←back to thread

416 points floverfelt | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
Show context
krainboltgreene ◴[] No.45055969[source]
> All major technological advances have come with economic bubbles, from canals and railroads to the internet.

Is this actually correct? I don't see any evidence for a "airflight bubble" or a "car bubble" or a "loom bubble" at the technologies' invention. Also the "canal bubble" wasn't about the technology, it was about the speculation on a series of big canals but we had been making canals for a long time. More importantly, even if it was correct, there are plenty of bubbles (if not significantly more) around things that didn't have value or tech that didn't matter.

replies(4): >>45056028 #>>45056137 #>>45056185 #>>45056300 #
sfink ◴[] No.45056137[source]
Apologies for arguing from first principles, but for anything that spurs a lot of activity, the only alternative to a bubble is this: people ramp up investment and activity and enthusiasm only as much as the underlying thing can handle, then gradually taper off the increase and gently level off at the equilibrium "carrying capacity" of the new technology.

Does that sound like any human, ever, to you?

(The only time there isn't a bubble is when the thing just isn't that interesting to people and so there's never a big wave of uptake in the first place.)

replies(1): >>45056996 #
1. krainboltgreene ◴[] No.45056996[source]
If you were right then we'd have a lot more than a dozen listed bubbles on wikipedia.

That's an absurd framing for a cute quip.

replies(1): >>45057472 #
2. BlueTemplar ◴[] No.45057472[source]
Why do you assume that Wikipedia can be trusted to provide an exhaustive answer to this question ?