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an0malousyesterday at 5:39 PM2 repliesview on HN

If you liked that, you'll enjoy his take on how, actually, bubbles are good: https://stratechery.com/2025/the-benefits-of-bubbles/


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matwoodyesterday at 5:57 PM

And he's right (and the sources he points out), that some bubbles are good. They end up being a way to pull in a large amount of capital to build out something completely new, but still unsure where the future will lead.

A speculative example could be AI ends up failing and crashing out, but not until we build out huge DCs and power generation that is used on the next valuable idea that wouldn't be possible w/o the DCs and power generation already existing.

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RoddaWallProyesterday at 8:28 PM

I _kind of_ understand this one. You can think of a bubble as a market exploring a bunch of different possibilities, a lot of which may not work out. But the ones that do work out, they may go on to be foundational. Sort of like startups: you bet that most of them will fail, but that's okay, you're making bets!

The difference of course is that when a startup goes out of business, it's fine (from my perspective) because it was probably all VC money anyway and so it doesn't cause much damage, whereas the entire economy bubble popping causes a lot of damage.

I don't know that he's arguing that they are good, but rather that _some_ kinds of bubbles can have a lot of positive effects.

Maybe he's doing the same thing here, I don't know. I see the words "advertising would make X Product better" and I stop reading. Perhaps I am blindly following my own ideology here :shrug:.

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