Cryptocurrencies and ICOs.
Applied neural networks.
Automation.
Good electric cars. To the point where people are prepaying for something that might be built in a few years.
Good cheap batteries.
What value is being created here, exactly? There's plenty of idealistic notions being thrown around, but I've yet to see a single, real, useful product or service materialize
>Applied neural networks.
Same.
>Automation.
This is way too broad to be invested in. Of course the world is automating at a greater rate, but is this a cause for growth? Will automated factories produce more goods for the same consumers?
>Good electric cars. To the point where people are prepaying for something that might be built in a few years.
Again, how is this growth? People will simply replace their existing cars at a known rate with electric cars as they become available/affordable
>Good cheap batteries.
Granted this one would be a technological revolution greater than the internet, but it's just a fantasy for now. I think the grandparent is dead on here. Real inflation is 10 times the official rate since the mid 2000s. We are all playing with funny money these days, and this won't end well.
Since driverless vehicles and fleets are arriving roughly concurrent to electric vehicles, they're actually more likely to _reduce_ the volume of cars produced, after accounting for any increased, accelerated "fleet churn" buyers exert via aggregate demand to reach a faster critical mass on increasingly or perfectly safe cars.
I have said multiple times, and did sign again, that I do not believe driverless vehicles will automatically lead mass adoption of fleet/on-demand vehicles. I don't think they will be as much of a savings over human-piloted vehicles as the optimists think.
Right now I'm gradually liquidating my crypto stash and buying stocks instead.
Here's another at 6% : PHYSX https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PHYSX?p=PHYSX
Less risky (municipal) at 4%: MMHYX https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MMHYX/profile?p=MMHYX
From investor pov you can short dinos and ride disruptors. ez $$. Not saying tsla isn't overvalued though.
Except the "dinos" of GM, Nissan, BMW, Ford, and Hyundai are outproducing Tesla in the EV market, with a clear lead in affordability. Nissan Leaf is far and away the most popular EV ever built, having sold thousands more than all Tesla models combined (discounting unfulfilled preorders).
ELI5 please?
Perhaps it's more like 5x, but the point stands
The inflation rate for a computer with a fixed set of specs is massively negative -- it gets cheaper every year. So it is for many technological devices.
But our whole economy is a mixture of technological stuff (that drops in cost over time, i.e. negative inflation) and non-technological stuff (burritos and health care).
The overall inflation rate is an average across the entire economy. Even if you believe the reporting is not distorted (which is dubious), then the fact that there are so many goods whose prices drop quickly over time, implies that there have to be many goods and services whose prices go up much faster than "inflation" would predict. Because something has to balance that average!
Baumol calls the technological stuff the "progressive sector" and the non-technological stuff the "stagnant sector". As time goes on, prices in the stagnant sector continue to rise until they consume almost all spending.
Baumol made specific predictions based on this model in 1960 that have turned out to be consistently true for 50 years ("the cost of healthcare will continue to rise to degrees that will seem scary" and so forth).
Furthermore, it's not like it is some weird complicated or hard-to-substantiate theory. It is just math, not much more complicated than the definition of the average. Given how big the consequences are, and how hard to argue with, it surprises me that this idea occupies so little of the public conversation.
It's the greatest advance in money laundering ever invented. For that to work the proles need to be conned into participating so there is plenty of transaction volume to hide in.
Otherwise, you have to have a seemingly legitimate Enterprise that is accepting Bitcoin on a large scale. Which would cause you to stand out like a sore thumb to the authorities because no one in their right mind is using Bitcoin with $40 transaction fees.
Creating tons of coinbase accounts is no easy task. You have to validate the accounts with multiple forms of ID and this pattern would eventually be found out and get flagged big time.
Then, you need different bank accounts for every single coinbase account you create and those require multiple forms of ID as well as valid SSN numbers which will be checked.
If you are referring to GDAX allowing you to transfer to USD, looks like it is FDIC insured, which means it is a US bank account, which means it is subject to KYC patriot act stuff and will be the same as opening any other us bank account.
You do this so that each individual account can make small purchases over a long time horizon so it looks valid. Looking at coinbase's site, you only need a bank account if you're using fiat currencies. You'd probably also want to make it harder to detect all your laundering accounts by having them make purchases to other "legitimate" accounts too (e.g overstock) Obviously I'm not a criminal mastermind so this plan could very well fail, but I find it hard to believe that a digital cash currency couldn't be used to effectively launder money considering laundering is most effective for all-cash businesses (combined with good accountants/bankers like illegal organization employ these days to avoid all these problems).
The ASX is implementing blockchain for its ledger, via the digitalassets company. Right now.
HST voting dapp is being used at the world economic forum, this week.
Thats two I know of, off the top of my head.
As well as the obvious btc and eth being used to purchase stuff everyday, all over the world.
Its actually happening if you bother to look.
If you start from the assumption that well-being or some other desirable policy goal can be measured by income (profits, wages, etc), I'd argue most of the things in this list aren't likely to increase either wages or profits of companies.
But they are likely to create economic surplus - that thing that makes us want to trade/transact in the first place. Economic surplus is why you'd rather buy a Netflix package for $10 than rent a $3 video from the video store. You're massively better off with Netflix even though Netflix's profits and your wages haven't moved.
The problem is, we don't have a good way to measure this. Economists are aware of the problem, and it's something that makes comparison of GDP across decades difficult. There are many things that are better or flat-out new compared to what existed 50 years ago. How do you compare the experience of driving a modern, safe, smooth-driving car to an older one? Or the experience of talking cross-continent for practically nothing on Skype?
I agree that these technologies are going to reshape our world, I just don't think those gains are necessarily going to show up in GDP, at least not how we measure it today. And I also think this whole "real wages have stagnated" argument is a bit of a red herring. Maybe they have...so what. People are much, much better off today than they were even 20 years ago. We have more things, they're better in almost every way, less disease, the world is just 100% a better place, and anyone who says otherwise is just trying to push some redistributionist political agenda. I'm not saying inequality isn't a problem, but it's borderline lying to suggest our lives haven't gotten any better over the last 30 years because "real wages have stagnated".
I agree cryptocurrencies are mostly a fad, but AI, automation, electric (self-driving) cars, and good cheap batteries are definitely capable of driving productivity & growth. Lithium batteries are the IC of the 21st century. They've driven a lot of innovation already (smartphones, better laptops, tablets, smartwatches, EVs, consumer drones, etc), but there's a lot more to come in terms of mass market self-driving EVs, mass grid storage, electric aircraft (both robotic and not), etc.
It seems like this is the opposite of growth - as more jobs are automated, fewer people will be able to buy the products that are created by the automation.
Do you want more money but the same amount of widgets or do you want the same money but more widgets?
But if I earn less money, even if widgets drop in price, I don't have enough money to buy a thingamabob.
And really, how many widgets do I need? My garage is already stacked full of them and I can't even fit my car inside.