We are in geopolitically fraught times. Money alone is not capital.
We have been living in an era where financial capital has dominated.
We are entering an era where computing capital, intellectual capital, and military capital will dominate.
The people in control of those when the game changes are the ones writing the rules.
These are bullshit terms. Capital is capital. Military production, IP production and yes, AIs running in datacentres and on the grid, are all subject to economic forces. (Folks argued railroads were a different form of capital in the 19th century, too. And fibre optics. And tulips. And dot-com companies. And computer-assembled American mortgage instruments.)
We might be investing for a golden future. We might be the Soviet Union baited into unsustainable spending commitments. The answer to these questions isn't in pretending this time is different, or that economics can be suspended when it comes to certain questions of production and return.
We could probably debate how holding onto piles of green paper doesn’t provide much advantage in certain contexts, but I suspect you’d agree with that.
My proposal is that there’s a high likelihood the bet is that green paper matters less than high powered AI systems, and as far as I can tell, that’s a reasonable bet.
Sure. That doesn’t make it not capital.
> My proposal is that there’s a high likelihood the bet is that green paper matters less
The green paper is a transactional intermediary and unit of account. Nobody is hoarding cash. When folks talk about returns on data centers, they’re asking whether building more of those is a better economic bet than investing in housing, the military or healthcare.
People questioning data centers vs real estate are denominating and critiquing returns on investment measured in money.
I am suggesting that they are not adequately considering risk-weighted returns denominated in other forms of capital. Do you disagree on this point?
yes, true, but it would probably be better to pour money into shipyards than data centers