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Comment by QuarterReptile | Hacker News Reader

In first generation post-WW2, we built out productive infrastructure, and started to do so with our savings. In the second generation, we expanded with debt spending and started to increase consumer debt. Now, most well-educated new entrants to the market have already taken more debt than they have an appetite for, so they're saving to pay down that debt. There may be quite a few who are still doing frivolous things with their money that could go to service the debt, but in the end we're all paying off activity that already happened, to one extent or another.

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This is entirely due to the baby-boomer demographic changes. Saving on a generational and national scale is basically impossible: things you make today are going to break down, wear out, or become obsolete thirty years from now. The only way the retiring generation can receive care is by obligating or mandating younger workers to pay for it.

This is the core of why college is pushed so hard, why home ownership is pushed so hard, and why interest rates are so low. The baby-boomers need to have someone paying back debt thirty years from now, so there's a ton of money sloshing around trying to fund current consumption.

"things you make today are going to break down, wear out, or become obsolete thirty years from now."

Planned obsolescence started not too long ago and everything now needs replacing much earlier than thirty years. We can see its inefficiency in every industries generated from this money printing scheme. Turning what once was considered permanent and high quality will now break and need replacing.

Everybody is doing it, and it's hard to stop, but it probably should stop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1j0XDGIsUg

I guess the flip side of this is that we can have access to so many things, so affordably. I don't need an industrial-grade waffle iron, but it's kind of fun to have for the occasional weekend if I've got space.

Having said that, I tend to avoid that side. If I have to buy something, I tend to do a buy-it-for-life type of purchase. This drives my fiancee crazy, as I spend 50% more money and 500% more time making my purchase. Most of the time it's not even about the money; I just get upset when I have tons of trash, so I try to avoid buying things that make or become trash.

and this is the niche manufacturing opportunity of the future.

I have a friend living it right now - he makes buy-it-for-your-grandkids-lives tools and sells direct via the internet to his end user. His end user is in a particular niche and my friend is an expert in it.

His stuff is expensive, niche, and his marketing consists of crappy phone videos on Facebook. He is authentic however, his stuff is super high quality, and he gives great customer service. His business has been growing at 30% a year thanks to the internet allowing him to reach the few people that care about his niche. He will surpass $1M in gross sales with a high net margin, and he has zero competitors in his micro niche - a million dollar micro niche.

And its truly micro - 200 units per year of the $800 piece of equipment, and the rest of the sales in the 14,000 accessories he has for the equipment. He is doing quite a bit better than a well paid SV engineer and is direct to 10,000 consumers. His moat is impenetrable.

Even without planned obsolescence, it's still difficult to make things that have value thirty years from now. Even infrastructure has issues on this timescale: nuclear reactors are designed to function for forty years with maintenance, and roads something like 26 years before re-doing the asphalt. And there's only so much infrastructure that's worth building, based off the intensity of economic activity that it facilitates.

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