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Comment by peddling-brink | Hacker News Reader

> That's a feature, not a side effect.

You’re implying that the deep lizard state planned the LLM craze?

Sama might be a lizard..

You don't need a back room filled with cigar smoke where supervillains coordinate their plans while twirling their mustaches when good ol' class interest does the same job.

r>g is an old hustle, LLMs just accelerate it. Lizards aren't wizards.

when there was so little capital it had to be true... the idea that it will persist forever is obviously silly.

The problem isn't that it fails to unwind, the problem is what the unwind looks like. Last time it meant global upheaval and world wide capital incineration -- mostly metaphorical in the case of the US but very literal in the case of Europe and Asia. The poor suffer more in real terms but capital suffers more in nominal terms and that unwinds inequality and the burden of furnishing runaway capital with the runaway returns it demands in excess of economic growth.

I'm sure the same "strategy" will work again, but this time around everyone has nukes and drone swarms and AI-equipped bio labs so shit's gonna be lit.

r dropping below g isn't "unwinding". r has been falling for decades now. The world is awash in capital.

r>g, not r<g. In 2025 GDP grew 2.1% and SPY grew 17.7%, which is the pattern recently and throughout time.

Historically r>g, no one is debating that. It's the idea that it will just persist which is silly. Capital isn't immune to supply/demand.

And, r is the return on all assets, not just the s&p 500, and 1 year of returns means nothing...

Ok, if you like big intervals, 50 years, all nonwasting assets: returns were 10% in an economy growing 2%. The excess is so excessive that diddling the knobs gets you nowhere.

Capital isn't immune to supply and demand, but we do not live in the just and good universe where this leads to a Kuznets Curve. The Kuznets Curve fails because capital is in control of the economy and the politics and once it tastes high returns it fights like hell to keep them. Fights and wins. Every wise lever to pump r gets pulled, and then the unwise levers get pulled, and then the evil ones get pulled, and then the evil and stupid ones get pulled. Which brings us back to my claim, the one that answered yours earlier but you subsequently ignored:

> The problem isn't that r>g fails to unwind, the problem is what the unwind looks like.

Last time it looked like WWI/WWII. What do you think it will look like next time?

Completely made up numbers. Real returns to all assets haven't been close to 10%, and real GDP growth globally has been higher than 2%.

Anyone can parrot Piketty. Anyone with half a brain knows he is a hack.

Nah, you just don't like that he's right.

You're gonna have to diddle those numbers harder if you want to get rid of r>g.

Nah, he's a hack, extrapolating the recent past into the future.

I'm not the one making up numbers...

s/deep lizard state/billionaires/

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