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Comment by nimos | Hacker News Reader

I'm happy as the next person to eye roll a lot of the stuff that gets funded but the world is just fundamentally different compared to 2000. The average time an internet user spent online at home was ~3 hours in 2000 and is about 18 now.[0] People are just so much more willing, and able, to spend time and money online now days I would be surprised if there was 2000 style crash.

[0]http://www.digitalcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/2017...

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Crashes are a phenomenon of investor mass hysteria I don’t think they are correlated with metrics of the companies they have invested in. When enough people belive they have been throwing money at a hype, panic will ensue and a crash will happen.

I don't think it will effect the industry nearly as much as it did in the past. Tech is simply more integrated into society now, the fundamental thesis is proven in a way that it wasn't in the 2000s. Its akin to the early days of TV when it was a luxury to the 70s-00s where it was where the average american spent most of their free time (and note that its dominance has been supplanted by the internet).

18 hours online? Per what? Per day? That seems... unlikely.

I looked at your link, but it's 160 pages. Can you point me to a page number?

Ah yeah my bad, its per week, page 16 in pdf pages.

I can believe 18 hours per week. In fact, I'm surprised it's that low.

Before every single crash of the past 100 years, someone always says this: "but the world is just fundamentally different..."

Yes, you are correct, the world is fundamentally different. And it was fundamentally different in 1893, 1929, 1987, 1999, 2008.... Just because things are fundamentally different has yet to stop a crash from occurring.

Things may be fundamentally different, but one thing hasn't changed; Boom and bust is a fundamental aspect of capitalism. It's not if, it's when.

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