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> Meanwhile the AI fad is seeing huge layoffs.

This is really the only point I disagree with. Layoffs are being blamed on AI, but they are really a hangover of the covid hiring boom, and subsequent bust.

All the tech money is going into building data centres (and the gas turbines that power data centres), and it turns out that programmers don’t have the relevant skills to build gas turbines.

There are a bunch of factors that are intertwining. And unfortunately, some specific demographics are mostly those being most caught in the crosshairs.

And building gas turbines (or even designing them) are probably not jobs that pay salaries developers got accustomed to, especially in Sillicon Valley, over the last 10-20 years.

Jobs at GE in Schenectady may not be what those developers are looking for even if they were qualified.

No, but it's a fun line for any automotive or other old-industry workers to throw at programmers, as they were the ones promised re-training in industries they would have to start from the bottom in.

A few months ago I’d have been right there with you; however recently there have been a number of high profile multi-thousand-head layoffs attributed to budget pressure of deploying AI - and so technically it’s more of an indirect rather than “a robot stole my job” replacement, but still causal. Those tokens will be “doing” labor, rather than the human.

Workers at many of these companies are being required to use AI each day, not because AI is such vaporware that it has to be pushed, but because making employees use it creates trainable datasets to further improve it, further automate work, further put pressure on headcount. A very worrying cycle on top of the already rapidly improving real capabilities of AI.

> Layoffs are being blamed on AI, but they are really a hangover of the covid hiring boom.

The world's most convenient virus.

Most companies are showing high revenue and profit and still laying off huge segments of their workforce. Largely due to the stock market - a lot of non-AI players are facing lowering stock price.

High revenue and profit are not relevant - employees cost money, so if company feels it could do without them, the layoffs happen. Low revenue and loss would be another reason for layoffs too, of course.

> And farms are failing. Climate change will accelerate that, so there will be food shortages within a few years.

This is the key one to watch out for. Prior food-based conflicts have sparked revolutions and civil wars. People can tolerate not having electricity, people can tolerate not having internet, people can tolerate not having gas.

But a lack of food, due to a wheat shortage which in turn was sparked by Siberian wildfires destroying a whole year's wheat crop in Russia, precipitated the Arab Spring and the subsequent civil wars, as well as the ascendancy of ISIS.

> Climate change will accelerate that

The climate is changing in a positive direction for farming. Farming is easier now than ever before. There's literally no chance of food shortages. Unless, of course, there's another attempt at building socialism.

And also the sky is red rather than blue.

You cannot state a contrary opinion like that here without kicking off the tribalism mentality. Yes, hacker news internet nerds have that. You can observe it in the wild above by the incessant down votes.

Coffee crops have already been failing the last few years due to global warming, and now with the fertilizer crisis that is hitting major coffee producers hard this year (Kenya, Ethiopia, Indonesia, all famous for coffee and all dependent on Gulf fertilizer).

So where are all these rich bunkers and storage caches again? Isn't there like a map of these things, to help them preserve their thousands of lbs of food for their future generations of course. No need to have backup feed for the starving masses.

William Gibson coined the term "The Jackpot" to describe an apocalypse made up of many different disasters all happening near in time, overwhelming civilization. Pandemic, war, mismanagement, corruption, resource scarcity, climate breakdown, ...

The book "1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed" essentially argues that as being the root cause of the Bronze Age Collapse. The eastern Mediterranean and middle east were sophisticated, highly integrated cultures with a large amount of trade. There was a series of droughts, earth quakes, fires, etc. that re-occurred over a period of time, causing agricultural output to drop, leading to rebellions, leading to wars, leading the trade routes to collapse, and everything collapsing roughly at the same time.

The more academic term is polycrisis.

It would be a great scapegoat for further monetary expansion related inflation.

Step 1) Instigate price increases for temporary reasons, leading to noticeable price increases.

Step 2) As temporary reasons go away, increase money supply. Prices stay the same, you get to blame the causes from step (1) while not mentioning that the prices could have gone down when the problem went away, or blaming greedy companies for not lowering the prices.

Presumably food shortages will first be felt by livestock, so expect meat to get much more affordable (as animals are slaughtered to avoid the need to feed them) for a while, then expensive (when there are fewer head). Animal feed represents over 50% of acreage.

we can generate full protein mixtures with hydrogenotrophs, fed green hydrogen from solar, the photosynthesis -> protein is 10x more efficient than plants.

90% of acreage could be slashed this way, either for rewilding or for development.

Soylent Green, but veritable, not old people

US tariffs are mostly dead. Ruled illegal and being refunded. Second attempt at tariffs has also been stopped. And inflation over the past 5 years is still milder than the late 70s and definitely milder than what has been seen in Turkey or Argentina or Zimbabwe.

Not to mention that some of the effects that OP cited are either deflationary (like layoffs and automation), or clearly cyclic (like the memory boom bust stages, experienced just a few years ago post COVID).

Ah, the ole’ “were doing better than Germany ca 1937” argument. /s

I didn't say "doing better". I was responding to someone very wrongly stating that we're at a historic level of inflation.

refunded to whom? the businesses? great! where’s my refund as a consumer who paid those higher costs (passed along to me)?

If you imported yourself, then all major carriers (Fedex, UPS, DHL) have announced that they will refund the cost.

The imported stuff you bought retail unfortunately won't be refunded (unless one of the current ongoing class action lawsuit will win).

And AI causing electricity infrastructure price rises for domestic consumers - aka forced indirect investment in AI companies.

Oops, sorry, wrongthink, I mean "due to the war in the Middle East", even though a large majority of gas in the UK comes from elsewhere (gas and electricity prices in the UK are supposedly very tightly coupled ?)

If Malaysia can't obtain 30% of its fuel because of the Hormuz closure, they don't just reduce their consumption of fuel by 30%, but make up for most of the deficit by buying it for a higher price somewhere else. But the fuel they buy to make up for the deficit simply means there's less fuel for other folks buying in that market to purchase, which drives up prices. This process repeats until prices stabilize worldwide, which ultimately results in higher prices for fuel in the UK.

What's fuel (petrol/diesel) got to do with it? (By gas I meant natural gas, not petrol)

Destruction of russian refineries should increase proposition of crude oil on the market and drive price down a bit.

Farms are failing where? More than usual?

they are not failing, our Socialist President provides billions in handouts for Farmers so they gonna be just fine

if they are large corporation owned farms as many small family owned farms are going to go bankrupt in the next 2 years because of the price of fertilizer and diesel and higher interest rate.

He destroys trade relations so the farmers can’t sell their produce, then bails them out by taking on more government debt so farmers can dump soybeans in a ditch.

It’s all such a clown show.

We're losing a lot of workers. Some might consider that a good thing if they hate the idea of a large exploited underclass (or just people of a certain skin color), but it could be a problem for farms if there aren't enough hands to harvest in time.

Let us hope this results in farms offering Americans better wages for working on farms. Only 1% of the retail cost of produce is due to labour. Farms could double wages to workers and it would barely move the needle on inflation.

I agree, but the farmers aren't pulling in massive amounts of cash either. There are record profits being siphoned from the wages of the workers, and from the profits of the farmers, and from the pockets of the consumer at the register. We'd all be better off if we tracked the money down and took it back.

Put Wall Street out of work and have the bankers work the farms out there in rural Conneticut and NJ and NY. It'll be good for them, put some hair on their chest and give them Real World Experience (tm)

Farmers don't see your retail cost in their gains either. That's captured by huge middlemen corporations.

Unless of course the farmers are themselves working for a huge vertically-integrated corpo.

Oh come on. What they are trying to do is turn farm owners into corporate farm employees. The handouts are just to keep their votes.

Handout for American farmers or Argentine ones?

New Jersey just declared a state of emergency after an unprecedented cold snap wiped out crops across the state, up to 90+% for some farms.

Don't forget the threat of Ebola, hantavirus, Taiwan war

The Taiwan war that the world is sleepwalking into is going to wipe out so much chip capacity that the current inflation will look like a blip.

While it's a possibility, do you believe it is likely enough in the very near future to the point where you are betting on it? Perhaps shorting TSMC?

If I did so when I first thought about it, I would be broke by now.

The point to short will be when the Chinese army forms up.

With Ukraine we saw it. It was incredibly obvious. Hilariously the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences. Taiwan will be the same. But the satellites will give everyone enough warning.

> Hilariously the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences.

In terms of gaining political support, being a victim in the modern world is very advantageous. The more of your civilians die unjustly, the more the media will portray you as a great and brave leader. There is nothing hilarious about this, only cynicism of the leaders of the country.

> the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences

You're going to have to cite that, because Ukraine was already in the low-intensity Donbass conflict when the most recent invasion happened.

But yes, you can't hide an invasion fleet. The Chinese navy only has three aircraft carriers. They've recently had high level purges in the PLA. Invading now would be a disaster for them. But you never know when a disaster is going to get ordered for political reasons.

The Chinese also have at least a few landing ships that they've been practicing with. I'm not sure how many aircraft carriers they need for Taiwan.

At the time it did seem like mobilization came very late, after the invasion already began. But like the other commenters pointed out they did prepare for it and a few more days of mobilization wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

Ukraine expected treaties to mean something. The world now knows better.

To be fair my understanding at the time was that Ukraine was well aware the invasion was coming and the government was publicly making claims that helped avoid panic and allowed them to move military assets around more easily.

>Hilariously the Ukrainians themselves saw the huge army on their border and told everyone it wasn’t going to happen and refused to build any defences.

Not the full truth. Leadership said publicly that there was nothing to worry about, but the AFU dispersed assets, distributed suppiles and ammunition, and took a defensive stance before the invasion happened.

I'm sure leadership in Ukraine was aware of an impeding war, but naturally that's not the type of thing you're gonna tell your citizens. It doesn't help anything; it would only cause panic, migration, and resource hoarding.

Not shorting TSMC, I’ve lost too much money shorting and it’s just too easy to lose because of timing even if you eventually are correct.

I’ve overweighted EU weapons manufacturers because a Taiwan war will be coupled with an expansion of the war in Europe. With the US busy trying to fight China, Russia will for sure make a bigger move in Europe. European defense budgets will 10x.

Big picture, I think you're right that there will be continued and increased EU spending on weapons. But... Russia is basically at full capacity just standing still (or losing slowly) in Ukraine. Do they even have the ability (people, weapons, fuel, money, logistics) to significantly expand the war further?

I hope they don’t but also worry that China is willing to fight to the last Russian just to keep Europe busy.

Are you expecting that China invades Taiwan and destroys chip production? Or cuts the world off and keeps the supply for itself?

If China were to invade successfully, Taiwan chip production will self-destruct just to prevent it from falling into Chinese hands.

Keep going…