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the pessimists have the best narratives and the worst track record
Smith noted that none of the analysts whose job it is to track Visa and Mastercard stock had apparently thought about AI disruption until a blogger spelled it out for them, which tells you more about sentiment-driven trading than it does about macroeconomics
It's an error that has been made, in nearly identical form, about every major technological transformation in modern history. Every single time, the pessimists looked at what was being destroyed and extrapolated catastrophe, while failing to imagine what would be created, because the thing that would be created hadn't been invented yet.
Tom Lee of Fundstrat made this point with a specific example that I find clarifying. The invention of flash-frozen food in the early 1900s disrupted farming, taking agriculture from 30-40% of employment down to its current sliver. The economy didn't collapse. It reallocated value elsewhere, into industries and occupations that the frozen food pioneers couldn't have imagined. And today, I can't name a single family that subsists on frozen TV dinners.