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Non-Tech : Tulipomania Blowoff Contest: Why and When will it end? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: yard_man who wrote (2244)	12/26/1999 11:48:00 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3543

We disagree on the fundamental future impact of the Internet. It has changed my life drastically but I have been overseas so I'm not a representative example. In terms of services, the Internet can create entire new services that weren't economically viable before because getting the information or selling it to customers wasn't profitable. Five years from now we can revisit this post and see who was right. I still believe it's more of a wave than a bubble. Good luck.

To: yard_man who wrote (2244)	12/26/1999 12:40:00 PM
From: KyrosL	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 3543

tippet, you are greatly underestimating the impact of the internet and overestimating the relative importance of the "real" goods producing economy. Already the goods producing economy represents less than 30% of our GDP. A large portion of the rest, the service economy, is being transformed in a significant way by the internet. Within a generation I can see banking, insurance, home financing, higher education, routine medical care, and many other service activities moving almost entirely to the internet. The savings that will result from this are compelling, so I am certain that this movement to the internet will continue and accelerate. I think that this movement of a significant portion of the service economy onto the internet will result in significant deflation, once the building of a fast internet infrastructure is completed. It is this deflationary impact that, I think, has not yet been appreciated. Today, you have access to a wealth of government information from IRS forms and publications to patents and trademarks for free at a click of a mouse -- many dollars and countless hours of savings. You can get fancy charts of any stock or index instantly as well as SEC filings and a wealth of investment information for free -- hundreds of dollars of savings. You can read almost any newspaper or magazine for free -- many hours and hundreds of dollars of savings. You have instant access to your brokerage statements -- many hours of savings. You can send and receive messages with pictures for free to and from friends and family throughout the world -- again lots of time and money savings. You can get car insurance via the internet and save hundreds of dollars. Internet banks pay you interest on your checking account, instead of charging you for the privilege of writing checks like the brick and mortar banks do. Your airline tickets to Europe, purchased on the net, are much cheaper than what your travel agent used to get them for. And on and on. When I read the bears on SI moaning about the huge increase in money supply and the eventual return of inflation, I laugh. Inflation, IMO, is the least of our concerns: the internet is a deflationary tsunami.