
Effect of the Depression on Technology - nreece
http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/10/effect-of-the-depression-on-te.html
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davidw
He sure seems to know a lot of things that other people aren't sure about:

* It's a recession for sure, but depression? No one knows. Here's one guy who says no: <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122333679431409639.html>

* "this adds up to difficult times for business in America for at least three years and possibly longer." Three - not two, not four, but three. Hrm.

* "with the US dollar in the gutter" - it's actually been climbing lately: [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=EURUSD=X&t=3m&l=on&#...</a> No idea if that will last - I don't pretend to have a good understanding of why it would be rising right now, but it is, for the moment.<p>I guess his points about open source and other cost savers doing well in a recession are valid, but the reddit-bait title and other stuff put me off.

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thomasmallen
Without figures, you're correct: His estimates are worthless. But _if_ the US
government stays the course and puts money up for all of the failing US
companies, which seems to be the plan, the dollar _will_ be in the gutter.
Can't just print money, after all.

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davidw
I think your analysis is somewhat facile, and unsupported by the facts: the
dollar hasn't dropped at all because of the 'bailout' - quite the contrary, it
has done well over the past few days.

But once again, that's why this is hacker news, and not economic news: our
area of expertise is not in economics, with a few exceptions (that certainly
do not include me).

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jhancock
As near as I can tell, noone's area of expertise is economics. Hackers seem to
have just a good a handle on matters as the "experts". If you really want to
feel "safe" do a little research and see what "Greenspan's" PhD thesis was
about. Spoiler hint: You won't find it. Folks that have studied his background
believe he was "gifted" his PhD in effort to allow his rise in the government.
I'm not supporting this viewpoint, just pointing out the uncertainty. To add
irony, Barron's thinks they found a copy and the 1977 thesis was about a
housing debacle!!!
[http://online.barrons.com/public/article/SB12091741904904680...](http://online.barrons.com/public/article/SB120917419049046805.html?mod=mktw)

You may not like that someone thinks its a depression and not a recession. You
may not like that someone thinks its 3 years, not 1 or 5. But hey, their guess
is as good as the "pros" at this point.

And noone can explain the little raise in the dollar the last week. These
little hiccups are almost unpredictable in a complex global economic
realignment.

So you may not agree with certain words such as "recession" vs. "depression"
or someone's guess as to how long it will last or even if the U.S. will ever
recover. But I think the non-quantitative predictions in the article are solid
nonetheless.

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davidw
> You may not like that someone thinks its a depression and not a recession.
> You may not like that someone thinks its 3 years, not 1 or 5. But hey, their
> guess is as good as the "pros" at this point.

What I don't like is people pretending it's anything but a wild guess.

You're right that the discussion of how the downturn will affect software and
open source is better. That's because it's something Nat clearly knows a great
deal about. He should have stuck with that.

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lsc
Personally, I just blew 4 months operating expenses on new server parts in
preparation for launching a 'value for the dollar' initiative, so I obviously
agree that businesses will become more cost sensitive. I wasn't thinking about
the capex vs opex change, but that's good for me, too.

Interesting times indeed.

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rms
It's a depression now?

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jcl
Yes, and apparently the national debt and the trade deficit are the same
thing.

(Not that the article is bad, but I found the intro confusing.)

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helveticaman
I would argue there will soon be an even larger proportion of users that will
never, ever pay for anything, making Wesabe a bad investment.

~~~
tjr
I will take this opportunity to pose a question I've been wondering for a
while.

It seems that there is an increasingly ubiquitous attitude that if a product
or service _can_ be delivered free of charge, then it _should_ be delivered
free of charge.

Is this really the best road to be walking down? Why or why not?

~~~
abstractbill
If you don't, one of your competitors will.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
This is true.

But you don't always want bottom-fishers as customers.

It all comes down to a trade: your app's perceived value versus the user's
time/money. You can try to fake-out the trade by making it a free app, but
then a) you're just competing for eyeballs, which makes you a media company,
and b) any incremental improvement will also be seen as free by the end-user.

It's a lot harder to price up from free to one dollar than to price up from
one dollar to ten dollars. And maybe you're the coolest media content provider
out there, but I'd rather compete on value rather than on attention span. It's
more comfortable for this nerd :)

