[dahart]

The financial services industry has been revolutionized by computers, I have no idea why the author thought that would make a good example. Today’s stock markets & high frequency trading & online banks & international finance didn’t (and can’t) even exist without computers. The explosion of personal investing and day trading that has changed trading doesn’t exist without computers.

The entire computer industry itself has accelerated and grown because of computers, nowhere has he accounted for the “productivity” attributed to sales of computers. Fields I’ve worked in, video games and CG films, have absolutely increased efficiency with computers: for equal sized productions, the quality has gone up and the workforce needed has gone down over time consistently for decades.

The article has only one single and completely vague datapoint that includes anything from the last 30 years, that’s a major red flag. The invective portmanteaus and insult words are also a red flag and very weak argumentation. Is that supposed to make up for the complete lack of any relevant data? Not to mention some of the insults are worse than iffy by todays standards and don’t reflect well on the author.

Call me rather unconvinced, I guess.

[superfunny]

Agreed - I was very surprised to hear this. From Dividend.com:

"In the late 1960s, the volume of trading activity increased dramatically. With the drastic increase in volume, the NYSE had $4 billion in unprocessed transactions by 1968. To catch up, the exchange closed every Wednesday from June 12, 1968 to December 31, 1968. During this crisis, over 100 brokers failed due to the high volume of transaction that could not be processed."

Today, the NYSE processes trading volumes of 3-4 billion shares per day.