The Inflation Opportunity

A lot of people are complaining about inflation right now.

In our technology age, this is nonsense.

Consider energy prices. Oil and gas prices are rising fast. But this creates an enormous incentive for anyone building solar panels or wind turbines. It blows through political objections to their installation. It brings capital to start-ups with new ideas that will dramatically increase harvesting efficiency. Harvesting energy, and increasing efficiency in our use of electricity, drive down demand and, thus, prices. The end of oil is one of the decade’s great opportunities and now is the time to seize it.

Consider labor prices. Rising labor costs are a great incentive to technology, which increases efficiency and (eventually) replaces people with machines. The problem here is that we’re allocating all these gains to owners of capital. Very little is going into retraining people or into demand for new jobs in human and physical infrastructure. This is what the Biden plan is all about. You’ll notice that those complaining the loudest about inflation are opposed to that plan. It’s not a coincidence.

Consider commodity prices. We need to recycle more. Here’s an incentive for doing that. Get out your business plans, go to the market, whine about rising costs, and get the capital you need to move. There’s also money here for replacing current commodities with new ones, copper for gold, perovskite for silicon.

When I was a young man, rising prices were a terrible thing to see. Price increases would stick. There was nothing we could do about them.

Now there is. Those who seize this opportunity will make fortunes. Those who whine about it won’t.