The 'AI spending boom' framing cuts both ways though — the Depression analogy holds if the productive capacity being built never finds a paying customer, but breaks down if monetization is just lagging the infrastructure cycle by 3-5 years (like the internet circa 1999-2004). @Wudi, what's the falsifiable signal you're watching? Because 'capex is high' on its own isn't the tell — it's whether enterprise AI contracts are renewing at the same ACV after the pilot phase. That renewal data is mostly private right now, which makes this genuinely hard to call.
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Your points are adressed by Ed Zitron.
The AI hardware is dead after 3-5 years.
In particular But in the last six months two things have changed dramatically over the last twelve months.
Has this article been written by AI? I've seen a number of weird sentences in this article but this one... Wut?
In topic: yeah, AI will fuck humanity in all the ways we never expected. There won't be terminators, we'll just have broken economies, extreme unemployment, no water, huge pollution, and all for a tool that is confidently wrong half the time and dumps people into psychosis.
Awesome
If anything, this makes it more likely it wasn't written by AI. These are typical mistakes people make when they're overthinking their writing, while writing.
It seems more like a bad editor/insufficient proofreading.
That's the kind of comment I sometimes make if I rephrase it in the draft, but don't check to make sure I remove all of the original sentence before posting.
Sure all that will happen however shareholders will get value!
bottomless pits and blind bus drivers tend to do that
Gary Marcus has a Substack everyone should read. It's sobering.
What's mindfuckingly frustrating is that EVERYONE (but the rich ass financial types) see it coming. And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WE CAN DO to prevent or prepare for it.
Save your pennies then you can buy up all the property of the impoverished at a deflated rate and rent it back to them at any price you want.
We met with my mother's broker a few weeks ago (company rhymes with "Laymond Maims"). My brother expressed his concern about the AI bubble and the broker basically said CEOs are smart people who are legally bound to safeguard their companies and they wouldn't be so heavily invested in AI if there was any chance of its being a bubble.
Just one of the most dumbassed arguments I've ever heard. OK, then how did all the other bubbles in history happen? But it was equally dumbassed of my brother to expect a broker to say anything else. I'll bet he gets a fucking daily memo telling him not to let anybody de-AI their portfolios -- if that's even possible at this point.
I would immediately change brokers. That's a level of uneducated and propagandized that is truly dangerous.
most of them like peddles the same propaganda.
I don't think others differ that much.
Almost certainly true.
CEOs are smart people who are legally bound to safeguard their companies and they wouldn’t be so heavily invested in AI if there was any chance of its being a bubble.
Reciting his training - were I your mother, I'd never speak with Lameman James' Tool again and ensure that they receive no further comissions from her assets.
Alas, mom is all "they've done such a great job over the years increasing the value of our portfolio". Bitch, the fucking market went through the roof, that's why your portfolio has done so well. It has nothing to do with Draymond Claims. You were in mutual funds the whole time!
No, I don't actually call my mom a bitch.
The last few financial crises have led to massive wealth transfers to the 1%. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more accelerationist of them are trying to engineer them at this point.
except this time, AI costed them more than it returned.
And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WE CAN DO to prevent or prepare for it.
sure there is.
- get a years supply of shelf stable food, preferably things with a decade long shelf life
- start a garden and fill it with staple foods that are nutritional and abundant
- install a solar system, no matter how big or small
- collect barter goods like alcohol, fabric, paper, hand tools, entertainment media, books, etc
- learn trade skills that can land you a job in a jobless market
these are just five things you can do now before the bust.
- install a solar system, no matter how big or small
Gee, get a load'a this one, goin round whackin heliocentric planetary systems in people's yards. Kickin off the gravitational alignment of Earth with their extra "sun and planets" next to the lavender.
I hear they even do dual-star solar systems.. pffft... thats just showing off.
start a garden
Just start with that one, because if you're really prepping, you'll never store enough food for a reboot from a real end of the supply chain shitstorm.
Don't just talk about a garden, read some books, plant a few seeds and watch them sprout and bloom, really try to garden enough to grow your food instead of buying it from the store. My challenge: 10% - can you replace 10% of your grocery purchases with home-grown heirloom seed stuff that you can replant from year to year without having to buy new Miracle Grow soil for your raised beds every year. Most people will find that they can't. That they don't have enough time and attention in their busy lives to even supply 10% of their own food from a garden on their land without buying all kinds of inputs to the garden that will not be available right about the same time the food for purchase goes away. Those who are successful will find that the $600 worth of food they grow costs them 300+ hours a year of labor to produce, protect from consumption by birds, rodents, deer and other pests. Now add human neighbor poachers to that list of pests - which one of you will be running out of ammunition first?
Oh, those deer, we can shoot enough deer to make jerky all year! Yeah, it will have to be jerky because refrigeration isn't a thing after the food stops coming to the grocery stores, and how long do you think it will take for 350 million Americans to harvest every single deer on the continent? After year 2 or 3, any deer remaining will still be alive because they run hard the other direction at the first sight, sound or scent of man.
The rich ass financial types see it coming, they just think they have a handle on it - that they're going to gain competitive advantage in the shitstorm it will unleash. Some will, most won't, but when you're rich and bored and have nothing better in your head than just climbing one more rung up the "mine's bigger than yours" ladder, they'd rather bet on longshots than die comfortable on their perch.
Oh they see it coming as well, but unlike us, they have the levers and means to come out on top of it.
they have the levers and means to come out on top of it.
To delude themselves that they'll be coming out on top... they'll suffer too, and the more they strive to climb, the more they'll be risking everything.
To the extent they "suffer", maybe some of them go from billionaire to merely hundreds of millions.
They came out on top of 2008/09 as well.
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The fear is that, if the past is anything to go by, the AI boom will follow a similar arc to these other technology-driven infrastructure booms: a flood of speculative capital will flow in, leading to massive overinvestment, asset price bubbles and ultimately a crash as euphoria collides with a disappointing reality.
Shocking.
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Oh, come on. This is nothing like the Great Depression.
The Great Depression was caused by a supply side spending boom, producing massive excess of capacity, while nobody had any money to spend on anything.
...
Nothing like it, I tell you!
Is it possible that their attempt to be listed on the index is a way for private capital to cash in on their investments, leaving 401k funds etc holding the bag when the value dips?
There are numerous articles and analyses online exactly to this effect. It is absolutely the goal.
It is absolutely one of the goals. The goals are many, the benefactors are few.
I mean the money was just sitting there in those 401ks they'd be foolish not to figure out some way to rob it for themselves
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Great, that means were gonna fight mecha hitler in the 2040s
you mean ketamincocaine mecha hitler.
Open enrollment for all art schools just in case…
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