Some losses are about to get socialised
“set to wipe out” and “wipe out” mean vastly different things in this context.
Is this finally the crack, or will they manage to paper over it and keep the bubble growing even further?
WE.ALL.SAW.THIS.COMING.
It’s legit crazy how financially illiterate top executives can sometimes be.
In a company I worked for, they decided to stop using on-prem systems and move them to cloud servers. I made a rough calculation on a coffee break with colleagues that the move increases costs by roughly 10 times. It was unbelievable and all we could do was laugh.
Some 4 months later it was announced that the cloud systems are to be decommissioned due to costs and employees have to find a way to do the same things on their laptops (which will be upgraded if needed). I still cannot wrap my head around it, there must have been some nasty politics or absolute numeral illiteracy going on in the background.
I worked in the title insurance industry around 2005, data entry. So I saw thousands of mortgages being issued every week, and my job was to data enter mortgage details and data enter the research showing clear title of the property.
I was 19 years old and renting a studio apartment and even I was shocked that every. Single. Mortgage had an adjustable rate or balloon rider on it. Reading the terms of those I was thinking how the hell will any of these people make their mortage payments in 4 or 5 years?
When I would talk to people older than me with homes and investments they would get genuinely upset and tell me I couldn’t possibly understand, the banks know what they are doing. Ok.
nasty politics or absolute numeral illiteracy
Or kickbacks from the cloud service providers.
Well, some of the C-level executives had shady ties to cloud companies…
I’m currently wearing my entirely-unsurprised-face. Look, I’m never going to be an advocate of the dystopic post-capitalistic hellscape of Cyberpunk, but there’s something to be said for a Militech-style severance package.
“I was hoping to reach Anthony Gilchrist on this number,” said Faraday tentatively.
“I’d tell you that I regret to inform you that I just executed Mr. Gilchrist in his office for violations of corporate policy five minutes ago,” replied Meredith Stout smugly, “but then I’d be lying.”
“About executing him?” asked Faraday cautiously.
“About regretting it.”
I would be dramatically less upset if I was surprised. Its painful to of shouted this from the rooftops for what feels like years now, only to be dismissed so easily. What males it even more painful is its the same idiots that where so desperate for nfts to work because their lives are so pathetic the only way they can see it improving is yoloing it on some tiktok fad they just learned about a week ago.
The same people that are desperately defending ai on every turn desperately need it to work because they have taken full bait on the scam. They probably bought some 10k course from the PDB podcast or something like that on “how to get rich quick with ai for dummies” and then wasted 7.5k in tokens to make a web wrapper that sends all user input to Claude and does literally nothing. All their retirements are getting fucked by ai and they probably dumped all their personal savings into ai stocks. Literally the whole american economy is held up by a scam and instead of looking at death in the eye people rather claim ignorance and get mad and upset when you point out the truth.
I rapidly flip between “everyone is just misguided and have been intentionally deprived of good information”, and “oh god the stupid people are running the planet, they are lesser beings who only prevent progress.” And that usually just depends on my mood.
I just don’t understand how practically every business in recent times has operated on this model, and its not just obvious to everyone that this is the new scam to siphon money out of you instead of a real grass roots business that has actual real proven thing.
I think they saw it coming as well.
There is a song playing, fewer chairs than people running and it is about to stop. They want to earn money and hope they are not the last one to sit.
They are playing a game and they know it
They saw it coming. This is a legal bank heist. The ultra rich rob the banks then will cry poverty (to big to fail) and demand to be rescued only rob the banks again another day. This isn’t the first time they’ve pulled this scheme, it won’t be the last. As long as it keeps working they’ll keep doing it.
Kick out fascists
State seizure of big tech, ISPs, and utilities
Require reeducation for conservatives
End citizens united
Expand Supreme Court, house, and senate
End first past the post and require proportional representation
Eliminate presidential pardons
The blue party will oppose all of this.
If you’re gonna support all that why not just destroy the government and make a worker’s state?
I feel like the word “just” is doing the heavy lifting here.
The power required to kick out fascists, seize businesses or do any of that stuff can really only come from a socialist revolution. There’s no way the capitalists will let you vote for it, that’s for sure.
Read the history of Scandinavian socialist democracies to see how policies such as free healthcare and education can be achieved by voting.
I’ve read the history of the USSR and China, and those revolutions did not achieve anything close to similar. So… Yeah…
Social welfare is not socialism. And also, the only reason Scandinavian countries got social welfare was through massive civil unrest and threatening a worker’s revolution. The welfare was the compromise. They are still capitalist members of the imperial core who fund their welfare through exploitation of the global south.
Also, maybe read histories of the USSR and China that weren’t written by capitalists. They tend to lie about socialism, like a lot.
Social welfare is not socialism
Frankly, I don’t care about socialism. I care about free healthcare, education, welfare etc.
And also, the only reason Scandinavian countries got social welfare was through massive civil unrest and threatening a worker’s revolution.
Ok, let me educate you a bit here, as I’m actually from one of those countries. In Finland, there was a civil war in 1918 between the reds and the whites. The reds lost big time and the country went to pseudo-fascist mode for almost 2 decades. I’m saying pseudo-fascist, because there was a coup attempt to go full blown Nazi at around 1930. It failed.
During WW2 the country united against the USSR, as almost no one wanted to have any part of that disaster. After the war (and in fact also a bit before IIRC), everyone understood that leftist parties have to be allowed in politics to prevent another civil war, and so leftist policies started to enter legislation. You want to know why? People fucking voted. Now you’re going to argue that the threat of the civil war was the key, but it only allowed the left to enter the game. After that people fucking voted. People need to fucking vote.
They are still capitalist members of the imperial core who fund their welfare through exploitation of the global south.
This is as tiring as having anyone slightly leftist in the US being called a communist. The USSR exploited the shit out of Eastern Europe, somehow that doesn’t count because imperialism is a boogey man.
Also, maybe read histories of the USSR and China that weren’t written by capitalists. They tend to lie about socialism, like a lot.
Nah, I’d stick to something trustworthy. Did you know they had to smuggle information about gulags out of the USSR? Why? Because they didn’t want to acknowledge them. I wonder how trustworthy their history writing is…
You are so steeped in propaganda that you refuse even to look at information outside of the capitalist bubble. Capitalists even have a material incentive to lie about socialism because it is the only thing that threatens them, yet you still believe their lies. I despair sometimes that humanity will ever be able to throw off their chains.
Nordic countries are so stable because they import raw resources and cheap consumer goods (which are underpriced because of financial imperialism) from mainly Africa, China, and Russia, and then export monopoly priced machinery, processed goods, and weapons. They literally could not develop if not for the EU getting rich from neocolonialism in Africa.
The main exports of Scandinavian social democracies are cars, industrial machinery, petroleum products, and weapons (mainly Sweden, which is actually one of the world’s largest arms exporters, which are being used currently in mainly Ukraine and Yemen against Ansar Allah). While they import everything under the sun from the global South. Consumer-based, highly financialized economies are not socialist.
Sure bub, I know the history.
Finland, for example, was broke as hell after being on the losing side of WW2. Did not receive any aid from Marshall plan. Did not receive cheap resources from Africa either. What saved Finland was that the USSR, thanks to it’s terribly ineffective system, was unable to produce decent products, so Finland could sell absolutely everything there in exchange of cheap oil. So communism worked for Finland, not so much for the people of the USSR.
Consumer-based, highly financialized economies are not socialist.
I’m happy to let you define what’s socialist and what’s not. I care more about what countries offer (close to) free healthcare, education and social safety nets.
Edit: you could have also indicated when you edited your replies. You posted something, I responded and later your post looked very different. Not cool, man. Not cool.
so Finland could sell absolutely everything there in exchange for cheap oil.
You are literally describing how imperialism works. Exploiting the USSR after its industry was destroyed after WW2, after they literally invaded the USSR as an ally of Germany no less, and getting its oil for cheaply in exchange for expensive consumer goods afterwards. You are literally describing what I said. And yes, Finland and most of Europe got a return on their investments in Africa.
I’m happy to let you define what’s socialist and what’s not.
Socialism is when the working class is the ruling class.
To expand on that chuds will really take to this if you just throw words in like “america first” or “for the people”
2026 has kinda fucked up their brains and they sometimes confuse nationalism with socialism. They still love nationalism so you just work off of that. Once they learn its socalism after they already agreed to it’s already in their head as a good idea and have a harder time walking away from it. If there’s one thing they are bad at its self reflection and admitting they are wrong, so just get that brain worm in there.
If you say you’re making a workers party already you lost majority of the country. If instead you just say we are fixing the country and kicking out Israel and giving the money back to Americans for an american first country, then you got a lot of confused conservatives on your side who are bitter. I’ve unironically heard conservatives say they’ll vote for aoc to “punish” their own party. So things are weird right now and potentially in a advantageous way.
No, actually, that’s really bad, because that’s exactly what the national socialists were.
No no we don’t become national socialist. But I understand your fear.
I mean, like you’re literally arguing for like the lib cultural revolution, and restructuring of the government, which definitely requires some sort of takeover, why shouldn’t it be working class? You’re only like 12 steps away from being a Maoist.
So who should I short
This was the most pathetic economic bubble I’ve ever been a part of
Fully agree. At least in the past bubbles, some parts of it trickled to the rest of the economy and we had a societal bonanza.
During the dotcom bubble you could start a company and make millions out of thin air, you’d pay your engineers ridiculous amounts and everyone could get a job.
During the housing bubble everyone could get loans and buy a house, live a decent life for a moment. Real economy, not just Wall Street, was soaring.
AI bubble? Layoffs for everyone. Sense of impending doom all around. Clear signs of financial manipulation directly in front of us. Egomaniac CEOs being obnoxious. Inflation racing. Fucking lame, kill it now, please and let’s start over.
All of these of course resulted in misery, and it’ll come again. But fuck it, at least the other bubbles were fun.
This one has seemed to be a bubble of stupid by stupid. Like 90% of humanity straight up sat this one out because it sounds like a bad idea, but somehow it’ll crash global economies anyway.
Other bubbles were reasonably hidden, or had some surprise elements, but we’ve all been watching and talking amongst ourselves about this one.
It’s like watching a degenerate gambler keep going after everyone at the table and even a couple of people walking by have tried to intervene.
Pathetic indeed.
Socialism for the rich. Here we go again
I’m doing my part by continuing to ask chatgpt questions constantly without paying them money. I have started using Claude at work as well. If I do it enough, they’ll eventually all realize it’s expensive af, and give up on it. That’s the hope anyway.
Edit: Also, fucking finally. Been waiting for this to happen for what seems like ages.
log out before doing anything. chatgpt now serves ads if youre logged in, thus making them money.
Log out of what? I don’t have an account. My work thing is officially set up. I didn’t do anything but request access to it at work. Now I’m juat trying to use up my works money so they realize it’s stupid to use AI for everything. They put a cap in how many credits I can use, so it’s not endless. I kinda just wish they would stop trying to shove it down our throats.
The AI companies don’t actually care about your company wasting money. They are making money off of your activities. Your company is losing money. That might result in you or your co-workers getting laid off. Which given you’re wasting company resources, you should be. But I’m more concerned about your co-workers getting laid off because of what you’re doing.
You’re literally transferring your company’s money to AI companies because… why again? Some internet brainrot accelerationist mentality it seems.
So that the company finds it to be a waste of money and stops giving the AI companies money. Also, even the paid tier is losing money for AI companies IIRC.
Yeah so it’s a reverse boycott. After we buy a lot from this company everyone will understand why this company isn’t a viable business!
Meanwhile in the real world, investors see an uptick in usage. Sure it’s not making money yet, but they project more growth because it looks it may be a viable business.
The companies paying for subscriptions see that the employees are using the service a lot and keep paying for those subscriptions. It’s silly to assume that a company paying for a subscription for AI isn’t going to know the tokens were wasted. If they knew that, they’d fire the employee doing this because it’s maliciously wasting company resources. If no one is fired for wasting tokens, we can logically assume the company paying for the subscriptions think the tokens are being used for valid work purposes and continue paying for the subscriptions.
What would actually prove to a company that an AI subscription is worthless is using zero tokens. Why would they pay for a service their employees don’t use?
Methinks this is a person that is actually using AI and feeling guilty over it. So its… “yeah I’m just using to to waste tokens to fight the power!” That or a brainrotted accelerationist.
Just another bullshit cog in the bullshit economy.
No shit, but if I waste my companies money, they’ll eventually realize it’s expensive and they aren’t getting any benefit out of it.
One of my favorite passtimes is going on a chatbot and asking it really out of left field questions. “Last night while I was sleeping I was woken up to my neighbor making fried eggs in my kitchen. The eggs were pretty good, but I’m concerned how he got inside. Do you know what seasonings he might have used on the egg? It was green.”
That’s a weird thing to do, but I’m here for it. I mostly ask it real technical questions about my game code to see if it can solve it, or find me a source that has already solved it. I usually Google it first tho. But every search engine has made their searches worse, so I don’t usually find what I want. Even just a year or two ago searches would pop up forum posts with the solutions to my issue someone else already asked and had answered. Now it’s like digging through a hay stack for a needle.
Try Kagi if you can afford a paid search engine. You can even specifically search the fediverse.
I’ve been using noai.duckduckgo.com for a while and it’s still useful. The problem isn’t just the search engines it’s the SEO that shit sites abuse to get to the top of searches.
Cool, can I buy a 5090 now?
Even when prices eventually go down, why would you want to put more money into nvidias hands, they’re one of the main reasons we’re in this mess to begin with.
5090 will be cheap but you will be unemployed
No
People keep saying AI boom as if it’s made any money 🤑
Sure has, for a select few.
Everyone is hoping that we start arresting these politicians and tech bros when the bubble bursts but why wait?
That won’t happen. People like Elon only exist because of these bubbles. The bubble means nothing to the individuals, they just jump ship and start something new.
The state of the world says an actual revolution is a possibility
Whoa its updated and high res.
Think it might bounce back one more time?
Crashes usually include a few sharp rallys
Knife juggling
Dead cat bounce
The trick is stopping before you lose a finger, hand or arm.
Absolutely will, lot of financial institutions still need to finish offloading their shit on the rubes and they need another big IPO for that. All bets are off after that though
Ah, yes, that’s the time of all the ads telling you to invest and buy stocks, so the small investor is holding the bag.
Gen-X, having lived through 1987 (Black Monday), ~2000 Dot-Com Bubble burst , 2008 global financial meltdown, and the 2020 COVID-19 crash:
As a 44-year old who lived through all of those once-in-a-lifetime events (you also forgot 9/11) just once in my life, I’d like a boring decade where nothing happens.
Between the wars, politics, global terror, economic upheaval and the general state of things… I’m really fucking tired boss.
We will never live in peace. It’s just greed and war all the way down.
Us older millennials as well. We just don’t have the advantage of working in the booming 80s.
Neither did the vast majority of Gen-X. The cocaine 80’s is peak Boomer shit.
EDIT: I was born in 73. Started uni in 90. Let’s say you wanted to ride that mid 80’s wave, you should have been in the workforce by 84, that puts you born ~63. By the majority of lists, Gen-X starts on 65.
Yeah. I went to school with rich kids who were suddenly worried about whether daddy could pay for college after that 1987 crash.
dad bailed on us for good that winter. left mom and us kids with nothing. he spent several years globe-trotting with his flavor-of-the-month mistress.
I’m sorry that you had to experience that. I hope you all eventally survived and thrived.
Yeah, 1988-1996 was pretty bad. It was my computer hobby that saved my life. No idea where I’d be today had I not turned my side hustle into a career.
I guess I was “lucky” in that I was too poor to be directly impacted my the market back then. But I was young, energetic and at my peak looks-wise, so I can’t shit on that era too much.
Many kids had part time jobs in highschool. Plus that still directly impacted kids graduating into a good vs bad economy. Younger Gen x, sure. But it still benefits older and mid Gen x.
Most of us were coming of age in the 80s and working at a grocery store if at all.
Look, it’s another one of those one-in-a-lifetime events! How many now?..
i’m tired boss…
Same…same.
I think you mean the “once in a lifetime” crashes
And most of them is some way orchestrated by the US. Motherfuckers and their bullshit capitalism.
I think there was an early 80s crash as well.
Everyone here is so excited for the bubble to pop, even though it would make everyone’s life harder.
As for me? I too am also excited for it to pop.
Why? Well what the hell is the alternative, I’ll take a market correction and return to sane time any day of the week but it seems that them oligarchs are too horney for their game of financial Russian roulette.
I rather them putting the gun down, but if they insist on playing then I want them to lose faster.
The longer the bubble inflates the worse the pop of going to be. Bursting now is going to be bad, but a hell of a lot better than bursting later.
The problem is the robber barons are unaffected by the crashes. In fact, it just becomes another buying opportunity for them with all that free money lying around. They just keep getting richer. It’s the rest of us that suffer.
I’m excited for the greenhouse gas emissions to drop!
I wouldn’t hold my breath.
You’re gonna have to if they keep emitting. There’ll be nothing left to breathe
Unfortunately they never lose.
Yeah, pretty sure they will get bailed out.
It will be 2008 all over again and we are still in the 2008 aftermath. Democrats are not brave enough to change things. No one who is going to be allowed near power is talking breaking up the monopolies and regulation. I don’t think things will improve until they have got worse still.
As a Brit, I just hope we, and Europe in general, kick America dependency to not get pulled round by their whims and eventual collapse. But most people’s digital lives are completely dependent on American monopolies. So much so they don’t dare even see it.
I don’t think things will improve until they have got worse still.
Shit won’t improve before people kill oligarchs. We’ve not seen a peasant correction in Europe since the French revolution.
This is why they are building bunker fortresses.
I don’t think so on this one. Logistically it’s toast. Society has a negative outlook on it. You can’t sell AI like you can firearms and politicians aren’t going to stick their neck out for it.
It will all be about maintaining America lead/power (monopolies). Wrapped in a flag. It doesn’t have to be popular. There are only two parties and they will both be for it.
Well put. That’s the summary of it. Sadly
Hope we are wrong, I just don’t see going differently.
I’d say it’s by design. There’s a strong push against even something like ranked voting. While that has it’s flaws voting A or B doesn’t work. Especially A or B can’t identify as either nor can be trusted. Prime example is Charlie Christ.
They can’t really bail them out like they did in 08. Just to compare Ford to OpenAI for sake of my argument. The collapse of Ford risked not only losing a company but also the institutional knowledge within on top of the fact that Ford itself could eventually pay off the loan which isn’t even getting into other benefits, for comparison what does the collapse of OpenAI risk beyond some edge case nonsense hell could they even pay off a loan. Trying to bail out the AI industry would be dead on arrival by default, the best you may be able to do is downsize them massively and maybe make them profitable via specialized sub industries but yet again that risks them collapsing regardless.
More to the point is the magnitude. Note that Ford ultimately didn’t get a bailout, but between GM and financial sector they did about $500 billion, which adjusted for inflation would be about $800 billion. That’s not enough to even cover OpenAI’s obligations by itself, let alone the broader AI industry. GM’s bailout was $50 billion.
Thanks for correcting and adding to my statement on how severe this whole thing is, I have it in my head but I’m a bit shit at elaboration. Also I knew it was one of the big three but I couldn’t remember if it was Ford or GM.
I’m not saying it is a good idea. Or even one the populous wants. I’d be shocked if it all allowed to collapse and dominoes fall where they may. It will all be wrapped in the flag and about maintaining America lead/power (monopolies) and force fed to voters by both parties. There are only two parties to buy.
Oh I got what you meant I just disagree. My point was that AI is a money burning party with nothing to show unlike basically any other industry, even if you bail them out once they’ll likely need to be bailed out again by the next quarter since they don’t really have a product to sell. Not even getting into all the debt a lot of these companies have or any future contracts that have been signed.
Point is even if they are bailed out it will amount to doing a blood transfusion on someone with an actively bleeding artery. They are far more likely to wipe everything else out than succeed, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the end goal for dipshits like Thiel. Maybe it’s a weird but of optism but I can’t quite see enough congresscritters siding with that since basically all of them gain their power through the government and the current economic systems continued existence.
You say they have nothing, but a lot of people are using it. Now I’d argue many aren’t getting value out of it, even at a 10th to 100th the actual cost, but they think they are. (Often it is someone else has to fix the slop)
And I’m not saying a government bailout is the end of it. It just kicks the can down the road further. And probably makes the final pop bigger.
There is a reason these guys are building bunkers. It’s not AI they are fearing. It is us. Rising up and demanded retribution. They are literally trying to work out how they can keep their security people under control in a collapse. And hoping to replace them with bots. Thinking they can maintain that themselves. Or leave earth and hide where we can’t go. It’s all absolutely mental.
2008 had a very wide blast radius. If it was just a handful or even most banks that were in trouble it probably wouldn’t have been a bailout. Mortgage securities were everywhere and no one knew how much they were actually worth. Most the fortune 500 facing a double digit percentage loss was looking likely, which would have been catastrophic.
Compared to today it might be more money, but it’s isolated to the tech sector. Even then a lot of the worst of it is not on publicly traded companies .
When the dominoes fall, it is unlikely to be neatly contained due to the scale if nothing else.
