

Ask HN: Has there ever been a bubble that didn't burst? - relix

If you read up on the lifecycle of a bubble, one key property is that people will claim "this time it's different" because of several reasons, which turn out to be incorrect when the bubble inevitably pops.<p>Has there ever been bubble-like growth without the bursting at the end? In other words, has it ever been that "this time it's different" turned out to be true?
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gregcohn
One of the defining characteristics of a bubble is that a threshold-clearing
percentage of people don't know it's a bubble.

Thus, there's no such thing as "a bubble that didn't burst", there are only
either things that weren't bubbles in the first place... or bubbles that
haven't burst YET.

An example that comes to mind is petroleum. There are those who believe that
oil-based energy, which is a key underpinning of our economy, military,
lifestyle, etc., has been part of a "long boom" following coal but has reached
a peak and will cause our economy to burst like a bubble when it finally
retracts... and there are those who disagree and think we'll find economical
substitutes as incentives warrant our doing so.

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boot
One could argue Gold is a 6000 year old bubble. Desperately digging it up to
bury it somewhere else. Only because it's the particular element that doesn't
react chemically and is just the right amount of common/rare.

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vwoolf
The Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment. Growth was negligible over human
lifetimes for as long as their were humans, yet in the last 200 – 250 years
most people in the Western world and Japan become orders of magnitude richer
than our predecessors, and much of the rest of the world is catching up.

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Piskvorrr
To play the devil's advocate, this could be interpreted as bubble-in-progress
(what with "Peak $someResource imminent" etc.)

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alphydan
to add to Piskvorrr's point, if population isn't a bubble waiting to explode I
don't know what is ...
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg>

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Irishsteve
fiat currency?

