Wednesday, June 03rd, 2026
Bill Bonner, from Gualfin, Argentina
But wait...hold on. Won’t the younger generations benefit from all the nifty tech improvements made in the last few years? Won’t they have self-driving cars? Won’t they have AI to tell them what to think...and help them avoid thinking altogether?
Won’t they be able to live on Mars with all the comforts of Hoboken, thanks to one of Elon’s great rockets?
Maybe most important, won’t this new technology send the economy into escape velocity...freeing it from the zip-ties of $110 trillion in accumulated debt...making sense of the Nvidia’s 23x price/sales ratio...
And allowing the politicos — without even breaking a sweat — to balance the budget and make good on all those promises they made to credulous voters?
Could be...PWC:
AI adoption could boost global GDP by an additional 15 percentage points by 2035
But this is where the complexity comes back into the picture. We know that if you earn 10 shillings and spend 11 shillings...you are going in the hole. Keep it up and you will go broke.
And we also know that if you raise your income to 11 shillings…you’re very likely to spend 12!
But who knows? Maybe you’ll invent the 21st century equivalent of the wheel...or the hula hoop.
Better than that, says Wall Street; this is not just an investment opportunity...it’s the technical equivalent of the Big Rock Candy Mountain. In that great and glorious world of the future, AI will increase output for everybody. We’ll all get rich...pay off our debts...and never have to change our socks.
The idea, roughly, is that computers will mimic human thought. But somehow, they will get us out of the hole human thought dug. We will all have our AI ‘butlers’ waiting on us...directing us...helping us avoid mistakes, right? Will they tell us to stop spending those 11 shillings? Will we listen? These are known unknowns.
Among other known unknowns are the many things that AI will help people do that would be better left undone. AI, made by Palantir, for example, is helping US and Israel assassinate foreign leaders. Will it be an advance for humankind when AI geniuses on the other side murder our own leaders? And what about the time wasters? Already, you can fritter away hours following AI-induced clickbait. Down one rabbit hole and into the next one. Whee!
AI is getting better and better at organizing and presenting information. But it also organizes and presents fakes, propaganda, and outright lies. Will it be like the internet itself...vastly easing the flow of blah blah, but ultimately not making us any smarter or more productive?
In order to avoid a debt debacle, the new tech would have to increase productivity...not just add complexity and novelty. Will AI do that? So far, there is no sign of it.
And there’s SpaceX blasting off. More complexity. Not one investor in 1,000 understands how to send rockets into space...or how anyone will make money at it.
But millions of them seem to be hyped up, so much so...that normal, usually-sober investment pros place their bids as if they were the dot.coms in 1999...or the Japanese stocks of 1989. The price hardly matters, the chorus chants: this is a chance of a lifetime. MSN:
Space stocks and ETFs surge ahead of SpaceX IPO
And who knows? Maybe they are right; maybe the whiskey will come tumbling down the rocks. But until we get a taste of it, we’ll stick with the basics. It’s a bubble. Bubbles blow up.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Research Note, by Dan Denning
Do you want to speculate on the commercial development of outer space by some public and some pre-public companies? There’s an ETF for that! It’s the Tema Space Innovators ETF [NASA]. See chart above. Highly speculative…and out of this world.
The ETF has $2.5 billion in assets under management, despite only launching in late March of this year. It’s actively managed and includes publicly listed companies like Rocket Lab, AST Space Mobile, and Intuitive Machines (companies all directly or indirectly involved in rocket propulsion, satellites, and the infrastructure required for commercial space flight and operations).
The fund also gives you pre-IPO access to some companies through Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs). The second largest space-related ETF is the Procure Space ETF [UFO]. It tracks around 50 companies that make up the S-network Space Index. Buyer beware…and buckle up.
Bill, I spent my entire work life in the engineering world, mostly electronics. It was a great life. Many great developments, some even help mankind. What we see today from my view point is the greatest Ponzi Scheme ever created. YES, AI has some benefits and more to come , BUT, this is like the tower of Babel in the bible for me. Yes those riding the wave up today may make out well short term but the piper always has to be paid.
I'll stick with items of proven value over time thank you very much!
Jim Marshall
What, exactly, are we "progressing" towards? A life like that depicted in the movie Wall-E, where the humans are nothing but flabby blobs of flesh whose only entertainment is sitting in front of a black mirror in a an overstuffed lazy boy? There is no point to life if you spend it docile and dumb inside a digital prison, neuro-linked to some technocratic thought generator. All of it violates natural law and robs one of dignity, virtue, and free will. No thanks.