“The Enshittifinancial Crisis”

A colossal level of malinvestment that is the AI bubble, that has infested ridiculous corporate valuations and bank lending practices. Waiting for its pin. The article is a long read but chock full of insight. Some highlights:

“It’s times like this where it’s necessary to make the point that there is absolutely “enough money” to end hunger or build enough affordable housing or have universal healthcare, but they would be “too expensive” or “not profitable enough,” despite having a blatant and obvious economic benefit in that more people would have happier, better lives and — if you must see the world in purely reptilian senses — enable many more people to have disposable income and the means of entering the economy on even terms.

By contrast, investments in AI do not appear to be driving much economic growth at all, other than in the revenue driven to NVIDIA from selling these GPUs, and the construction of data centers themselves. Had Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon sunk $776 billion into building housing and renting it out, the world would be uneven, we would have horrible new landlords, and it would still be a great deal better than one where nearly a trillion dollars is being wasted propping up a broken, doomed industry, all because the people in charge are fucking idiots obsessed with growth.”

“There is also a brewing bullshit crisis in Private Equity, which is heavily invested in data centers.”

“The AI bubble is an inflation of capital and egos, of people emboldened and outright horny over the prospect of millions of people’s livelihoods being automated away. It is a global event where we’ve realized how the global elite are just as stupid and ignorant as anybody you’d meet on the street — Business Idiots that couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag, empowered by other Business Idiots that desperately need to believe that everything will grow forever.”