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points by eigenspace 1 day ago | 0 comments

Tulips, Railroads, and the Internet also didn't go away when the financial bubble around them burst. That doesn't mean there wasn't a massive market correction in response to the over-investment.

[–] lnkdinsuxs 1 day ago

> Tulips, Railroads, and the Internet also didn't go away when the financial bubble around them burst. That doesn't mean there wasn't a massive market correction in response to the over-investment.

Your Railroads and the Internet parallels are so very apt. We certainly are very productive even in 2026 off those but almost no one remembers how many large behemoths were wiped out in the U.S. because of them.

Yes, it does seem to me that the AI of 2026 will be like the Railroads and the Internet - fundamentally transformative technology that changes how things are done into the future but there will be blood in the short term, which is why I would not be participating in the IPOs directly

[–] bloppe 1 day ago

Tulips kinda did go away

[–] lnkdinsuxs 1 day ago

I don't believe they literally meant Tulips but rather its hype cycle. I commented on the other two that can be taken literally

[–] wolfinterval 11 hours ago

The interesting thing is I think we might over hype the tulip hype now.

It seems like much of the tulip mania has become the stuff of legend.

From what I have read, it seems closer to baseball card trading than AI or dot com.

You can find baseball and pokemon cards trading for thousands of dollars right now on ebay.

This would seem insane to a culture just valueing the cards as pieces of cardboard.

It would be like hundred of years from now people viewing our society as wanting to buy Mickey Mantle cards instead of houses. It is a very small number of people involved with this. It is not a widespread movement to hold your retirement money in Mickey Mantle cards.

In an interesting way it shows even better though he we are susceptible to these type of mythologies. People don't even question the absurd givens of the narratives of the tulip mania. We just repeat these narratives to each other as if they are historic fact.

[–] eigenspace 1 day ago

There's a beautiful tulip garden just down the street from me, and an outdoor weekly market where tulip bulbs are sold. Tulips are very much still around, I assure you.

[–] bloppe 1 day ago

I don't mean went extinct. I mean the idea that tulips could be an asset class is now laughable, which is not true of the other two. The impact of the tulip industry on GDP is utterly imperceptible.

[–] owebmaster 1 day ago

Same thing could happen with the idea of selling tokens

[–] bloppe 12 hours ago

Ya, or any other asset class

[–] lnkdinsuxs 1 day ago

I think bloppe was talking about the Tulip hype cycle that took out many generations.

[–] eigenspace 1 day ago

Yes, that's my entire point. There was also a railroad hype cycle and an internet hype cycle that took in massive amounts of overinvestment, and all three things remained as regular things in the economy with bigger or smaller roles after the hype cycles ended.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Mania and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com for some info on the other hype cycles I mentioned.