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Comment by klyrs | Hacker News Reader

First off, I'd like to commend you for using landfill volume as a proxy for productivity. It's refreshingly honest and I wish economists would take note.

That said, there are last-gen GPUs and ASICs going to landfills. Some people are actually getting paid to make the inputs to the otherwise-ephemeral pseudocurrency. Not to mention all of the CO2 released into the atmosphere... you can't see it but that $1.8B put it there.

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And the paper clip factories churn on.

Do not click this link, you will loose at least 6hrs of your life:

https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

lol, mobile browsers are impervious, I was gone in 10 seconds flat

Unfortunately you are correct.

My pet theory is that the massive excess in GPUs from the crypto explosion are being fed back into the AI explosion we are seeing now.

In reality I wander how many former mining GPU farms are now doing AI training...

All of the crypto companies have had layoffs since the crash. The big exchanges are downsizing- but obviously there's still some money in it.

People doing "economist things" but with money at stake (i.e. financial analysts) already do that stuff.

some use freight activity as a measure of economy, atleast "real economy".

And therefore completely ignore the 50% of the global economy that is services.

aka fake economy.

Yeah, the illusion of electricity and the Internet...

Not entirely, most services require some products as inputs, so they are still measured in some way.

What about electricity generation requires a shipping container?

freight in this context generally includes commercial rail freight.

Do we ship natural gas via rail now? Are we replacing our turbines every year?

Plenty of economic activity that is not fake involves no freight.

electricity consumption to measure economic activity is another technique, but judging by your reaction, "fake economy" hit a nerve.

Yeah, because people who believe “services are a fake part of the economy” vote and their representatives pass bad economic policy as a result.

Energy production is kit a self contained endeavor. Transformers, steel, copper, pipe, valves, digital equipment for monitoring and control systems are just some of the necessary inputs for construction and maintenance.

Beyond that, efficient use energy production requires some place for it to be used, Generally home and industry appliances.

>Energy production is kit a self contained endeavor. Transformers, steel, copper, pipe, valves, digital equipment for monitoring and control systems are just some of the necessary inputs for construction and maintenance.

Freight is a very poor way to measure electricity output. Both turbines and balance of plant equipment usually last 40 years (so we replace c. 2.5% in a given year) and now a days, most fuel is piped.

>Beyond that, efficient use energy production requires some place for it to be used, Generally home and industry appliances.

Yes, all of which is economic activity unrelated to freight.

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