The forces that are afoot are about to go into overdrive. People do not realize how quickly society will be transformed. governments are, by default, too slow to respond. Most people, because they fail to look past the next episode of reality television do not know what is coming.
Basically, the masses are going to be blindsided.
Technology is starting to heat up to a degree we never dreamed possible. This is going to disrupt much of life, in ways we never dreamed about. While some are complaining about how things are now, just wait.
They will be completely hysterical in the next 5-10 years.
To some, that might sound like a long time but it does go quickly. We are already 4 years into this decade. It seems like yesterday we were just learning about this thing called COVID.
So be mindful of what 4-5 years looks like when reading through this.
Technological Deflation
Here is something that is totally misunderstood. Anyone who reads my articles regularly has more insight into what takes place with things such as money than most of the world. Simple concepts are completely wrangled while the complex is brought to the simplistic.
It is madness and the reason why people are wrong...for decades.
When it comes to the inflation discussion, the idea of hyperinflation is laughable. To believe that not only shows a lack of understanding about the global monetary system but also technology.
To start grasping the world around us, we have to remember this point:
Technology, by definition, is deflationary.
Some might claim this is good. After all, the masses believe inflation bad so deflation good. Of course, this is foolish. The Great Depression was the most deflationary period in modern history. Do you think it was a good era?
The problem with deflation is that it hits the working class. This is something that few seem to understand. Prices dropping means nothing if you do not have a job. And what happens when the revenues of a company slows? They lay people off.
Technology is taking things to another level.
Massive Job Loss
Some like to maintain that "technology always creates more jobs than it destroys".
That might have been the case for a long time yet it was invalidated over the last 25 years. We see less working at people in the workforce as a percentage of whole than ever before. This was on a steady decline since 1998.
What is the cause of this?
In short, we have to say technology. The last quarter century saw a massive advancement in technology. This has eradicated complete industries. Of course, new ones did pop up yet they do not employ the same number of people.
For example, U.S manufacturing is at an all time high. This is something that keeps growing. Of course, many will tell you otherwise but look at the data.
What is not at an all time high is the manufacturing jobs. In fact, the U.S. is down 1.5 million of those. So we have record output with 1.5 million less workers. What is the root of that?
Again, we have the answer in technology.
The challenge is blue collar is not the next target. We are looking at the white collar realm that will be obliterated. Manufacturing had one defense: it operates in the world of atoms.
We are limited in what we can do in the physical realm. Things move slower since it is harder to automate something.
The world of bits and bytes is completely different. Automation when it comes to software is a much quicker approach. With the technology we are dealing with today, it is easy to see how things can accelerate.
Just looking at some of the LLMs, they are still in their infancy. ChatGPT is not even a year on the open market. The question is not what are the limitations today but, rather, where will this technology be in a year.
Another case in point: OpenAi recently had a valuation of around $90 billion. This is (was) a company with under 1,000 people.
In the past, disruption took decades. This is no longer the case. If we project out what some of these LLMs might be like in another 24 months, it might be mind-boggling. Of course, things could slow down but the pace does not appear to be abating.
We then have the theories that Altman and OpenAI were closer to AGI than many expected. This might be a reason for the board to have stepped in.
What the details, we know they have some powerful stuff they are sitting upon. If that is the case for OpenAi, what do some of the other companies have?
Software is, indeed, going to eat the world. It is only a matter of time before the digital platforms expand even more. The marriage between the digital and physical is growing. That means that, once digitized, things absolutely accelerate.
In the end, this means the money is removed. We see this repeatedly. Technology, over time, pushed prices to zero (or near zero).
One way it does this is to take jobs out.