[jtolmar]

There's a really noticeable difference in time frame covered in your examples (80s and 90s) and the one in the comment you're replying to (2010s and 2020s).

Is that just two people with different go-to examples? Or is there something going on here?

(I don't mean this as a leading question to some conclusion in my back pocket, I genuinely have no clue.)

[corford]

It's politics.

The US's corporate problems in the 1980s and early 1990s existed when strong international competition existed.

It began to change with things like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_U.S.%E2%80%93Japan_Semico... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord.

It was accelerated further with things like anti-circumvention clauses in Free Trade agreements (see Cory Doctrow's recent highlighting of this: https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/) and then had more gasoline thrown on the fire in the ZIRP/easy money era post GFC, culminating with the bazooka of stimulus unleashed post-covid.

My best guess is we are now going to witness ~20 years of slow unwind. You can already see signs of this in things like RoW/EM stocks outperforming the S&P, treasury yields diverging from other "safe haven" soverign bonds (e.g. swiss), gold price rising, Europe starting to get serious about addressing the Draghi report's findings, European defence spending increasing, China starting to act like the "adult in the room" wrt the recent Iran/US blow-up etc. Essentially, countries/blocs attempting to re-assert sovereignty that has been willingly diluted over the last ~30 years to mainly America's benefit.

[nostrademons]

Somewhere else in the comments here, someone else remarked "Individuals perhaps [move to the new models], but not organizations."

That's illustrative. The mechanism by which organizations are forced to update their technology, move to more competitive suppliers, and cut costs is a recession. In one, every business that doesn't do so goes bankrupt, and what's left are the more efficient businesses that have adopted technology effectively.

We haven't had a real recession since 2009. (2020 was an odd case, because it was effectively brought on by government edict and so it actually killed a number of efficient but unlucky sectors while doing nothing to clean out the dead wood in major corporations). The next one is likely to be a doozy, because the economy is filled with bullshit jobs, bullshit corporations, and bullshit products.

[Dumblydorr]

“Brought on by government edict”

No, brought on by a novel pathogen that killed 10 million people. It would’ve been much worse without government action.

[pocksuppet]

Without the indecisive government action that was taken, millions more people would have died, but the economy would have done better.

With decisive government action (see New Zealand), millions less people would have died, and the economy would have done better.

[klipt]

New Zealand does have the advantage of an ocean border and thus near total control on entries and exits.

Compared to the very porous land borders of the US.

[pocksuppet]

Come on, they're not that porous, certainly under a Trump administration. People fly into NZ too.

[Xunjin]

This argument is so flawed in many ways, economies are built by people for people. Extrapolate the numbers, let's say in the COVID Pandemic a country, take USA as example, has 10% percentage of their population killed by it, would that be better to the economy?

[etcimon]

There's multiple ways to look at the economy, the raw exchange of dollar currency in a debt chase (shit I need to run faster & pay down this stuff!), there's the productivity of industrial output (shit we need to sell more junk and useless crap!), and there's the stock and productivity in optimal life cycles (Damn, that Nokia is a tank!)

If 10% of the population went away, it would affect 1 & 2, but in any true practical lens, there's a ton of cheap empty houses, while on the other hand building repairable stuff that lasts or enough cheaply is where economies move to more complex technologies by saving time and effort in useless endeavour of debt chases or consumption-oriented wasteful productivity

[pocksuppet]

Economies are built by rich people for rich people. A few million poor people dead doesn't really make a dent in them.

[rdbl27]

The case of Sweden entirely falsifies the theory that "it would've been much worse without government action."

No government action whatsoever was taken in Sweden. None. Death rates were no better or worse than adjacent countries that intervened extensively.

Ergo, government intervention was irrelevant one way or another.

[arkh]

> The next one is likely to be a doozy

The US, EU, China are teetering on the edge of a crisis. Russia is well on its way.

I feel like 2008 was just a warmup to what may be coming.

[davedx]

The EU is not "teetering on the edge of a crisis", why do you say that?

[cezart]

Not OP but, EU economy is being squeezed by China on the industrial and tech front, and by the US on the innovation/startup front. It is clear EU is no longer at the technological/economic frontier like it used to be 10-20 years ago. At the same time there are serious demographic, budgetary and political challenges all across the continent. Dragi's report covers some of these. It feels like the whole system might fall into a crisis soon if measures are not taken

[abirch]

Factor in that Europe is powerful partly because of its unity and there are many forces trying to undermine that.

[logicchains]

Europe became powerful before it was unified, and ever since the creation of the EU it's been becoming less and less important on the world stage.

[logicchains]

More likely it just slowly declines like Japan. Or if anti-migrant sentiment continues growing at the current rate, it breaks into a race war when the AfD and PFN win the majority of votes in Germany and France respectively.

[Paradigma11]

I dont think these slow indicators and developments hold much water the next few decades. We have seen the first inklings what the brave new multipolar world is going to look like and it does not bode well for much of the world. As long as Russia breaks down before the shit really hits the fan, Europe should be fine(r) than most.

[neonstatic]

> Russia is well on its way.

Including the warmongering angry midget next to the US, EU, and China is funny. Russia's economy, before they decided to shoot themselves in the face, was the size of the Netherlands. Whether they are in a recession or not is irrelevant to anyone but them.

[ben_w]

I thought Russia was about 2x the Netherlands by nominal, and 5x by PPP?

More relevantly, they were one of the world's petrol stations, and now they're not.

[neonstatic]

You are right: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...

[cs702]

> the economy is filled with bullshit jobs, bullshit corporations, and bullshit products.

Yeah, it sure feels true.

There's even a book about it, you know, to help people cope with it:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691276786/on...