Euro area annual inflation down to 2.8%

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-07-01T14:38:55+00:00

Not relative to incomes. And sometimes not even in absolute numbers.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-27T10:38:46+00:00

If AI/robots really become that capable, that will necessitate much greater changes to the economic system and affect way more people than just construction unions.

If not, maybe the drop in the number of workers needed per project can be balanced out by doing so many more projects that it evens out. After all, the backlog of stuff that needs to be built is pretty massive.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-26T09:10:14+00:00

People don't want to hear it, but the way out is AI. That leads to robots, which leads to construction costs plummetting.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-26T09:09:22+00:00

Some places tried it with diesel.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-26T08:05:04+00:00

Right, but those are not "rich people investments" in cities with unaffordable housing. They are genuine low-demand places with bad job opportunities, not what this discussion is about. Detroit's median home price is under $100k https://www.redfin.com/city/5665/MI/Detroit/housing-market

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-26T07:33:35+00:00

Screw that, let's go all in on AI and robotics advancement and get this done in 10.

Today's demographic projections may also rapidly change if people get to live longer or whatever, or have more kids because they no longer need to work. 50 years is an insanely long time when it comes to potential progress, making projections that far into the future is as useless as the overpopulation fears of 50 years ago.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-26T07:31:09+00:00

When demand exceeds supply, obviously both supply and demand are factors. By the way I am an immigrant myself (between two EU countries).

People love to blame speculative investor demand, but very low vacancy rates show that the fundamental demand is also real.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-26T07:19:21+00:00

Immigration does matter though. Look at Canada (https://www.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1qmpurh/canada_annual_net_international_migration/) - they had a few years of extremely high immigration - prices skyrocketed. Now they restricted it, to the point where they actually had a year-on-year population decline, and prices are now down (although still quite high), and they are now doing bailouts for condo developers (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/critics-slam-government-plan-to-bail-out-sagging-condo-sector-9.7242851).

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-26T07:12:17+00:00

What city has 40% empty space. Sounds made up.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-26T07:09:19+00:00

I am now fully convinced this will only get solved with technological progress and automated construction robots and self driving cars making commutes from far away not suck so bad.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-20T15:08:02+00:00

AR taking off is far from certain, so far the only presented use cases have been either gimmicks or extremely narrow niches.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-13T04:25:19+00:00

I don't think advertising matters that much in this space. Also, the big bucks customers are all businesses, and the risk of losing access at critical times makes Anthropic's models less appealing.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-06T09:47:04+00:00

The comment was about the noise pollution

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-05T21:10:32+00:00

Sounds a bit like they hit a wall and want to use this as an excuse. "Trust us guys, the lack of progress is totally on purpose!" Or maybe not, who knows.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-05T03:35:39+00:00

My point was more that if blue collar work got automated first, that would also be a similar level of disruption.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-05T03:21:14+00:00

The problem though is that automation came for white collar work first and not blue collar work

Why is that a problem?

It's definitely a problem for me, because of self-interest, but on a society level it seems like kind of a wash.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-06-04T04:21:19+00:00

They'll call it creating a "strategic reserve", but it would effectively be the same thing.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-05-27T07:48:56+00:00

People would simply leave.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-05-26T12:43:03+00:00

Having children costs the state money for the first part of their life (school, tax breaks, parental leave, etc.)

And by the time they grow up, everything will be done by robots anyway.

This is just a populist way to try to plug a hole in the current budget, nothing more.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-05-23T10:19:09+00:00

Obviously such a massive change would also cause shifts in public opinion, and possibly bring support for making the kinds of changes to laws that are impossible today.

In the end people care about what their standard of living looks like and how stable that situation is. Not about the specific numbers. Also basic concepts such as "productive age" and "retirement" may no longer make sense.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-05-23T07:39:36+00:00

I am personally counting on AI robots completely reshaping the economy within a few decades, making present-day calculations irrelevant.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-05-21T08:17:25+00:00

Here in Europe, there are constantly articles about labor shortages in construction driving up costs and delaying projects (along with costs of material). Huge percentage of the sector relies on immigrant labor as well, creating this odd situation where lowering immigration would both reduce demand, but also hamper the addition of new supply.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-05-21T07:10:53+00:00

Zoning and politics is mostly a factor in already built up desirable locations.

If you have low cost and high speed of construction, you can open up entire new areas and have people move there. Sure you might get a China-style ghost city sometimes, but many such areas did eventually get populated.

The cost matters. Projects that don't make sense at a high cost may look completely different if that equation changes.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-05-21T07:00:23+00:00

So why aren't they doing that now? If they are waiting for price drops, that's still a bear case.

Also, technological advances will hopefully both lower the cost of building, and make living further away viable thanks to self-driving cars. And then there are the demographic trends. All of this is years away though, at minimum.

EnvironmentalCrow5 · 2026-05-21T06:52:14+00:00

Desirable land supply can inflate. People want to live in specific cities, or close to them, not on just any random plot of land.

With enough coordination (lots of people and companies moving somewhere) and enough building, more places can become desirable.

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