hark

You may not like it, but this is what 10x productivity looks like.

It's faster to go from the 50th floor of a building to the bottom by jumping out the window than it would be taking the elevator, but that just makes a mess of things. Similarly, you seem to be going faster with AI, and in some respects you are, but there's also the matter of technical debt, which is the messy aspect that someone has to deal with later.

I have used AI to quickly write up small functions here or there, but even then I've had to go in and clean up the code because even in small tasks it can be messy. The mess scales with the size of the problem, even if you do split it up among more agents (in fact it can be worse if you use too many agents).

Especially when people claim 10x productivity gains (a suspiciously oft-repeated claim, by the way), alarm bells ring in my mind, because I've seen the garbage that AI generates, and no one is actually reading that garbage carefully and cleaning it up while maintaining 10x productivity.

You're missing the point. Ever since Reagan, "the economy" has been in service of the stock market and shareholder primacy has been the rule of the land. This isn't something that should be assumed natural.

Reminds me of when the stupid "Web 3.0" made up by blockchain freaks was supposed to be the future. Not every technology will be as widespread as the internet. The internet facilitates communication across the entire world and offers many advantages over phone, mail, and other forms of communication.

The use cases and advantages are clear, even if there was an overly eager hype cycle in the 90s. AI might have some uses, but a clear advantage has not actually been established yet, nor have the legal challenges been ironed out. Remember that the current iteration of AI would not have been possible without breaking tons of IP law, slurping up as much data as possible.

Again, that's assuming the "worst time to invest" will be followed by the greatest bull run in history. Now try a situation where the government and Fed aren't pumping trillions of dollars to help the market.

depending on returns

All the "just save $X per month" advice hinges on this, but for some reason, finance "gurus" take our current longest bull run in history and pretend high returns are guaranteed.

Anyway, it's funny that you call for $500 a month when, according to this article: 63% of workers are unable to pay a $500 emergency expense

If so many can't come up with $500 for an emergency, what makes you think they'll have $500 every month to save? What makes you think $2-4 million will be enough to retire on by the time, given the rate of inflation we've been experiencing?

Not just 20 extra people. I'm seeing a funny trend in my company where managers decide to get into vibe coding and they get super excited at getting something somewhat functional running, so now they've been presenting "their work" and expecting developers to merge their heaping trash in. That'll require quite a few more people.

They can't print oil, but they can play games with the strategic reserve and maybe implement heavy (heavier) subsidies, but yeah, eventually reality should set in. I just have no idea how long that would take. So far the market seems to take trump at his word every time.

Europe could help by muzzling their rabid dog israel.

I have no idea what an economic crisis would look like anymore. Ever since 2008, it seems the playback for any sign of economic trouble has been printing ridiculous amounts of money and shoving it directly into the pockets of rich people while playing a shell game with bad debts. This seems to allow the terrible economy to keep limping along.

They should start with themselves.

This is ignoring the massive costs in building, staffing, and maintaining a moon base. There are battery chemistries that do not rely on lithium and even there weren't, we wouldn't need to fight wars over it. The wars are fought in an attempt to control those resources, even if not scarce. Expanding territory does not reduce scarcity when the scarcity is artificial (so that a few can exert control over the many). Also, why would the earth be depopulated while mars somehow thrives?