efflorescence around the Ægean from -1000 on, and who do I wind up looking at but the tyrannoi—the people who seize control of the city-state polis in a crisis because they are not a sacred king wanax or a hereditary monarch basileus because they are trusted to fight the oligarchy and the clan chiefs and lift the burdens off of the people—seisakhtheaia, cancelling the debts and redistributing the land. There are those who are deadly serious about actually doing this: populists—think Peisistratos. There are those who do not care much about policy and think that championing the people is the best road to power: pragmatists—think T. Sempronius Gracchus or C. Iulius Cæsar. And there are those who want not to make the people prosperous but rather to convince them that their purpose is to follow him, assign them a mission, usually of vindicating their status and power against enemies, and thus lead them to glory, his and, vicariously, theirs: fascists—think Alkibiades.\n\nAnd I find I have not escaped at all, for now we have Trump: neither a populist, a pragmatist, nor a fascist, but rather a chaos monkey:\n\nJeff Tiedrich: Elderly Golfer Is a Deteriorating Chaos-Monkey: ‘Gaetz… a degenerate sex trafficker with a closet full of skeletons became the first member of Donny’s Confederacy of Sewer Clowns to go down in flames. It’s the same deal with christofacist ahem alleged sex abuser Pete Hegseth — quite possibly the next sewer clown to find himself unconfirmable: “A source said Hegseth — who has been married three times and has pursued multiple extra-marital affairs — was asked if there were any scandals from his past and even if he had ever signed a non-disclosure agreement. ‘He told the campaign there’s no issues’ said the source. ‘There’s no assault issues. There’s no NDA. Compounding lies.’” Team Donny is trying their damnedest to subvert democracy — and Donny’s pissing all over their best efforts, because he’s a demented chaos-monkey who can’t help himself…. Marjorie Spork Toes Greene… [has] her own playpen…. She’s going to be the Congressional point of contact for Vivek and [Musk]….\n\nAOC: “This is good, actually. She barely shows up and doesn’t do the reading. To borrow a phrase I saw elsewhere, it’s like giving someone an unplugged controller…. Absolutely dying at those two now getting assigned the ‘privilege’ of ‘working’ with MTG. That is actually hilarious. Enjoy, fellas! Very prestigious post you have there”… ","body_json":{"type":"doc","attrs":{"schemaVersion":"v1"},"content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"},{"type":"italic"}],"text":"Political Economy"},{"type":"text","text":": "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"I try to escape back into the past in my time machine & I find myself writing on the Hellenic Efflorescence around the Ægean from -1000 on, and who do I wind up looking at but the "},{"type":"text","text":"tyrannoi—"},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"the people who seize control of the city-state"},{"type":"text","text":" polis"},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":" in a crisis because they are not a sacred king "},{"type":"text","text":"wanax "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"or a hereditary monarch "},{"type":"text","text":"basileus"},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":" because they are trusted to fight the oligarchy and the clan chiefs and lift the burdens off of the people"},{"type":"text","text":"—seisakhtheaia"},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":", cancelling the debts and redistributing the land"},{"type":"text","text":". "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"There are those who are deadly serious about actually doing this: populists—think Peisistratos. There are those who do not care much about policy and think that championing the people is the best road to power: pragmatists—think T. Sempronius Gracchus or C. Iulius Cæsar. And there are those who want not to make the people prosperous but rather to convince them that their purpose is to follow him, assign them a mission, usually of vindicating their status and power against enemies, and thus lead them to glory, his and, vicariously, theirs: fascists—think Alkibiades."}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"And I find I have not escaped at all, for now we have Trump: neither a populist, a pragmatist, nor a fascist, but rather a chaos monkey:"}]},{"type":"blockquote","content":[{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Jeff Tiedrich"},{"type":"text","text":": Elderly Golfer Is a Deteriorating Chaos-Monkey: ‘Gaetz… a degenerate sex trafficker with a closet full of skeletons became the first member of Donny’s Confederacy of Sewer Clowns to go down in flames. It’s the same deal with christofacist "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":"ahem alleged"},{"type":"text","text":" sex abuser Pete Hegseth — quite possibly the next sewer clown to find himself unconfirmable: “A source said Hegseth — who has been married three times and has pursued multiple extra-marital affairs — was asked if there were any scandals from his past and even if he had ever signed a non-disclosure agreement. ‘He told the campaign there’s no issues’ said the source. ‘There’s no assault issues. There’s no NDA. Compounding lies.’” Team Donny is trying their damnedest to subvert democracy — and Donny’s pissing all over their best efforts, because he’s a demented chaos-monkey who can’t help himself…. Marjorie Spork Toes Greene… [has] her own playpen…. She’s going to be the Congressional point of contact for Vivek and [Musk]…."}]},{"type":"paragraph","content":[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"AOC"},{"type":"text","text":": “This is good, actually. She barely shows up and doesn’t do the reading. To borrow a phrase I saw elsewhere, it’s like giving someone an unplugged controller…. Absolutely dying at those two now getting assigned the ‘privilege’ of ‘working’ with MTG. That is actually hilarious. Enjoy, fellas! Very prestigious post you have there”… "},{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"italic"}],"text":""}]}]}]},"restacks":1,"reaction_count":7,"attachments":[{"id":"dd25f740-cd0d-4db2-8835-0b687a556477","type":"post","publication":{"apple_pay_disabled":false,"apex_domain":null,"author_id":51646226,"byline_images_enabled":true,"bylines_enabled":true,"chartable_token":null,"community_enabled":true,"copyright":"Jeff 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