• FishFace@piefed.social
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    6 days ago

    Got any stats on that? Seems implausible that the global top 0.1% or whatever are doing 1000x more economic activity than the average of the 99.9%. With their companies, sure, but they consist of many ordinary people.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      6 days ago

      Probably hyperbole on mycodesucks, but the whole AI bullshit alone generated over USD 1 trillion dollars in GDP. USA’s GDP in 2024 was a bit under 30 trillion. Having like 8 companies account for 1/30 of the ENTIRE MONEY SPENT of a country is absolutely nuts, as well as a good reminder of how disconnected to reality GDP alone is.

      • 13igTyme@piefed.social
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        6 days ago

        Is it really generating money if it’s a company spending money it doesn’t have on another company to then pay the original company to provide what was originally promised as a service/product?

        • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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          6 days ago

          Factually speaking, only the debt is “generating” money, since the entire concept of bank loans reside in their capacity of lending more than they actually have and charging interest back.

          Regarding nvidia and the companies it is giving money to so they buy its chips, lots of legal loopholes make it count as “totally real investment”. That’s why I said the thing generated said money in GDP, which has little connection to reality.

    • Rothe@piefed.social
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      6 days ago

      A bit exaggerated, but 70% of OpenAIs revenue is from a handful of enterprise customers. The other tech giants, spearheaded by Nvidia, are shifting their entire business model towards enterprise customers, which is largely why consumergrade hardware is incredibly expensive if not directly unobtainable.

      • FishFace@piefed.social
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        6 days ago

        But what are those companies doing with what they’re buying in order to generate their revenue? Ultimately there has to be something that does something useful or enjoyable in and of itself (like food, or a video game), rather than something which is just instrumental for something else. And those useful/enjoyable things will only be profitable if you can sell them to a decent number of people.

        You can replace your gamer consumers with corporate customers only if those corporate customers have someone to sell to.

    • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I grabbed the first result, but you can find the same information from whatever source you like - it was big news:

      https://finance.yahoo.com/news/top-10-earners-drive-nearly-191500198.html

      The top ten percent drive half of all consumer spending. The corporations and the rich no longer see the bottom 90% as a profitable market - they see them as a resource and a liability.

      When you realize it’s not incidental, but the actual plan, it all makes sense.

    • AmyAye@nord.pub
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      6 days ago

      They are probably counting all the exchange of funny money on the stock market and things like the xircular AI buying (Microsoft invests a zillion dollars in OpenAI who then uses that zillion dollars to buy Azure compute cycles from Microsoft).