Most of What We Call An Asset Today, Will Not Be Tomorrow!
Sooooo many things change over this next half-century.
One of the big things is what we consider an asset.
And its corollary, what is an asset changes.
It is like our current idea of "investing" in the stock market will seem silly in the future. Buying, trading, selling businesses? What kind of deranged fool would do that?
Our ideas of "lending" money will be very different. Being extremely wealthy, meaning having "lots of money", meaning having lots of stock, valued at a high price, will be almost impossible a mere 50 years from now. Bitcoin is only the beginning.
All of this future comes about, it is just one domino falling after another. However, getting through these next few years will be a struggle. Especially if you hold onto the old. Especially the old way of assets.
The stock market will be gone.
Yesterday's post was about how the stock market will be gone in 50 years.
But, lets talk about it from an asset point of view.
A business in this future will be required to produce as close to zero pollution (forget about the CO2 crap of today). If you pollute, no one will do business with you. And products made need to be repairable and recyclable. In their entirety.
You may start to see that customer loyalty will be all. And it won't be loyalty to a name brand, it will be the people who produce the product. The family who create the items, the family business head who manages customer satisfaction. This business will not be sellable. The loyalty will evaporate as soon as the sale happens. Further, it will be extremely easy for anyone to start a similar business (if they have the love for creating those products). There will be little barrier to entry. What there will be is a difficulty in getting new customers to support your business.
So, you see, from this future viewpoint, corrupt, cost externalizing, giant corporations will soon have no customers. Owning a piece of that… you would rather have a bag of shit.
The stock market, and stocks goes away. And the idea of buying, trading, selling stocks is seen as stupid. And the idea that they are an asset is just silly.
Real Estate and Rental Properties
The entire idea about how we see land ownership will be turned upside down.
Instead of keeping our kids from owning land through higher and higher prices, the children will own the land, because they are our, and the land's future.
There is plenty of land all over our planet to live on. So much land. Only in cities do we think that land is scarce.
We have a system that keeps people that need land now, from having any land. The parents' parents claimed all the land and divvied it up between themselves. And because we put land in the same box as other things, we mistakenly have the idea that we "own it". We do not own it, it would be more apropos to say it owns us.
In the future, we will have small communities, and these communities will "own" the land. Or, more appropriately, it will be said that this community is the current caretaker of the land. And other people will respect the area as "the communities' land", as long as they are caring for the land.
So, in the future, the idea of holding real estate and making money on it, will seem silly. As silly and repulsive, as someone bottling up air to keep others from having it.
Gold and Diamonds
We all know that the only reason why diamonds are so expensive is that De Beers has monopolized the supply. They have gotten so desperate to maintain control that each year they burn a mountain of diamonds. There isn't much real value in these rocks.
Similarly gold will be found to be in such great supply, that gold will drop to the price of a pretty yellow metal. After people stop thinking of it as money, there is really very little use for it. Jewellery and plating electrical connectors.
There will be two things that really destroy the value of gold:
- We start seeing that the Rots-childs are hiring mercenaries to oppress us with it
- We learn that the reason it is valuable is that our alien overlords wanted us to mine it. (The Rots-childs still remember)
Imagine learning that the only reason you value gold is because it was important to these aliens who were kicked out?
And then imagine that your little village has these people come to town to buy food. And they pay in gold. The gold comes from the Rots-childs who have a mercenary army that steals from you, or in other ways oppress you. All you have to do is not accept gold, not support the tyranny. Let them grow their own food.
Gold and diamonds become about as precious as a bag of shit.
So much of what we call assets today. So much of what we trade our blood, sweat and tears for, will, looking back from the future, seem silly and useless.
Stocks, bonds, real estate, rental properties, gold and diamonds will be seen as worthless. Like Weimar German Marks and Zimbabwe notes.
If you hold onto these things, because you cannot give up on the past, you will lose everything.
However, holding onto the future will bring so many of the things that capitalism and communism promised, but could never deliver. We will have a world where people are rarely let go hungry. We will have a world where people have a comfortable place to live. AND!! We will have an even greater explosion of inventions and innovations. Where everyone will see a much higher standard of living than most people can imagine today.
And the reason why we will see very few, if any, very rich people is that the method of sucking up money unto one person/group will not longer be allowed to exist. AND the riches that a person can amass will change from money to friends, partners, and loyalty. A person who loves money will find it flies away from them.
It will become a world where money may not buy anything at all. Where your reputation will determine if others would sell to you. Who today would think of a store that would turn a person away for not being someone they would want to do business with?
The future is very strange, especially as viewed from what we consider assets today.