Just like in Tintin when Haddock is tempted to grab a bottle of whiskey, I have
…imagine Musk is right: how to then still gain from investments? And if he is wrong?
I hear he is really good at predictions.
In 2011 Elno said he would put a man on Mars in 10 years.
Elon Musk: I’ll Put a Man on Mars in 10 Years
“Best case 10 years, worst case 15 to 20 years.”
“Musk’s overall success rate for these predictions was 16.28%.”
Elno could easily skew up his average to above 50% by making daily predictions about tomorrow’s weather based on today’s weather (apparently a 60-70% success rate).
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Does suggest that consistently predicting the future is not a prerequisite for accumulating large amounts of money… perhaps that is the relevant takeaway for this forum.
Indeed! You don’t have to be smart to make a lot of money, you just have to be reckless and relentless. And survive.
When I came of age maybe four decades or so, people (portrayed in the press then) becoming filtly rich were people like Bhagwan (under his name then).
I didn’t know much about him then – at my tender teenage years – or now, but then already concluded that if I were a person without a conscience desiring to make as much money as feasible, I would have to strive towards becoming a Guru and exploit people’s weaknesses in order to become filthy rich.
Luckily Via rigorous philosophical self-questioning, mostly involving going down the rabbit hole of existentialism, I refrained from pursuing that path of ever becoming a Guru.
Nowadays, both via press and sheer numbers of wealth, people like Elno seem make the top of that list again. Are they any different from my childhood villains? IMO no. Different tune, but still just the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Today’s comparable skill would only be to become a Pret-Engineer like Elno, and walk that talk until … well, not sure if he’ll ever be called. We’ll see.
Good luck to everyone signing off on saving for retirement!
Predicting it is not the prerequisite - promising it seems to be.
Hmmm, setting aside the fact that the economics of it don’t work, same predictions were made in the Industrial Revolution, and in the early 50s: machines will do everything for free, humans will only need to order Mojitos while lounging on the beach. We saw how that went 
/philosophical
He also forgets to consider that humans need to do something, and something to do, otherwise we go bad. It is differences and contrasts that make any experience enjoyable, something known to chefs the world over when acidity is combined with fat, salt/bitter with sweet, crispy with creamy, and more broadly effort/labour with leisure, chiaroscuro, fortepiano… Socialism/communism attempted to bring everyone to the same level and managed to create something utterly inhuman where, in the end, nobody but select few riding ZiL lanes, had any fun.
That reminded me also, we were watching the Vikings series with my wife, in the beginning Ragnar Lothbrok shares gold coins with the village, we both wondered…what are they going to do with the gold coins…trade them for goats? If everyone’s rich then nobody’s rich, and a goat is objectively more valuable
Hey hey he still got 5 years ok?
From a welfare point of view it went exactly that way.
I can only imagine how life was before. Working day and night and still hungry, dying before the age of 30 and so on.
But that was the cause for overpopulation too, and now we may be at the turning point of the game of life (which was my first screen saver on my Sun workstation in the 80s).
There’s the argument that welfare, 5-day week, pensions, healthcare came about for economic reasons. Maybe I am jaded but doubt that much good ever happened in the world for altruistic reasons.
Interestingly the life of a medieval peasant was really not as bad as we’re made to think it was, and life expectancy is skewed by huge infant mortality. Those who made it to 12-15 could expect to make it to 50-60 with pretty good health - natural selection at play. Sure they had backbreaking work in fields for ~9 months of the year, but it was interspersed with many feasts, holy days, rest days. As Marx (I’m going from capitalist to socialist in two posts but I’m fundamentally a pragmatic centrist!) noted, distancing the means of production from the individual brought about dramatic drops in quality, as was observed in the Industrial Revolution where flour was mixed with floor sweepings and sold to the poor. For ~1000 years in the medieval world, east and west, quality and price of stapples like wheat and meat was extremely tightly controlled, and besides, when the miller buys wheat from the farmer who lives next door, and his wife makes bread (and beer) with the flour he, personally, milled to feed themselves and their own children they organically ensure it’ll be as good as they get it to be. When wheat is grown 5000km away…that farmer over there doesn’t give a rat’s ass about it, only the margin they can make.
I think there are roughly 3 futures we might find ourselves in in 20 years:
(1) AI is important but comparable to past technologies (like the internet)
(2) AI replaces most human labor, but humans retain control
(3) AI replaces ~all human labor, and humans lose control
What are some possible investment implications?
(1) Little reason current economic systems wouldn’t persist. You should probably invest in stocks that benefit from AI-driven productivity gains. Standard arguments for why this is hard to predict apply, broad index funds (like VT) are probably a good bet.
(2) Still seems pretty likely that our economic system would largely persist. It becomes much more important to be owning capital, as you won’t have income and UBI is uncertain and out of your control. You want to end up in the capital-owning class, not in the UBI-dependent class.
(3) Economic systems probably don’t persist. Owning capital matters much less, since it’s unclear whether/why superintelligent/super-capable AI systems would respect existing property rights. If you think this scenario is likely (as Musk seems to), it may make more sense to consume now rather than invest.
I’m operating under the following rough subjective probabilities: (1) 30%, (2) 50%, (3) 20%.
If I had more time, I’d probably think more seriously about investment strategies that outperform ‘VT’, since I do believe AI will be more transformative than what the stock market currently prices in.
Separately, I’ve spent the last ~3.5 years working full-time to hopefully reduce the chance of outcome (3), or at least make it less bad. That’s not optimal from a personal financial perspective, but I’m doing it for altruistic reasons. If you think (3) is too-likely-for-comfort and are altruistically inclined, you might want to check out https://80000hours.org/ and feel free to DM me directly.
I think retirement will be irrelevant in 20 years because either:
Although #2 and #3 could be argued to be a retirement.
Because it’s market capped,
I’m convinced that VT will become quite fat with corresponding “AI winners” corporations accordingly anyway.
So not changing my mostly-index-based-with-some-fun-bets approach for the time being.
As the old saying goes: “It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”
I think this is in fact not a prediction by Musk but a mix of wishful thinking and giving Koolaid hoping the masses drink too much of it…
I love capitalism but am not ignorant to the fact that checks & balances are a good thing.
To add, my take on it is that now is the time to ensure you get your FIRE in order as AI (in line with Musks vision) may otherwise result in the 1% becoming the 0.001% - even more extreme distribution of wealth - enabled by AI.
One of the things I’ve been doing is expanding my Bitcoin assets (in my regular portfolio as well as Freizugigkeitskonto). Already have some gold and rather not buy more at current price (which may turn out to be an error).
One of the things I appreciate in Switzerland is (for instance when I was building my house) so many businesses work with suppliers they know and trust from nearby. Not necessarily the cheapest, but good quality. I try to do the same now (unless it’s really a pure purchase without much execution being required - e.g. expensive furniture bought in Germany to save on the taxes).
You are very lucky if you found anyone doing quality in housing and construction.
Land cost are so high that people buying end up with super tight budget on actual construction/equipements, so it’s either expensive and bad quality or super expensive and average quality. Good quality, for work with nice finishing, design, actual artwork and long lasting (multiple decades) materials and equipements would cost 10x more than base price or more so only the super wealthy can afford.
All I see in housing project below 1.5MCHF in Vaud (and probably other high density/demand areas) is bare concrete box with no finishing details whatsoever, 25-30k budget for kitchen that barely buy you IKEA quality furniture with basic oven and fridge that would need replacement in 10-15 years at best and bare minimum solar PV and heating system, no water reuse, or other efficient system saving you on long term and getting slightly more autonomous in energy consumption.
That’s also why I see real estate for mortals, especially traditional families living on one income or 1.4 income at best, as not a good investment anymore. In a UBI society those who invest all their money and got full in mortgage would just get more exposed and face more risk in the future, as less and less would be able to afford housing and only big real estate holder, with large building saving on every corner to stay profitable, will make money out of the UBI living slaves.
But hey ! Hopefully I will be wrong as I don’t want to live in such world.
Tesla selling humanoid robots to the public by the end of next year, you heard it here first!
Just as self driving cars this year! And the year before that!
Tsla investors fall for that lie every single year. Somehow it keeps working.
I mean, I don’t really doubt they’ll be selling them, I just doubt they’ll be autonomous in any meaningful kind of way.
It also seems Musk is falling off of his game. He should have advertised cyborgs with Neuralink enhancements.
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