alt Hacker News> Railroads, semiconductors, plastics, networking... the utility was there for all of them, and so was the potential profit.
Canals... where a repeating pattern was the company underestimating difficulty/costs, and going unrecoverably into debt. Another company, which then bought the largely finished canal, cheap, they had potential profit... until tech change (railroads).
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I'm reminded of vertical hydroponic farming in old silicone fabs in Japan...
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/07/09/companies/p...
Also, (setting aside Standard Oil’s business practices), this is a common meme in oil exploration historically, and even today. Early prospectors were honestly pretty stupid, and their principal differentiation was risk tolerance.
There a lot of parallels with AI…it doesn’t take a genius to see the long-term potential, but the risk is in implementation, so it’s a mad rush to the finish line by a wide variety of less scrupulous early players. Rockefeller got his big start by sweeping up failing producers who were all capital weak, and I’m sure something similar will happen here during the inevitable bust.
I can do the hard, risky work of drilling wells / deploying AI, or I can sell you a vision of that future, today. The most dangerous technologies in terms of grifting are the ones that everyone can understand.
Restaurants and bars!
This pattern repeats across many industries with large up-front costs.
Capital cycle theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J2Fb1bBufA&t=577s
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> Another company, which then bought the largely finished canal, cheap, they had potential profit... until tech change (railroads).
Absolutely right. Somebody may buy the DCs. The tech changes very very fast, the DCs may be entirely worthless. US has high energy costs, it can never be cost competitive.
Why Data Centres Will Change the World and Bankrupt Their Builders — John Hempton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY5YyPLfqp0
Useful (like solar, airlines, fiber), but it won't be profitable. High capital cost, low marginal cost, subject to competition and with technical improvement --> these four factors guarantee businesses will never be profitable, and they go bust.