Is DeepSeek a Sputnik Moment?

Sometimes wide moats and billions of dollars to blow lead not to glory but to hubris, which beckons Nemesis. While everyone was busy reassuring themselves the stock market was still A-OK, the driver of the market--the AI fad--just burned to the waterline. Yes, the current euphoric expectations for AI are a fad, the latest in the endless stream...

In summary: bloated headcounts, no new sources of revenue from AI, and limitless content with no scarcity value. Welcome to the DSD: DeepSeek Disruption. I've been fruitfully engaged in a lively dialog with readers on my Substack regarding my post yesterday Is DeepSeek a Sputnik Moment? (titled Is (Chinese) Software Suddenly Eating The World?...

Why is any reduction in consumption posed in terms of unbearable sacrifice, when no sacrifices are necessary to consequentially reduce consumption? When we think of the word power, we associate it with external forces: energy, technology, the government, etc. But our own choices of behavior are a great power that's all ours. Collectively, our...

A great many people laud traditional values and lifestyles, but they leave out the hard part: it take a heck of a lot of work, effort and sacrifice. I'm calling the next ten years The Do-It-Yourself Decade, as whatever we want to happen will increasingly be up to us to do for ourselves. After decades of fostering passive consumption--let...

A fatal bout of runaway instability becomes inevitable when "extraordinary emergency measures" become permanently essential to keep the bubbles from popping. A funny thing happens as policies intended to fill financial potholes transition from "temporary emergency measures" to "we need to keep doing this to stabilize the status quo": extremes...