Comment by piloto_ciego | Hacker News Reader

Comment by piloto_ciego | Hacker News Reader

People are going to flame me for this, but it's the end of the line because of a confluence of AI, bad planning, offshoring, and a few other things. But this is the end of capitalism as we know it because the value of labor is plummeting globally, it's not going to happen overnight, but this is kind of the logical end of things. Education no longer implies employment - I did my masters a few years ago and promptly got scooped up, but the undergrads that graduated around the same time did not - and I was different, I had prior relevant work history.

Nah, this is the end of it. It's going to convulse a bit and hurt as we get this sorted out, but we're literally in the midst of both a political, social, and economic revolution right now, and everyone seems to mostly be doomscrolling through it.

What we get on the other side? I have no idea, but it's kind of funny to watch people gnash their teeth at this stuff. I mean, it sucks if you can't find a job, I get it, but the only real play is to "embrace the chaos" and adapt to the changing times. This might be the first time "we" have had to deal with this sort of uncertainty and chaos, but historically we're regressing to the mean.

Personally, I bought land in the woods last year when I saw this starting to occur, my "startup" (read lifestyle business) is vibe coding apps while people still bother to pay for that and doing hydroponics.

Interest rates are relatively high compared to what they were several years ago. When interest rates are low everyone and their dog gets hired because its cheap to do that. When interest rates are high companies need to be more selective and growth/risk taking decreases.

If we can somehow get inflation under control it will trigger lower interest rates and hiring will increase again. But the current, and possibly only, strategy is to stagnate wage growth and increase the number of people out of work so that the economy has less money circulating in order to reduce inflation.

I've lived through a few of these. Its definitely cyclical.

I've lived through a few of these now too, maybe not as many as you, I don't know, but...

I do think this time is a little bit different. I don't think a lot of these jobs are coming back. Maybe ever.

I'm not saying I'm some crazy woodland luddite maniac, I mean, I'll be tailscaling into the business VPS from the cabin... but... yeah, I think this time is a bit different. I think stuff like this has happened before with like "John Henry was a Steel Driving Man" sort of vibes? But a lot of people are going to try to out-machine the machines right now, and I think that's a losing strategy?

We'll see in 10 years, and I'm in a bit of a privileged position that I'm able to do this, so I don't envy the folks who are struggling right now? But, more concretely, I do think this is different. Interest rates are absolutely part of it, but there's so much deviation from the historical norms right now that I think normalcy bias is a loosing move.

Personally, I'm adapting - also, I'm playing with robots, but that's mostly because it's fun.

> Interest rates are relatively high compared to what they were several years ago.

And compared to last 50 years, Interest rates are still WAY lower, and unemployment is still WAY higher.

Make no mistake: Sure, the "curve" of unemployment trends downwards as interest rates drop [1]. But the "base" of unemployment is constantly increasing with each cycle [2]. There is no reality of unemployment rate going back to what it was before.

It's easy to be unaware of this pattern if one is constantly re-employed and never part of the 27-week unemployed graph, or if the point of reference is just the post-2000 or post-2008 crisis.

But 20% baseline of people who are unemployed more than 27 weeks. Let that sink in. It's pretty insane. And that baseline is only increasing.

What the OP commenter says has truth in data to it: Unemployment increase is not a linear scale of a working society. It's driven by tipping points where major changes happen (e.g. the current political changes in US).

Sources:

1. Unemployment rate last 50 years FRED graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS13025703

2. Interest rate last 50 years FRED graph: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFF

The American economy and GDP was driven by consumer spending (around 68%). Who knew if you offshored the jobs, pushed an ever increasing share of capital to higher tax brackets and away from consumers, and then started replacing consumer/workers with AI, that a consumer driven economy would drop off?

"U.S workers just took home their smallest share of capital since 1947, at least" https://finance.yahoo.com/news/u-workers-just-took-home-2140...

And since our taxation system is also primarily worker funded (over 50%) and during times of loss businesses/capitalists can write off a ton of their share of the tax burden, we're in for a lot of pain.

Wow, you're the first person I've ever heard of to buy land in the woods to prepare for the imminent economic disaster.

I mean, I also wanted land in this particular area of the woods, because I like it.

But also, it seemed pretty synergistic given how things are going. I guess it definitely made the sale a little easier to stomach.

It's funny how everytime the economic system is going to collapse, the response is often to complain about capitalism while purchasing more private property under the very same institutions that are about ready to fall over. It's easier to understand violent warlords honestly. At least they're being serious.

Eh, I think there are valid counterarguments to that. Buying property under the current ruling system buys you exclusive rights to that property while that ruling system is in power, and you can use that time to make preparations and such that could help you if shit DOES hit the fan. You might not have the government enforcing your property rights but maybe you can enforce them yourself.

This is kind of a silly take. It’s not like there’s much else I can do but prepare in the best way I think I can. I actually am really optimistic about how things will work out, but it’s going to be weird for a bit

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