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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   19830 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 13, 2025

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AI is Too Big to Fail

You've probably been hearing that we're in an AI bubble. I think that's both loaded and reductive, and I'd like to take some time to help people understand the nuances of the situation we're currently in, because it's deep. To be clear, I am pro AI as a technology and I have an economic interest in its success (and for reasons I'll discuss, so should you), however there is a lot more going on that I don't agree with that I'd like to raise awareness of.

AI capital investments are running far ahead of expected returns, and the pace of investment is accelerating. Analysts estimate AI-linked activity drove roughly 40–90% of H1-2025 U.S. GDP growth and 75–80% of S&P 500 gains. If it wasn't for AI investments, it's likely the United States would be in a recession right now. According to Harris Kupperman of Praetorian Capital “the industry probably needs a revenue range that is closer to the $320 billion to $480 billion range, just to break even on the capex to be spent this year.” It sure sounds like a bubble, however thinking of it as just another bubble would be doing a disservice to the magnitude of the dynamics at play here. To understand why, we have to explore the psychology of the investors involved and the power circles they're operating in.

The elites of Silicon Valley have cozied up to Donald Trump in a way that's unprecedented in the history of modern democracy. They've lined the pockets of his presidential library foundation, supported his white house renovations, paid for his inauguration and provided a financial lifeline for the Republican party. Between Elon Musk, David Sacks, Sriram Krishnan, Peter Thiel and his acolyte J.D. Vance, Trump has been sold the story that AI dominance is a strategic asset of vital importance to national security (there's probably also a strong ego component, America needs "the best AI, such a beautiful AI"). I'm not speculating, this is clearly written into the BBB and the language of multiple executive orders. These people think AI is the last thing humans will invent, and the first person to have it will reap massive rewards until the other powers can catch up. As such, they're willing to bend the typical rules of capitalism. Think of this as the early stages of a wartime economy.

[...]

I'm going to say something that sounds a little crazy, but please bear with me: from a geopolitical perspective, what we're doing is a rational play, and depending on how valuable/powerful you expect AI to be and how hostile you expect a dominant China to be, possibly a near optimal one. If you're a traditional capitalist, it probably looks like a bad move to you regardless of your beliefs about AI; you're going to need to put those aside. This is not a traditional economic situation. We're in an arms race, and we're veering into a wartime economy, or at least that's how the powerful view it.

[...]

Returning to the traditional capitalists, I'd like to note that they aren't wrong; this AI push is unsustainable (for us). I'm not sure how long we can run our economy hot and directed before the wheels come off, but my napkin estimate is between 5-10 years, though it's likely we'll lose the political will to keep pushing before that point if the AI transformation is underwhelming and we still have a democracy. To further support the traditional capitalists' position, if AI unwinds at that point having under-delivered, the economic damage will probably be an order of magnitude greater than if we had just let the bubble deflate naturally. This will be exacerbated by the favorable treatment the administration will make sure the Oligarchs receive; we will suffer, they will coast.

Where does all this leave us? For one, you better hope and pray that AI delivers a magical transformation, because if it doesn't, the whole economy will collapse into brutal serfdom. When I say magic here, I mean it; because of the ~38T national debt bomb, a big boost is not enough. If AI doesn't completely transform our economy, the massive capital misallocation combined with the national debt is going to cause our economy to implode.

I don't have the expertise needed to evaluate the economic arguments, so I'm mainly posting this here to solicit feedback on the linked article.

It's probably too late to avoid a future of "brutal serfdom" regardless of what happens, even if we reach singularity escape velocity. Power will do what it always has done, which is centralize in the hands of a few to the detriment of the many; turning every human into a cyborg god won't change that (you simply have the problem of organizing the coexistence of cyborg gods rather than the problem of organizing the coexistence of baseline humans). To think otherwise is to implicitly rely on a Rousseauean (and anti-Hobbesean, channeling Hlynka) presupposition that people are basically good and just and suffering is merely an incidental byproduct of material lack, which we have reason to be skeptical of. The second half of the 20th century provided what were probably the most fertile material and social conditions for freedom that have ever been seen in human history; regardless of wherever we're going now, we're leaving freedom in the rear-view mirror.

People underestimate the size of the labour market. Replacing 1% of global labour is tens of millions of workers. The cost isn't just the salary, employees are expensive. The AI companies set the bar too high by promising AGI and replacing the majority of all coders and other promises that won't materialize. Luckily, they don't even have to come close to those lofty goals for AI to have a massive impact.

But like... is that actually a good thing? Obviously from the point of view of a corporation, being able to reduce the number of employees they need is great. Huge cost savings, even if it's just 1%. And a lot of them could potentially cut a lot more, like the ones who rely on big call centers.

But for the global economy, what happens? I know the traditional answer is that those workers then go find something other job and our overall productivity increases. But it's far from clear to me what a million laid-off call center employees are supposed to do instead. Work in the factories? Those were closed/offshored decades ago. Learn to code? Silicon valley isn't exactly yearning to hire one million junior programmers with no experience these days. In fact, they're also hoping to lay off programmers and make it up with AI instead.

It seems like a lot of areas will jsut end up with significantly higher unemployment from this.

There is an infinite demand for labour in the forms of landscapers and butlers and such for the moneyed. That’s essentially what has come to pass with the rise of service economics. Of course for the past 30 years wages for people below the 90th percentile have been stagnant.

Of course for the past 30 years wages for people below the 90th percentile have been stagnant.

Nope

Also nope

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