[is_it_worth_it_]

Less VC money means less demand for engineers. Less demand for engineers means dropping wages. Higher levels of outsourcing and H1Bs also means dropping wages. American engineers though "scarce" will see a significant drop in wages, salaries in this field are going to collapse. They were being propped up by the government printing money, thus pushing up tech companies stock and pushing up VC money. With all that money no longer circulating, we will see wages go down.

[ghaff]

I think you're vastly overestimating the role of VC money in tech overall. One of the things that is probably different this time around--assuming a bubble pops--is that "every" startup doesn't have Sun servers, EMC storage, Cisco networking gear, etc. like they did in 2000. Yes, you could well see a de-frothing of the startup scene and overheated real estate market in the Bay area but the collateral damage will hopefully be limited. No more 6 figure starting salaries going toward $4K/month rents maybe, but that wasn't sustainable anyway.

[is_it_worth_it_]

Right, but startups do employ large numbers of competent engineers. VC money drying up means those engineers start competing for the same jobs. Quantitative easing has caused stock prices to rise, mainly tech stocks. This means tech companies can offer absurd salaries via stock to compete for talent. This drives up salary across the industry. If their stock goes down, as it will with rising interest rates and market downward forces, they will pay less for top engineers. This will have industry wide effects.

[joe_the_user]

As you say, this entire situation has been supported by massive infusions of printed money intended to support the economy dating back from the last collapse.

And the massive bailout followed by quantitative easing/money-printing was already touted by Bernanke in his helicopter speech.

Which is to say that one can't imagine any response to the present embryonic crisis other than even more money being thrown at the problem.

And it seems like this money restore the status quo even as the 2007+ money didn't restore the previous quo. Rather the primary trends - printed money concentrating into the hands of the already wealthy, seems likely to simply accelerate.

How long can the circus keep going? It might collapse at any moment yet I don't think anyone knows for sure.

[laotzu]

Even though the vast majority of monetary transactions are done electrically, it is still at heart a paper-based system built upon the constraints and assumptions of the paper/print medium that has dominated for the past ~500 years.

"It is part of the age-old habit of using new means for old purposes instead of discovering what are the new goals contained in the new means."[1]

I'd imagine the house of cards won't come tumbling down until a viable electric alternative outcompetes the legacy system.

The old goals of the Federal Reserve system are primarily:

1. Maximize employment

2. Stable prices

3. Low interest rates

These goals are no longer applicable in the new electic age of automation and ephemeralization.

[1] Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage

[joe_the_user]

Retail transactions may be "at heart paper" with those constraints and they may be numerically the majority of transactions however broadly financial transactions involve a greater large amount of funds and so the Fed's policy of money creation has in no way been limited by retail monetary transactions' dependence on paper.

Have you heard of the "helicopter money speech"?[1] It seems required reading for anyone trying to understand modern monetary policy (though it's naturally only the start).

[1] http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/Speeches/2002/200211...

[laotzu]

Deflation is defined as:

>a decrease in the general price level of goods and services

In the Gutenberg era of paper based processes and hierarchies, as stated in your cited speech, a reduction in the price of goods and services is seen as a bad thing. This is no longer the case. The assumption of scarcity of renewable physiological resources (level 1 of Maslow's hierarchy) is no longer valid:

>In technology's "invisible" world, inventors continually increase the quantity and quality of performed work per each volume or pound of material, erg of energy, and unit of worker and "overhead" time invested in each given increment of attained functional performance. This complex process we call progressive ephemeralization. In 1970, the sum total of increases in overall technological know-how and their comprehensive integration took humanity across the epochal but invisible threshold into a state of technically realizable and economically feasible universal success for all humanity.

-Buckminster Fuller

In the era of electric automation, deflation flips into ephemeralization because everything is increasingly/exponentially produced better, faster, and cheaper. A reduction in the general price level of goods and services is the purpose of automation.

This is why goal #2 of maintaining stable prices is now obsolete and self-defeating. It completely ignores automation and renewable resources.

[nascentmind]

How long can the circus keep going? It might collapse at any moment yet I don't think anyone knows for sure.

This statement is fundamental. It is very very hard to time the market. In fact there is a famous saying by John M Keynes "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".

[joe_the_user]

Thanks, I will add that Keynes quote to my collection