Technology has always been deflationary. But you don't put off buying a computer because it will be cheaper next year. Nobody seems to be putting off buying GPUs despite scary depreciation and a blistering pace of new product introductions that are ever cheaper faster and better.
> when prices go down instead of up. It is generally considered harmful: both because it is usually brought on by something really bad (like a severe economic contraction)
Or, you know, technological improvements that increase efficiency of production, or bountiful harvests, or generally anything else that suddenly expands the supply at the current price level across the economy. Thankfully, we have mechanisms in place that keep the prices inflating even when those unlikely events happen.
Deflation is about all prices going down. Just a few decreasing is normal.
Anyway, WTF, economics communication has a huge problem. I've seen the article's explanation repeated in plenty of places, it's completely wrong and borderline nonsense.
The reason deflation is bad is not because it makes people postpone buying things. It's because some prices, like salaries or rent just refuse to go down. That causes rationing of those things.
Does anyone else agree with this the premise of this article? Is it sensible to put off building things now because it will get even cheaper and faster later?
Maybe the time value of time is only increasing as we go.
The conclusion that you should wait to build anything is an illustration of the danger of economic inflation that the author started with. I'm not sure why he thinks the economic version is toxic but the technological version is a good idea though.
The answer to should we just sit around and wait for better technology is obviously no. We gain a lot of knowledge by building with what we have; builders now inform where technology improves. (The front page has an article about Voyager being a light day away...)
I think the more interesting question is what would happen if we induced some kind of 2% "technological inflation" - every year it gets harder to make anything. Would that push more orgs to build more things? Everyone pours everything they have into making products now because their resources will go less far next year.
Technology has always been deflationary. But you don't put off buying a computer because it will be cheaper next year. Nobody seems to be putting off buying GPUs despite scary depreciation and a blistering pace of new product introductions that are ever cheaper faster and better.
> when prices go down instead of up. It is generally considered harmful: both because it is usually brought on by something really bad (like a severe economic contraction)
Or, you know, technological improvements that increase efficiency of production, or bountiful harvests, or generally anything else that suddenly expands the supply at the current price level across the economy. Thankfully, we have mechanisms in place that keep the prices inflating even when those unlikely events happen.
Deflation is about all prices going down. Just a few decreasing is normal.
Anyway, WTF, economics communication has a huge problem. I've seen the article's explanation repeated in plenty of places, it's completely wrong and borderline nonsense.
The reason deflation is bad is not because it makes people postpone buying things. It's because some prices, like salaries or rent just refuse to go down. That causes rationing of those things.
I agree. It's super common that the price of vegetables goes up and down arround the year, in particular due to the harvest season.
>It's because some prices, like salaries or rent just refuse to go down.
a common argument, but one that doesn't bear out in the absence of regulation enforcing that.
Does anyone else agree with this the premise of this article? Is it sensible to put off building things now because it will get even cheaper and faster later?
Maybe the time value of time is only increasing as we go.
The conclusion that you should wait to build anything is an illustration of the danger of economic inflation that the author started with. I'm not sure why he thinks the economic version is toxic but the technological version is a good idea though.
The answer to should we just sit around and wait for better technology is obviously no. We gain a lot of knowledge by building with what we have; builders now inform where technology improves. (The front page has an article about Voyager being a light day away...)
I think the more interesting question is what would happen if we induced some kind of 2% "technological inflation" - every year it gets harder to make anything. Would that push more orgs to build more things? Everyone pours everything they have into making products now because their resources will go less far next year.
Actually yes. I wanted to get into UI programming with GTK 2 and right now im waiting for GTK 6 to stabilize so i can commit to it.
Knowing that GTK (n-1) will soon be obsolete is enough reason to not put effort into learning it.