Come to think of it, perhaps I should explain why I think there will be a long-term downward trend.
Given that every large, complex civilization before ours has eventually collapsed, the burden of proof should be on those who claim that ours is exceptional and will not collapse. If I’m wrong and our civilization outlives me, I don’t mind losing some money on my investments. I’d rather be a poor guy in a rich civilization if this insures me against being a poor guy in a poor civilization. If I’m right, I want to at least use the fact that I’m right to extract some wealth as a consolation prize and use that wealth to help myself and other techno-geeks survive and perhaps somehow hasten the next civilizational cycle.
If I had to guess, the most likely cause of collapse would be dwindling oil and gas supply combined with a growing demand caused by population growth and increasing industrialization. It’s true that this creates incentives to develop alternative energy sources, but there are organizational, informational, and physical limitations on how quickly our infrastructure can be retooled to such alternatives. It is prudent to hedge one’s bets that engineers and entreprneurs will win this race. Furthermore, every single alternative has a higher per-kilojoule cost than oil. Therefore, even if liquified coal, or biodiesel, or fuel cells become commercially viable, we will still be spending a larger fraction of our wealth just keeping the lights on than we do now, and I would expect the effect on the economy to be similar to a tax corresponding to the same amount.
But that’s just my guess. I don’t claim to know why our civilization will collapse, nor when this will happen. I do know that this collapse will not happen overnight, and there may be a long time window during which to exploit it before “the market is at 0”.
Come to think of it, perhaps I should explain why I think there will be a long-term downward trend.
Given that every large, complex civilization before ours has eventually collapsed, the burden of proof should be on those who claim that ours is exceptional and will not collapse. If I’m wrong and our civilization outlives me, I don’t mind losing some money on my investments. I’d rather be a poor guy in a rich civilization if this insures me against being a poor guy in a poor civilization. If I’m right, I want to at least use the fact that I’m right to extract some wealth as a consolation prize and use that wealth to help myself and other techno-geeks survive and perhaps somehow hasten the next civilizational cycle.
If I had to guess, the most likely cause of collapse would be dwindling oil and gas supply combined with a growing demand caused by population growth and increasing industrialization. It’s true that this creates incentives to develop alternative energy sources, but there are organizational, informational, and physical limitations on how quickly our infrastructure can be retooled to such alternatives. It is prudent to hedge one’s bets that engineers and entreprneurs will win this race. Furthermore, every single alternative has a higher per-kilojoule cost than oil. Therefore, even if liquified coal, or biodiesel, or fuel cells become commercially viable, we will still be spending a larger fraction of our wealth just keeping the lights on than we do now, and I would expect the effect on the economy to be similar to a tax corresponding to the same amount.
But that’s just my guess. I don’t claim to know why our civilization will collapse, nor when this will happen. I do know that this collapse will not happen overnight, and there may be a long time window during which to exploit it before “the market is at 0”.