As the latest wave of irrational exuberance recedes, leaving in its wake issues that were, not so much unseen dangers lurking beneath the surface, as real assets artificially buoyed beyond all proportion to unreasonable heights, I had a particularly scary thought.
What if the growth in PC penetration, Internet usage, broadband adoption, ecommerce, mobile device usage, and other cornerstones of the "new economy" were, not the signs of progress and digital literacy that we congratulated ourselves on, but, like auto sales and sub-prime mortgages, manifestations of our artificially inflated, unsustainable, levels of consumption?
So, for example, we are now all painfully familiar with images of neighborhoods inundated with for-sale signs, parking lots filled with unsold cars, planes being stockpiled in the desert, and super tankers parked at sea.
What if the same phenomena will be true for "new economy" goods and services?
Were people's purchasing habits on Amazon and Ebay unsustainable?
How about their broadband subscriptions? Purchases of computers and mobile devices? Or, more close to home, their subscriptions to premium services on Web 2.0 sites?
There are compelling reasons to believe that many of these "new economy" goods and services were not artificially inflated, and may even increase during a downturn, but if they were over-inflated to a similar extent as their old economy brethren, we are in big trouble!
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