Always Coming, Never Here

Someday people will learn that greed is not sustainable. The serpent can only eat so much of its own tail before it chokes.

I predict that the DJIA will settle down when it hits about 3500. I suspect it will take nearly another year to get to that point, when the markets all finally bottom out. Some time after Google's stock tanks, I think.

Why 3500? Because that's where it was 15 years ago, after more than a decade of steady growth through the 80s. That's where it was at just as the Internet first came into play - before people started going apeshit with everything, and began to believe that castles could be built on clouds. How could we possibly have created 300% more wealth out of thin air? The DJIA had barely broken 1000 for two decades prior to the 80s, and then we saw real growth with the rise of computing and software and general advancement of technology up to the early 90s. But somehow people went batty along the way and started ignoring things like "profits" and "business models" and suddenly CEOs started making exorbitant salaries, and more and more snake oil salesmen popped up to part fools and their money with made up shit they called "financial instruments", usually aided and abetted by our own government with tailor-made legislation paid for by the finest of lobbyists. And what was the result of all that?

Well we've now witnessed the implosion of finance, real estate, and car companies. Really these events are still ongoing, these prideful bastards haven't fallen all the way yet - all the bailout money in the world won't cushion their impacts either. But the real killer will be when high tech hits the skids again.

Internet bubble 2.0 is on the way. Internet advertising is going to pop it, again. Advertising revenue is just not sustainable on the Internet, because there's no way to make money from it unless you completely control the medium. It worked great for newspapers when they had regional monopolies. It worked great for TV with the network and cable monopolies. And of course the Internet killed both of those monopolies! So the Internet must be the future monopoly, right? Wrong.

Google's doing pretty well with ad revenue because they've got a search monopoly - but how long will that really last? Hint: it's already eroding, because iPhones and user generated content from social networks make Google obsolete. So wait, social networking is the new monopoly? Well, Facebook certainly won't have a monopoly on social networking for any long period of time... remember when MySpace was the monopoly? Ask yourself: is Facebook really worth billions? Was MySpace? No. That's utterly ridiculous, because people always move on to the next site, and the Internet is too big to really control.

Did Google ever advertise itself? Wikipedia? MySpace and Facebook? YouTube? Never. Because viral social networks spread word faster and more effectively than any advertising ever could. And when you actually have a piece of hardware that enables that viral action (iPhone: Google Killer) you're going to see just how ineffective ads actually are in comparison. Someone can write an iPhone app that will change a playing field overnight and render whole industries worth of web sites obsolete. You just can't beat the power of a network of millions and millions of people continuously sending the freshest live audio, video, GPS, and pure data streams. All the dead data in Google's web page index is worthless in comparison.

Maybe people will try to speculate a biotech bubble into existence, but I doubt that will succeed. People are too freaked out by biohacking, and legislation and regulation will continually muddle its development, too much so for it to really boom like the other deregulated industries all did.

Does anyone have any web site suggestions or research on how to generate electricty at home or otherwise go off the power grid? I don't know how much it would cost to make/buy a fuel cell, but I'm really rip shit about having to pay almost $80 a month for next to no electricity usage. 3/5 of my bill is transmission charges for selling me electricity from White Plains, NY.

They're playing the same game with us on the East coast that they did with California... damn energy robber barons.

Update: So, after doing some research, it turns out that my electric bill is about as good as it's going to get. Everyone who lives on Cape Cod is automatically enrolled in the "Cape Light Compact" which purchases aggregated electricity from ConEdison in NY. Deregulator? I hardly know her. NSTAR charges me $30 for distribution of electricity - what's the breakdown of that cost, you ask? Well, it turns out that $19 of that is the actual cost of distribution, and $10 of that is "transition" which is apparently a "fuck the consumer" charge that "deregulation" brought about... CLC describes this as: "Transition is the charge that allows NSTAR to recover payments to wholesale power suppliers for terminating those contracts allowing for competitive suppliers to enter the market."

How nice for NSTAR.

Oh, and $1 goes to renewable energy and conservation. Yay.

So, as long as I'm paying more money, I figure I might as well pay more money and enroll in the CLC 100% green program (if I can). Joining that means that all my electricity would be produced by certified green energy sources (hydro, land based wind, and solar) that are actually located in New England. It's 75% tax deductible and will cost about another $75 a year (approximately an extra month of electricity for me).

But if I can figure out how to produce 4,000 kilowatt-hours a year for $1,000, I'll do that instead.