“The growth of the Internet will slow drastically … By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” - Paul Krugman
To be fair he has done a lot for economics, but he is far from infallible.
I think Krugman has generally focused on labor productivity when talking about technology and the economy. He made that prediction in the 90s, when the productivity paradox was a topic.
Obviously I was wrong about the internet petering out, and have admitted that. So it goes. Show me an economist who claims never to have made a bad prediction, and I’ll show you someone who’s either dishonest or unwilling to take intellectual risks.
He has a recent-ish oped (direct nyt link) where he admits he was wrong but then brings up labor productivity again, waggles his eyebrows, and gives you a smouldering look. He sounded convincing to me, but I don’t have the background knowledge to know if he’s cherry picking his numbers.
I think Krugman is a legit intellectual and doesn’t intentionally cherry pick numbers. I followed his blog and such starting when I was a teenager (during the 2008 crisis), and I think he helped me understand what was going on, using fairly rigorous math and data (for a “science” communicator). Few other economic communicators made sense to me at the time. The Austrian school was being pushed heavily by the right and tech-bros, and didn’t seem based on anything but vibes.
Yeah I’ve had a few low profile disagreements/disputes with krugman (used to be an economist) and I’ve even been right once. He can be fun to talk with
Just to be clear, you’re saying he was right more often than you?
Yes. I was a decent economist, not a good economist
I saw him sort of maintain that message recently. His counterpoint was that it hasn’t made much material difference in average lives.
I’m not sure I followed, I mean, would the current level of globalization be possible with faxes?
On the other hand, the internet is for ads, so maybe.
So are fax machines. The bulk of the faxes received by corporate fax machines in the 90s were ads.
Oh dear gods, the faxes. I worked at a telemarketing company that handled legal documents, and I’d sent about 20 faxes a day to people we’d hired. We had five damn fax machines which would be running constantly 5am-8pm PST.
My family got ISDN, a slight upgrade from dialup where you got two lines, so your mom could talk on the phone while you were waiting for websites to load about 14% faster.
Problem was, the extra line also had a phone number, and both numbers reached both lines. Our new number apparently used to be the fax line of some business downtown, and we’d get phone calls from fax machines several times a day. The other end was a robot, so yelling that we’re not a fax did nothing.
We had to borrow a fax machine so we could receive the fax. It was an ad from Dell. Then we called the number on the ad and asked for our number to be deleted from their database. Thankfully they turned out to be the only vendor faxing that number.
Compared eith other technologies like the toilet or ehe washing machine, the Internet had not make the life of people materially better not even close to the same level.
I’ve had the honor to try both - shitting in a latrine, and living without the internet. If this ever becomes a choice, you can keep your fancy toilet, sir!
His head is so far up his own ass he can’t bear to consider admitting he was totally, absolutely, inconceiveably wrong.
I would suggest that in that example, he is predicting the future, while in the video, he is speaking about what can already be observed.
From my perspective, the idea that the internet growth would have slowed drastically by 2005 was obviously a shit prediction no matter when he made it. But it’s just a prediction about the future.
I think observations about things that can already be observed will always be more accurate than predictions about the future.
Agreed.
Here’s a way to use crypto to buy from pretty much any major online merchant anonymously without them tracking your user data:
https://paywithmoon.com/merchants
Its a card that acts as an intermediary for crypto.
It let’s you buy from these merchants without giving away your private data or buying habits.
This is a valuable use for crypto for many people. This is a site that let’s them use their crypto basically anywhere without getting spied on.
This fundamentally disproves his first core statments about crypto not having a use case and not being usable at most merchants.
Basically, he immediately reveals he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
I mean… I doubt the veracity of these claims.
Like, you could pay with cash and get the same level of benefit. While the serial numbers are tracked, movement of money is pretty random once it hits a customer’s hands, and that level of randomness might as well make anonymous.
Additionally, good luck getting crypto through anything that isn’t centralized, which removes the supposed benefit of the technology. If you want to get crypto anonymously, you’ll have to buy it from people instead of exchanges.
Plus, crypto comes with the inherent downside of premiums to exchange currency. You might as well just tax yourself 5% extra, but that’s probably generous considering how awfully volatile crypto can be.
And the fact that this uses fucking VISA should be a huge red flag for privacy, lmao. Congrats on not amalgamating your customer profile by purchasing our VISATM brand prepaid credit cards. They still made money off you.
Overall, you’d be better off asking someone a city over to buy what you want off the internet and paying them cash.
Crypto is, at best, a stupid hobby that got out of control, and, at worst, a huge scam people are desperate to find a legitimate use for and still can’t.
Also has a Nobel Prize (something he downplays).
Decent substack too.
Sort of. There isn’t a Nobel prize for economics. He has a Sveriges Riksbank that’s given at the same ceremony.
You’re right, it’s really “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel”
I love the idea of cryptocurrency and blockchain validated transactions, but the reality of it is very different.
I don’t like chargebacks being impossible. I think countries being able to manipulate their currency to balance inflation and unemployment has advantages too; if we’re going to keep doing this capitalism thing at least.
Land value taxes funding direct stimulus via UBI are a wayyy better way to control inflation and unemployment imo than interest rates and monetary inflation…
no chargebacks is a problem tho. that and everyone’s past transaction history being public record and not just available to well-accoutable investigative authorities. first mover advantage with crypto is also kinda terrible…
He’s wrong about the cult part though. The people screaming are criminals, idealists, speculants and deranged people
The word cult is derived from the Latin term cultus, which means ‘worship’.[1] In modern English the term cult is generally a pejorative, carrying derogatory connotations.[2] The term is variously applied to abusive or coercive groups of many categories, including gangs, organized crime, and terrorist organizations.[3]
Sociological classifications of religious movements may identify a cult as a social group with socially deviant or novel beliefs and practices,[5] although this is often unclear.[6][7] Other researchers present a less-organized picture of cults, saying that they arise spontaneously around novel beliefs and practices.[8]
In its pejorative sense, the term is often used for new religious movements and other social groups defined by their unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals,[11] or their group belief in a particular person, object, or goal. This sense of the term is weakly defined, having divergent definitions both in popular culture and in academia, where it has been an ongoing source of contention among scholars across several fields of study.[12][13] According to Susannah Crockford, “[t]he word ‘cult’ is a shapeshifter, semantically morphing with the intentions of whoever uses it. As an analytical term, it resists rigorous definition.” She argues that the least subjective definition of cult refers to a religion or religion-like group “self-consciously building a new form of society”, but that the rest of society rejects as unacceptable.[14]
🤷♂️ It seems to fit?
Although the article does then continue with:
The term cult has been criticized as lacking “scholarly rigour”; Benjamin E. Zeller stated “[l]abelling any group with which one disagrees and considers deviant as a cult may be a common occurrence, but it is not scholarship”.[15] Religious scholar Catherine Wessinger argued the term was dehumanizing of the people within the group, as well as their children; following the Waco siege, it was argued by some scholars that the defining of the Branch Davidians as a cult by the media, government and former members is a significant factor as to what led to the deaths.[16] However, it has also been viewed as empowering for ex-members of groups who have had traumatic experiences.[15] The term was noted to carry “considerable cultural legitimacy”.[17]
His arguments aren’t exactly solid. They are:
- It isn’t widely used. Well, just because something isn’t popular doesn’t mean it’s bad. See Linux, Tor, …
- It is only being used for speculation and criminal activity. That’s simply guilt by association. I’ve actually seen places that have stickers that say they accept Monero, for instance. I doubt they would have put up those stickers if there weren’t people who actually used that as a form of payment.
- Everyone who disagrees with this is in a cult. I don’t think I have to elaborate on this one.
We badly need a payment solution that offers privacy. Even cash is getting less and less private with automated serial number readers. If Crypto offers a perspective to fix that problem, I’m all for it, at least as a concept (minus a lot of the crap that’s being done with crypto nowadays).
- He didnt say its bad for not being widely used. You can use linux alone, on your own. The point of a currency is to be exchanged, so a currency that is not adopted by people is of very limited use.
- People put up a lot of stupid stickers all the time. People often invest in bad ideas.
- The cult thing is not about anyone who disagrees, its about those with aggressive and exagerated reactions.
How does crypto increase privacy? Isn’t the whole ledger public, so if someone manages to identify your wallet they can see all your past transactions?
Most cryptos are public. Monero specifically though cryptographically obfuscates sender, receiver, and amount.
Yeah, it seems like crypto offers less privacy to me, unless that crypto exchange/wallet/idk thingy that would pay businesses for you in exchange for crypto is legit.
stickers that say they accept Monero
If you’re holding the speculative asset you have incentive to promote the use of that asset.
How many people do you think actually pay with monero?
Even Monero is so huge at this point that one person shilling hard won’t make any significant difference in their own net worth.
I doubt they would have put up those stickers if there weren’t people who actually used that as a form of payment.
You arw overestimating people and businesses owners here.
He should’ve taken an economics course.
Krugman is firmly Keynesian school. Where are they teaching whichever school of economics is Bitcoin maximalism?
Youtube.
He has won the nobel prize in economics.
Prime “don’t you know who I am?” material right there
That’s a shame
“What problem does this technology solve? What does it do that other, much cheaper and easier-to-use technologies can’t do just as well or better? I still haven’t heard a clear answer."
Bitcoin (not crypto) solves the problem of centralization and control of money. It is a harder form of money than gold. You can send a billion dollars for pennies across the world in 10 minutes. It is completely transparent. It can provide access to finance to people who are traditionally excluded. It cannot be censored.
If he hasn’t heard a clear answer, it’s because he’s willfully ignorant at this point. And again, crypto is 99.9% BS. Bitcoin was not the first crypto, and it won’t be the last crypto, but it is the only one of its kind and if north of a trillion dollars doesn’t convince you of that, including institutional money, then nothing will and I invite you to invest in the stock market instead and hope inflation doesn’t steal your retirement away.
Bitcoin (not crypto) solves the problem of centralization and control of money.
No it doesnt, 51% attack, please do hush. It’s the same reason TOR is probably compromised - we can’t actually detect if one has happened.
I can’t even fathom what the cost of trying to implement a 51% attack on bitcoin would be.
Among the many feasible vectors with which you could accomplish it: Bitmain’s HQ is in Beijing, and while there is some scrutiny on the subject there has never been a (public) investigation into what’s actually baked into the silicon to check and make sure there’s not a 1337 backdoor or similar. Antminers are a fucking stunning percentage of the nodes out there, and although nothing like 51% of all nodes are just antminers, it still wouldn’t be difficult (for a powerful nation-state) to repeat the process across multiple manufacturers and get that kind of distributed influence.
It’s completely possible that the classically imagined 51% attack has never occurred (the “muhahaha all your coins are belong to us” scenario), but having that kind of large influence over the blockchain would trivially allow for subtle manipulations that would have world-spanning impacts. We have no way of demonstrating that it’s happened, nor mitigating it if it has, which is a big part of why bitcoin is regarded as such a joke by everyone that isn’t part of the cult. And to be clear, I have no idea if this has happened - that’s the problem, there’s by design no way of checking or verifying integrity on that scale.
Bitcoin was a half-baked idea that’s only stuck around because of the speculative market.
what’s actually baked into the silicon
Bitmain has actually discovered and used a vulnerability in SHA256 hash function to their own benefit before. It took months, but people eventually found out.
While the situation is concerning, it’s not like there are no eyes on what bitmain is doing. These days you can reflash the software on their machines, or eve use your own custom control boards if you wish. The guys from Braiins are doing some amazing work in this regard.
Yeah, there’s lots of hypothetical routes. Braiins or similar getting a poisoned repo would be my bet for a real attack, but I was mostly considering how much of an impact it would have to, say, slip a few tens of millions to a handful of TSMC (or buy 15% of NVIDIA…) design engineers to include something on the compute dies. The specific issue with ASICs is that manipulations could be present below firmware, baked in at the physical silicon level, and with modern lithographic densities there’s essentially no mechanism for anyone to check to make sure that hasn’t happened.
I just bought another $100, thank you
Why would you think I care? The audience I’m writing for isn’t you, one of the above referenced “cultists” they were talking about screaming in the comments, it’s for anyone who isn’t already firmly entrenched within this strange little cult. Your poor financial decisions are your own burdens to bear, don’t try to offload the burden for your choices onto me.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I do applaud you choosing not to make any more comically unfounded claims. The form leaves a little to be desired, but overall I’m glad to see improvement…
In such case, the Nobel commitee shoud probably set higher standards.
Lolz dafuq. Gotta be kidding me with this comment, and I hope it’s a joke.
Not at all.
Predictions for the price of Bitcoin in 2030? Give me a number. And then don’t forget it.
It’ll be worth exactly one bitcoin
Again…people don’t actually use it to buy anything. It has no tangible value aside from people buying.
Hasn’t it lost like 15% of its value this week?
Isn’t it worth 95,000?
I’ve been having conversations with doubters since it was 2,000 dollars. I wouldn’t waste your breath on me. I’ll be alright.
It worries me that you think this is a rebuttal to what they said.
And that doesn’t worry me…at all.
One further piece of evidence to support the theory that we are not the same person.
I’m downvoting you just to reinforce the idea that no one here gets sarcasm
They’re not being sarcastic, unfortunately they have gone on to double down. Rare hivemind W on this one.
