The other day, I had Thom Hartmann on my show, and we talked about the AI bubble. I was surprised to hear that America often prosecuted bankers who were responsible for bubbles in the past. These days, the American people are the ones to “subsidize” these little “oopsies,” and bankers get off scot-free.

A bigger question on my mind is about how America will handle the AI bubble bursting. You see, this is not your typical bubble. AI’s not like other industries that hit bubbles in recent years. Unlike real estate and banking, we lived for centuries without it. We don’t need it — and in many cases (especially art), we don’t want it.

I’ll be honest. I’m not a fan of Google’s AI search. I’m not a fan of the way Instagram uses our DMs to train its AI. I’m not a fan of AI slop or rewritten, spun content. And yet, it’s everywhere I look — even when I’ve made it clear in my preferences that I don’t want AI.

Most people I know don’t want AI tech centers in their area. They also don’t want the sudden, sky-high bills that comes with AI tech center buildings. Honestly? Most people I know are tired of AI, especially when it comes to content and phone answering services.

The funny thing is that these data centers keep being built and AI keeps shoving itself into things — despite a large public outcry. The ones who want it are all tech bros who swear that enough investment will eventually provide a return.

Ironically, even big names like ChatGPT have not actually broken even. OpenAI is actively losing money. Despite this, tech companies keep doubling and tripling down, often at taxpayer expense.

If we had serious reason to believe AI would make life better for all of us, we’d be fine. Sadly, AI isn’t doing this. It’s actually being pretty ruinous. AI has been systematically wiping out thousands, if not millions, of jobs across the country.

Globally, 11 million jobs are expected to be wiped out. Heck, even the jobs that are left remain with stagnant wages — a true devaluation of human labor. Many young workers won’t even get that first entry-level job they need to get into their career of choice.

Jobs aside, AI has been eating away at standard education and basic life skills. College professors have been dealing with barely-literate entrants who used ChatGPT to complete assignments, often without a lick of actual thought in the process.

Then, there’s the social blowback. AI is causing psychosis among users, as is the growing problem of dying social skills. AI chatbots are not a replacement for friends or community, and yet social media platforms like Facebook seem to be interested in making us think they are.

The demand and valuation just don’t match up. The signs of a bubble are all there — and it will be an unprecedented bubble…Or will it?

I’ve often said that America is behaving increasingly Japanese, and that seems to be going for our economies, too. Though there’s no stateside precedent for what we see in America right now, there was a precedent for a similar bubble in Japan. Let’s talk about it.

During the 1980s, Japan was going through a massive boom. The tech world lit up. Real estate was ballooning in price. Investors were speculating on everything, focusing mostly on technology and real estate.

Together, the two became known as the Asset Bubble. The Yen was ballooning and it was a vaporwave-style party that was never meant to end. It became a time when the Japanese asset bubble was cooking hard.

By 1989, everyone wanted a piece of Japan. For a while, Japan was the second most powerful economy short of America — and Japanese businessmen were buying up everything.

At the time, Japanese families were also known for their spending habits. The Bank of Japan played fast and loose with their regulations and credits…all until the bubble burst in the early 1990s.

It basically ruined Japan.

From the early 1990s to today, the asset bubble that burst in the 1980s damaged the economy so badly, wages and prices stagnated for years. These are now known as the “Lost Decades” of Japan because the country is just starting to recover from the burst.

To date, there has been no real estate bubble anywhere close to what we saw in Japan. Even today, the Japanese Nikkei has unusually low returns on investment due to the heavy fears surrounding the trading industry.

Prior to the Asset Bubble, most Japanese families were amenable to investment. Families were also okay with a little splurge once in a while. Credit purchases and loans were far more commonplace. Today, that is not the case.

Part of Japanese culture is the concept of “saving for a rainy day,” rather than focusing on investments. For decades after, families throughout Japan emphasized saving — often in the form of liquid cash, rather than in investment-ready forms like money market accounts.

Household savings in Japan became a major cornerstone of its financial culture long before the bubble. They had concepts like kakeibo (“the household ledger/mindful spending”), minimalist living, and a fear of mottinai — also known as a fear of needless waste. However, the bubble cranked it up to an 11.

Only recently did savings rates go down in Japan in exchange for loans, investments, and other financial moves. Though much of it is due to the spike in housing prices, the truth is that much of it also deals with the slow change in public opinion on investments and speculations.

While investment accounts are commonplace in Japan, the truth is that they’ve been a backseat to savings for decades. It’s easy to see why, after what happened in Japan before. The worry about another crash kept Japanese finance regulationsas strict as can be, even when it didn’t make sense to keep things tight.

The wealthy elite of the country still fear a Yen crash to this very day — and sadly, the same signs of a bubble have started to pop up.

But hey, that’s another discussion.

While Japan’s bubble left a scar of deep distrust in banking institutions, America’s AI bubble is going to leave a deeper scar on our collective trust of the internet. However, it likely won’t be the AI bubble’s finances that push us away from the net.

We’ve already started to see people turn away from the net due to the bad mental health effects it has on people. We’ve already started to see the distrust in internet content as a result of AI-based bots, false-flag news events, and the active betrayal of being used as AI test dummies for megacorporations.

Right now, we’ve gotten to the point where people are starting to stigmatize heavy internet use. I’ve heard multiple people swear off online dating and social media because of how awful their experiences have been.

More shocking still, I’ve heard young folks fresh out of college say they refuse to use dating apps because they “wanted someone who actually has a life and isn’t stuck at home doomscrolling.

Japan was rocked by the Asset Bubble and the Lost Decades after, with its outcome creating a national distrust in speculation. In that sense, the crash was not unlike what America dealt with via the Great Depression.

Both created multiple generations of people leery of greedy businessmen and wild speculation. It also created multiple generations of people who swore by saving money, often by stashing cash for a rainy day.

When the AI bubble bursts, it’s not going to hit as hard as the Asset Bubble or the Great Depression. It’s going to hit harder and it’s going to almost entire annihilate any confidence buyers have in the majority of AI-enhanced services right now.

By the time the bubble is truly popped, any sniff of AI will likely become a poison pill for the companies or creators using it.

Everyone needs a place to live. That’s why real estate is considered to be a great industry to get into. No one needs AI. It’s just there to do mindless, repetitive tasks — and at times, it often still manages to underperform humanity.

There will be some industries (coding, kinda) that might never give up AI entirely. However, AI has several major poison pills that have made it totally terrible for the biggest industries (blogging, SEO, video, animation, social media and entertainment) using it:

We as a collective will continue to be burnt by lies from AI and big tech until we throw up our hands and say, “I’m not trusting this group anymore.” Sadly, it’s going to take a lot of blows from that axe before the proverbial tree falls — and big business is quite ready to deliver each blow, every day, without a second thought.

Between the fake news, the slicing of well-paid and meaningful jobs, the way that tech has started to be used to hurt, brainwash, and destabilize people, it’s easy to see why people are not okay with being forced to subsidize power centers for this crap. In fact, it’s easy to see why people are demanding AI-free products.

In other words, the real estate bubble might come back. The AI bubble? Not likely to come back — and hopefully, those responsible for the reckless use of it to bilk the world of money will be held accountable.

The market for AI will likely never be as hot as it is now, and for that, I say good riddance. Once tech bros and bankers flee the scene after realizing they can’t make it profitable, you’ll see people increasingly unwilling to touch it outside of very specific industries.

Much of the tech bro reticence will only come after they see first-hand consequences. After all, as Hartmann pointed out, bankers used to be charged with crimes back in the day. We should bring that back…and also forcibly strip them of their companies, assets, and ability to own stock.

There are certain events that are so deep, so shocking, they create near-permanent scars in a country’s collective psyche. Those of us alive for 9/11 remember the primal shock we felt when those planes hit those towers. We never quite recovered to the carefree country we were before those days.

One could argue that America is also going through another collective trauma as a result of Trump and the GOP. I mean, he does act like an American Nicolae Ceaușescu. That’s a valid point, but that doesn’t get to the cause of what we’re seeing. Trump is a symptom, not a cause.

The real root of the problem deals with our finance-tech disaster that was enabled by politicians who wanted to profit from it. We’ve allowed bad players to tear our country apart. The mask is falling off, and it will continue to fall off until everyone is forced to bear witness to what happened.

Right now, those financial marauders are pumping up this bubble until it bursts. When it pops, it will be beyond devastating, and people will likely force change as a result.

The businesses that will likely see the worst blowback are the mainstream media machines that let it happen, such as Meta. I mean, they will be treated a lot like Adolf Hitler is treated in Germany — viewed as a public scourge.

We’re already seeing the blowback starting as people flee Meta platforms, but it hasn’t reached a boiling point yet. The amount of damage this AI and net anonymity will do will be far-reaching and will affect everyone. Many people won’t ever really recover from it.

When that bubble bursts, it’s likely that certain currently-popular names and movements will become four-letter words. In a word, we’ll see a different America — one that experienced a loss that leaves us permanently leery of anything we can’t see with our own eyes.