When new money pays old that's a ponzie scheme

In an actual Ponzi scheme yes. The AI bubble isn’t a Ponzi scheme. Infra investment ahead of revenue is fairly standard in tech and not inherently bad. However if the revenue to pay for all that infra doesn’t materialize then you have a bubble implosion. Right now while the revenue and growth numbers for AI revenue would be incredibly impressive by most standards, there’re still a drop in the bucket relative to what’s needed to stop this whole house of cards from crashing down.

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mitxela 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're calling the stock market a Ponzi scheme?

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nrclark 2 hours ago | parent [-]

As currently practiced, yes. Non-dividend non-voting shares might as well be pokemon cards. Their only real value lies in getting somebody else to buy them, and new money has to flow in from the outside. The question isn't "will it collapse?", it's "when?"

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marcosdumay 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

AFAIK, US stocks pay back mostly as buy-backs.

The fact that those are so few relative to what dividends would be is a measure of the market's (lack of) health. But it doesn't automatically make the market a Ponzi scheme.

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cmiles8 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

By your logic buying a house is a Ponzi scheme too.

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edgyquant an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Houses have real value by themselves as you can live in one. But they have been treated like a Ponzi scheme recently which is why we are in such a mess with housing

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gspr an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

My god, this is the most HN comment of the day. You do know that most normal people buy a house not to resell it at profit, but to have a place to live, right?

	▲	mitxela 33 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think most house buyers are buying it for resale value.
	▲	cmiles8 an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The point is it has value and can be resold later to get your capital back. Housing tends to be a mediocre investment at best but folks do generally expect to be able to get their capital back when selling.

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lotsofpulp an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Most developed countries are ponzi schemes, since they all have old age benefits where new people pay old people.