longish term investing

[Dan Goodman]

How would you invest for a hundred years in the future? Assume you're
going into suspended animation, and are due to be revived then.

For a thousand years in the future?

For a million years in the future?



--
Dan Goodman

[David Friedman]

In article <iY-dnfF2KZHPuqDM...@iphouse.net>,

Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:

> How would you invest for a hundred years in the future? Assume you're
> going into suspended animation, and are due to be revived then.

Assuming there are currently legal institutions that maintain your
ownership claim when suspended ... .

Partly by buying low risk stock or securities. Partly by concealing
something I suspect will still be valuable--antiques, perhaps--where I
will be able to retrieve it.

> For a thousand years in the future?

The second method is probably better than nothing, but not much better.

> For a million years in the future?

I don't think it is doable. Too hard to predict either legal
institutions or what will still be valuable.

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
_Salamander_: http://tinyurl.com/6957y7e
_How to Milk an Almond,..._ http://tinyurl.com/63xg8gx

[Bill Swears]

On 3/10/2013 6:16 PM, David Friedman wrote:
> In article <iY-dnfF2KZHPuqDM...@iphouse.net>,
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
>> How would you invest for a hundred years in the future? Assume you're
>> going into suspended animation, and are due to be revived then.
>
> Assuming there are currently legal institutions that maintain your
> ownership claim when suspended ... .
>
> Partly by buying low risk stock or securities. Partly by concealing
> something I suspect will still be valuable--antiques, perhaps--where I
> will be able to retrieve it.
>
>> For a thousand years in the future?
>
> The second method is probably better than nothing, but not much better.
>
>> For a million years in the future?
>
> I don't think it is doable. Too hard to predict either legal
> institutions or what will still be valuable.

Or, what will be human. I think the current brain is considered to be
between 60K and 30K years old, as an evolutionary step. A million
years? If you popped out at all, you'd probably be kept in a zoo, and
never know it.

Bill
>


--
Bill Swears
http://www.billswears.com/
Zook Country - http://twilighttimesbooks.com/ZookCountry_ch1.html
Also at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other fine ebook emporia.
Puppies - http://www.mtaonline.net/~wswears/
Opinions - http://wswears.livejournal.com/

[Dan Goodman]

On Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:16:14 -0700, David Friedman wrote:

> In article <iY-dnfF2KZHPuqDM...@iphouse.net>,
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
>> How would you invest for a hundred years in the future? Assume you're
>> going into suspended animation, and are due to be revived then.
>
> Assuming there are currently legal institutions that maintain your
> ownership claim when suspended ... .
>
> Partly by buying low risk stock or securities. Partly by concealing
> something I suspect will still be valuable--antiques, perhaps--where I
> will be able to retrieve it.

Seems to me that low risk companies have become high risk or "Don't throw
that certificate away -- a collector might want it!" in less than a
hundred years.

And there's the slight problem of ensuring that whoever oversees your
investments follows your instructions. Instead of deciding, for example,
that a company which makes flying cars is a more prudent investment.

>> For a thousand years in the future?
>
> The second method is probably better than nothing, but not much better.
>
>> For a million years in the future?
>
> I don't think it is doable. Too hard to predict either legal
> institutions or what will still be valuable.





--

Dan Goodman

[Dan Goodman]

On Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:59:27 -0700, David Harmon wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:16:14 -0700 in rec.arts.sf.composition, David
> Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote,

>>In article <iY-dnfF2KZHPuqDM...@iphouse.net>,
>> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>>
>>> How would you invest for a hundred years in the future? Assume you're
>>> going into suspended animation, and are due to be revived then.
>>
>>Assuming there are currently legal institutions that maintain your
>>ownership claim when suspended ... .
>>
>>Partly by buying low risk stock or securities. Partly by concealing
>>something I suspect will still be valuable--antiques, perhaps--where I
>>will be able to retrieve it.
>

> The price of antiques is already inflated.

So, buy things which are just becoming collectible.

Or buy fake antiques which have been exposed as fakes. They'll be cheap;
and in a century, they'll be genuine antiques.

> A case of first editions of your first novel?





--
Dan Goodman

[Don Kuenz]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
> In article <iY-dnfF2KZHPuqDM...@iphouse.net>,
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
>> How would you invest for a hundred years in the future? Assume you're
>> going into suspended animation, and are due to be revived then.
>
> Assuming there are currently legal institutions that maintain your
> ownership claim when suspended ... .

Paper always carries counter-party risk. rasfc readers may recall my
earlier post about a man, a Colonel, known to an associate of mine. The
Colonel possessed a genuine title derived from the Virginia land grants
of 1609 & 1611. The second map from the top at
http://www.virginiaplaces.org/boundaries/boundaryk.html illustrates the
sheer size of the incomprehensibly gigantic area covered by Virginia
land grants.

The Colonel lived an itinerant lifestyle, going from place to place
demanding that illegal squatters honor his genuine title. Most towns
probably showed enough sensitivity to refrain from laughing in his face.
Towns may have even compensated the Colonel a token amount for "his"
land.

But, in the end, the counter-party, and only the counter-party,
fixed the value of the Colonel's genuinely priceless title.

--
Don Kuenz

[Shawn Wilson]

On Mar 10, 5:37 pm, Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:

> How would you invest for a hundred years in the future?  Assume you're
> going into suspended animation, and are due to be revived then.

Start now, look backwards. Railroads? Uh... GM? Uh... Coal?
Uh... 100 years? No mid course corrections? Sucker bet.

> For a thousand years in the future?
>
> For a million years in the future?

Flatly impossible. You money will be gone.

[Jacey Bedford]

In message
<48ef0983-1b9d-43ba...@y2g2000pbg.googlegroups.com>,
Shawn Wilson <ikono...@gmail.com> writes

Well just sticking it in a bank account isn't glamorous, but it could
work.

100 years in the future should be OK. Maybe you need a financial
institution to manage some very low-risk savings accounts spread over a
variety of banks in more than one country. An institution that not only
seems solid now, but one that works in partnership with a large law firm
so that if the institution folds or merges, your account is passed on to
its successor. The law firm to keep an eye on the institution, the
institution to keep an eye on the law firm, so you don't fall between
the cracks. There are plenty of banks and financial institutions that
have been going for ore than 100 years, so no reason - beyond a minor
apocalypse (in which case all bets are off) to assume that your money
won't be safe for 100 years.

�1000 invested at just 5% for 100 years will yield � 131,501.26
according to a compound interest calculator I found on the web. You
should at least be able to do a little better than keep up with
inflation.

And it depends on how much you have to begin with.
�10,000 would yield �1,315,012.58

Also a nice patch of land on the edge of an expanding city should have
turned itself into prime real estate 100 years from now. Rent it out for
something innocuous in the meantime with a lease that reverts back to
your estate in 100 years.

Lots of small unambitious deposits seems to be the only way to play it
reasonably safe.

Maybe that would work for a couple of hundred years, even, but 100
years? All bets are off.

Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford

[David Friedman]

In article <JjD7YqZx...@parkhead.demon.co.uk>,

Jacey Bedford <look...@nospam.invalid> wrote:

> �1000 invested at just 5% for 100 years will yield � 131,501.26
> according to a compound interest calculator I found on the web. You
> should at least be able to do a little better than keep up with
> inflation.

As a general rule, real interest rates--interest rate minus inflation
rate--tend to be about one to two percent.

[JF]

On 13/03/2013 02:37, Jacey Bedford wrote:

>
> Well just sticking it in a bank account isn't glamorous, but it
> could work.

The people who invest for my timehopping couple in The Golden
Flower* use land and property because, as the cliche/ puts it
'they aren't making any more'. I wouldn't bet on that to work in
a low population density country like the US.

JF
BTW... I have had an actual review for The Iron Butterfly**,
someone who picked up the card, went to Amazon and then bought
it. Wonders will never cease. Nothing on the shorts collections
or the SF novel though. I'm plodding through another edit on the
Iron Butterfly, finding it's and its and your and you're. Of the
making of many books there is no end.

*Couldn't sell it so put it in the Lucifer Falling collection.
Modern sf doesn't do poignant.

**Good Lord, I'm actually on topic for alt.history....

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

Exactly my thought.

Lex Luthor: Miss Teschmacher, when I was six years old my father said
to me...
Miss Teschmacher: "Get out."
Lex Luthor: Ha ha. Before that. He said, "Son, stocks may rise and
fall, utilities and transportation systems may collapse. People are no
damn good, but they will always need land and they'll pay through the
nose to get it!"

So, IF you assume that you *can* make such long, long term investments
-- i.e., that whatever you buy, the people, or super-people, to come
will honor your ownership of it -- land. Buy as much land as you can.

If they disassemble the planet and turn it to a Dyson Sphere, you'll
own a fraction of the sphere. If the planet's still in use -- which is
likely in even a million years, by whatever lives then -- you will have
something valuable.

Obviously the whole EXERCISE depends on the assumption that your
investment choice won't be simply wiped out by regime change the year
after you go into suspended animation, otherwise there isn't a point to
even guessing.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Website: http://www.grandcentralarena.com Blog:
http://seawasp.livejournal.com

[Michael R N Dolbear]

David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote

> As a general rule, real interest rates--interest rate minus inflation

> rate--tend to be about one to two percent.

So unless you can avoid taxes, result is negative ?

--
Mike D

[David Friedman]

In article <01ce1ff3$f55c3d60$26c9403e@default>,

If the inflation rate and the tax rate are sufficiently large, yes.

But there have been long periods of time when the inflation rate was, by
our standards, negligible. My memory of the discussion in a book by
Carlo Cipolla, an economic historian, is that through the middle ages
and the renaissance, silver coinage tended to be debased by half about
every two hundred years and gold coinage was substantially more stable
than that. Of course, you could also get inflation through a reduction
in the value of silver and gold, but I don't think that becomes
substantial until the sixteenth century, with gold and silver coming in
from the New World. And I think prices in the U.S. and Britain were
pretty stable through most of the 19th century, with a gradual deflation
in the final two decades followed by a (by our standards) slow inflation
due to the discovery of the South African gold fields and the cyanide
process for extracting gold from low grade ore.

[David Friedman]

In article <khptth$2l1$1...@dont-email.me>,

"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:

> So, IF you assume that you *can* make such long, long term investments
> -- i.e., that whatever you buy, the people, or super-people, to come
> will honor your ownership of it -- land. Buy as much land as you can.
>
> If they disassemble the planet and turn it to a Dyson Sphere, you'll
> own a fraction of the sphere. If the planet's still in use -- which is
> likely in even a million years, by whatever lives then -- you will have
> something valuable.

On the other hand, if we develop good VR over the next fifty years,
letting everyone live in a real cubicle but a virtual mansion on the
Pacific coast, land prices might plummet.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

On 3/13/13 1:03 PM, David Friedman wrote:
> In article <khptth$2l1$1...@dont-email.me>,
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>
>> So, IF you assume that you *can* make such long, long term investments
>> -- i.e., that whatever you buy, the people, or super-people, to come
>> will honor your ownership of it -- land. Buy as much land as you can.
>>
>> If they disassemble the planet and turn it to a Dyson Sphere, you'll
>> own a fraction of the sphere. If the planet's still in use -- which is
>> likely in even a million years, by whatever lives then -- you will have
>> something valuable.
>
> On the other hand, if we develop good VR over the next fifty years,
> letting everyone live in a real cubicle but a virtual mansion on the
> Pacific coast, land prices might plummet.
>

Maybe, but I doubt it. The land will still be of use to someone for
something as time goes on. Maybe not very short term -- a hundred years
or less -- but over the time you postulated, I'm sure it'll be used for
something.

[David Friedman]

In article <khqi8s$ta8$2...@dont-email.me>,

"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:

> On 3/13/13 1:03 PM, David Friedman wrote:
> > In article <khptth$2l1$1...@dont-email.me>,
> > "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> >
> >> So, IF you assume that you *can* make such long, long term investments
> >> -- i.e., that whatever you buy, the people, or super-people, to come
> >> will honor your ownership of it -- land. Buy as much land as you can.
> >>
> >> If they disassemble the planet and turn it to a Dyson Sphere, you'll
> >> own a fraction of the sphere. If the planet's still in use -- which is
> >> likely in even a million years, by whatever lives then -- you will have
> >> something valuable.
> >
> > On the other hand, if we develop good VR over the next fifty years,
> > letting everyone live in a real cubicle but a virtual mansion on the
> > Pacific coast, land prices might plummet.
> >
>
> Maybe, but I doubt it. The land will still be of use to someone for
> something as time goes on. Maybe not very short term -- a hundred years
> or less -- but over the time you postulated, I'm sure it'll be used for
> something.

I was referring to the hundred year version of the question. For the
thousand year version, I don't think one can rely on secure titles to
land or anything else.

[ADPUF]

Dan Goodman, 01:37, lunedì 11 marzo 2013:

Gold and diamonds?


--
+¿+
----

[Greg Goss]

Shawn Wilson <ikono...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Mar 10, 5:37 pm, Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
>> How would you invest for a hundred years in the future?  Assume you're
>> going into suspended animation, and are due to be revived then.
>
>
>Start now, look backwards. Railroads? Uh... GM? Uh... Coal?
>Uh... 100 years? No mid course corrections? Sucker bet.

Set up a council to keep you in the Dow. Eventually, they would swap
you into an ETF and retire.

An index is pretty good at doing your mid-course corrections for you,
so long as the idea of stock markets and capitalism survives.

(Was there a stock index for Germany in, say, 1910 or 1925?)
--
I used to own a mind like a steel trap.
Perhaps if I'd specified a brass one, it
wouldn't have rusted like this.

[Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)]

Gold maybe. But diamonds can be synthesized and they're getting cheaper
to synth all the time.

[David Friedman]

In article <5142167b$0$40354$4faf...@reader1.news.tin.it>,

We can already synthesize diamonds. It's possible that people will
continue to value natural gemstones over synthetics, but I expect it
will become harder and harder to tell the difference.

Synthesizing gold is a harder problem, but there is a lot of it in sea
water and asteroids that might become inexpensively available with
technological progress in considerably less than a thousand years.

[John F. Eldredge]

Over a timespan of a million years, if the current altitude is anywhere
near sea level, there is a good chance it may end up underwater. I am
talking not only about climate changes, but also the fact that the land
itself rises or subsides over time.

--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly
is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria

[Dorothy J Heydt]

In article <aqffp2...@mid.individual.net>,

My daughter and son-in-law are currently house-hunting on
Alameda, an island in San Francisco Bay off the shore of Oakland
(part of which is familiar to fans of the Mythbusters, who
frequently run tests on the shut-down Naval Air Station there).
This island is very flat, and its outlying edges are fill.
Daughter and SIL go armed with a map projecting how much of it
will be under water if the sea level rises 10 feet. The central
part ought to be safe for their lifetime and their son's, and
that's where they're looking.

--
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com
Should you wish to email me, you'd better use the gmail edress.
Kithrup's all spammy and hotmail's been hacked.

[T. M. Pederson]

On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 02:36:18 +0000, John F. Eldredge wrote:

> On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:33:43 -0700, David Friedman wrote:
>
>> In article <khqi8s$ta8$2...@dont-email.me>,
>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:

[...]

>>> Maybe, but I doubt it. The land will still be of use to someone
> for
>>> something as time goes on. Maybe not very short term -- a hundred
>>> years or less -- but over the time you postulated, I'm sure it'll be
>>> used for something.
>>
>> I was referring to the hundred year version of the question. For the
>> thousand year version, I don't think one can rely on secure titles to
>> land or anything else.
>
> Over a timespan of a million years, if the current altitude is anywhere
> near sea level, there is a good chance it may end up underwater. I am
> talking not only about climate changes, but also the fact that the land
> itself rises or subsides over time.

Or even above that mark one may have to deal with glaciation from ice
ages over that sort of time scale. And then there's continental
drift.

IIRC, the oldest land/rock on Earth is in Greenland, although I don't
recall the exact spot. Regardless, there's plenty of land there that
could cycle between frozen over and underwater over several thousand
years.

[David Friedman]

In article <MJor3...@kithrup.com>,

djh...@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) wrote:

> My daughter and son-in-law are currently house-hunting on
> Alameda, an island in San Francisco Bay off the shore of Oakland
> (part of which is familiar to fans of the Mythbusters, who
> frequently run tests on the shut-down Naval Air Station there).
> This island is very flat, and its outlying edges are fill.
> Daughter and SIL go armed with a map projecting how much of it
> will be under water if the sea level rises 10 feet. The central
> part ought to be safe for their lifetime and their son's, and
> that's where they're looking.

10 feet is considerably more than the IPCC projections for the end of
this century. They've been avoiding calling anything a prediction, but
the sea level rise figures in their model are mostly in the one to two
foot range.

When Betty and I got married, she was living in New Orleans; I got a
position at Tulane and joined her. A bit before that there had been a
flood and she had taken note of what did or didn't get flooded, with the
result that when we bought a house it was one several feet above sea
level.

[Brenda Clough]

My b-i-l is a geologist. He has been known to look at a building plot
and say, kindly, "No, I wouldn't build there." If I ever build from
scratch he's the first person I will consult.

Brenda

--
My latest novel SPEAK TO OUR DESIRES is available exclusively from Book
View Cafe.
http://www.bookviewcafe.com/index.php/Brenda-Clough/Novels/Speak-to-Our-Desires-Chapter-01

[David Friedman]

In article <ki0a0q$7ov$1...@dont-email.me>,

Brenda Clough <Brenda...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> My b-i-l is a geologist. He has been known to look at a building plot
> and say, kindly, "No, I wouldn't build there." If I ever build from
> scratch he's the first person I will consult.

My wife is a geologist. When we lived in New Orleans, she made it clear
that she regarded the place as a catastrophe waiting to happen.

As was the Mississippi, kept from shifting its delta for decades by the
Army Corps of Engineers.

[John F. Eldredge]

On Fri, 15 Mar 2013 21:27:27 -0700, David Friedman wrote:

> In article <ki0a0q$7ov$1...@dont-email.me>,
> Brenda Clough <Brenda...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> My b-i-l is a geologist. He has been known to look at a building plot
>> and say, kindly, "No, I wouldn't build there." If I ever build from
>> scratch he's the first person I will consult.
>
> My wife is a geologist. When we lived in New Orleans, she made it clear
> that she regarded the place as a catastrophe waiting to happen.
>
> As was the Mississippi, kept from shifting its delta for decades by the
> Army Corps of Engineers.

Another risk is of landslide; if you pick a location below a hillside,
particularly a steep hillside, there is a chance that the hill may end up
on top of the location someday. In particular, watch out for locations
where there is a C-shaped indentation, with the center of the C higher up
the hill; this is the mark of a previous landslide.

[Drakhoran]

On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:28:28 +0100, ADPUF <flyh...@mosq.it> wrote:

>Dan Goodman, 01:37, luned� 11 marzo 2013:
>
>Gold and diamonds?

Can both be synthesised with current technology. Syntesised gold is currently
much more expensive than the natural kind, but I wouldn't bet on that remaining
true in the long term.

[Jim Cornwall]

Yep. When we moved to our present location (back home to Puget Sound
area), a number of potential spots (in my wife's eyes) were ruled out
due to location in places where our local volcano has produced historic
mudflows reaching saltwater, or too much tsunami danger when the
Cascadia rips loose and gives us a 9.0+ shaker... The Mountain is
beautiful but not to taken lightly.

Jim

[Jacey Bedford]

In message <ki81m2$qb7$1...@dont-email.me>, Jim Cornwall
<Rox...@gmail.com> writes

>>
>Yep. When we moved to our present location (back home to Puget Sound
>area), a number of potential spots (in my wife's eyes) were ruled out
>due to location in places where our local volcano has produced historic
>mudflows reaching saltwater, or too much tsunami danger when the
>Cascadia rips loose and gives us a 9.0+ shaker... The Mountain is
>beautiful but not to taken lightly.
>
>Jim

I am once more grateful to have been born in the UK, though I may not
say that if the Gulf Stream gets diverted and we turn into another
Siberia.

Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford

[JF]

On 19/03/2013 02:16, Jacey Bedford wrote:

>
> I am once more grateful to have been born in the UK, though I may
> not say that if the Gulf Stream gets diverted and we turn into
> another Siberia.

It's not so much location as timing. Isn't there a perfect
Yorkshire volcano called Roseberry Topping?

JF

[Jacey Bedford]

In message <JaWdnZzFl6uom9XM...@brightview.co.uk>, JF
<jul...@oopsoopsfloodsclimbers.co.uk> writes

That's well up north - almost in Cleveland (though the boundary between
Cleveland and north Yorkshire seems to have been blurred again. Even the
folks who live up there aren't sure whether they're back in Yorkshire
since the gov messed with the regions again.)

And, of course there's a fairly spectacular one in Edinburgh.

Jacey

Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford

[Jim Cornwall]

Sooner or later, something will get you, no matter where you are :-)
With a smallish amount of foresight, both tsunami and volcano risks were
reduced to an acceptably small level (especially when one considers the
spectacularly beautiful scenery that also comes from the same tectonic
mechanisms producing the occasional unpleasant bits).

Jim

[JF]

On 20/03/2013 03:36, Jim Cornwall wrote:

>> I am once more grateful to have been born in the UK, though I
>> may not say that if the Gulf Stream gets diverted and we turn
>> into another Siberia.
>>
>> Jacey
>
> Sooner or later, something will get you, no matter where you are
> :-) With a smallish amount of foresight, both tsunami and volcano
> risks were reduced to an acceptably small level (especially when
> one considers the spectacularly beautiful scenery that also comes
> from the same tectonic mechanisms producing the occasional
> unpleasant bits).

As long as one Englishman moans about the lack of a decent cup of
tea, or plants a garden where only weeds should grow, then
England will endure.

JF

[Will in New Haven]

Wouldna thought so after that last match against Wales.

--
Will in New Haven

[JF]

On 20/03/2013 18:18, Will in New Haven wrote:
> On

>>
>> As long as one Englishman moans about the lack of a decent cup of
>> tea, or plants a garden where only weeds should grow, then
>> England will endure.
>
> Wouldna thought so after that last match against Wales.

I said endure, not flourish.

JF

[Jim Cornwall]

So, it's obvious that someday an English mind will be responsible for
creating a computer that is capable of only producing a "substance
almost entirely unlike tea"... <grin>