Comment by plomme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by plomme | Hacker News Reader

A good and thought provoking read. This is obviously navel-gazing, but looking at this from an individual or family perspective, I'm wondering about how you could prosper in a depopulating, aging, and warming world.

Traditional investments like real estate and property may not be solid bets if there are suddenly a lot of it to go around due to there being less of us around. Then again, city growth seems stable.

Another point is what happens to stock markets when there are less consumers and producers. Stagnating GDP and indices do not make attractive investments. Where do I invest my hard earned cash then? Private elderly care, drug companies, robotics companies?

We should probably look to the countries mentioned in the article, like South Korea or Japan for answers. But I'm not sure I'm able to pick out winning strategies looking at those, or even be sure they would work where I'm based.

I'm curious what your thoughts are - how do you invest and prepare for the next fifty years?

I realize this is a selfish comment to make, but shoring up oneself is at least actionable for us as individuals, in addition to trying to make the world a better place for everyone else.

I just fundamentally do not understand the economics of why everybody is so worried about aging and depopulation. TECHNOLOGY. ROBOTS. We us technology to increase production. We create more with less. Automation and technology should create an environment where less people can care for more more efficiently than ever before. Food production should require less people than ever before. Shipping. And not even just mechanical robots. Sunlight and yeast -> food.

The problem becomes the banks financing private ownership of the robots. Maybe the populations livelihood shouldn't be a profit center. Or in the case of the modern economy, where consistent profit is failure, an wealth extraction growth center.

Technosalvation is being promised constantly, yet so far the signs don't bring much hope. Current trends rather point to technodamnation.

and making more people to take care of the old ones is the solution? can they be trusted more than the robots?

Robots can wipe asses or whatever, but they cannot provide care, because care requires more than mechanical actions.

The future you hope for is not less bleak and dystopian than what you try to avoid this way. As always when technology is supposed to bring salvation.

Tech does useful stuff like cure smallpox, provide ample food, central heating and so on. Salvation is more of a Jesus thing - I'm not sure tech is really promising to deliver our souls from sin but might be ok for food and shelter.

> I'm not sure tech is really promising to deliver our souls from sin but might be ok for food and shelter.

Tech cannot promise anything. That's silly! There are people, on the other hand, that go around and preach their gospel, where technology is placed in the center.

I think we are on the same page actually - I'm not dismissing the notion that we might engineer ourselves out of a declining work force. But then the question is, if human labor (me, you, us) is -gradually- becoming unwanted, then how do I make a living?

Maybe there is a Star-Trek utopia at the far end, but in the meantime we are looking at potentially several years where me and a chunk of other white-collar workers are unemployable. I'm not sure UBI will be enacted before a large chunk of the general population is unemployable. And how will we fund UBI? Taxing the automators? They can just move their business to a tax haven.

Maybe I can find a job in some sector that's hard to automate, but I imagine a lot of people will be looking for those jobs. And that would probably lead to a pay cut.

So, what then if we want to maintain or even improve our standard of living? Invest in tech stocks? Sure. But we will still need to pick out winners or spread our bets. Will the gains in the stock market be enough to cancel out job loss?

I spend a lot of time thinking about this.

Stock market? As you write - what will happen when the next generation of consumers and workers won't be born? On the other hand it is clear that market is anything but rational, and maybe it doesn't really need people in the same way internet doesn't need real people. Maybe the future is bots trading with each other, pumping up the bubble.

Bonds? The same problem, lack of next generations.

Real estate? Land? Maybe if you already have something in very good location, though even then I am a bit skeptical.

Then one needs to remember that money is just a number. It doesn't matter how much digits you have, but what can you get with them - real resources and services. So maybe the question is wrong from the very beginning.

I sometimes believe that ironically the best insurance in childless world are your own children. Unless, of course, we will face a scenario where old people, constituting majority of the population, will squeeze those few remaining young hard to get their pensions and healthcare. Yes, the same people that today preach about how it is good to not have children etc. will be first to put a boot on them in the future. For this reason I expect growing tensions between those people with children and childless ones.

This is why I constantly find most such discussions on demography pointless, as participants rarely understand how everything in our society depends on the assumption that no longer holds - that there will be more people, and that young will be more numerous than old.

In the end probably best things to safeguard you in the upcoming crisis will be the same as always - local community, family (including children), friends and your own skills. People living in more agrarian societies, or just in the countryside, generally have better situation in that regard.

Agreed, children were the original pension scheme and might well become one again!

Jokes aside I agree with you on strengthening bonds with local community, and it's something that many people neglect, not even knowing their neighbors. Especially so for city dwellers. Strong social bonds are an end in its' own right!

On your agrarian note I wonder if we will see a return to the country side as younger people are priced out of cities and more jobs accept remote work. Then again, RTO and "affordable" rentals may nullify that. But as real estate prices grow I keep wondering how anyone has the money to buy real estate in the city any more. Corporations I guess.

Regarding money being just a number I don't disagree exactly, but it sure feels like my flavor of white collar work might be among the first to be automated. If not, and the stock market flat-lines and taxes shoot up because we need to support the super-centenarians then my investments and cash flow are shot. I don't count on UBI to save me before pretty much everyone is out of a job, and in the meanwhile I will need to exchange money for goods that I'm not certain will plummet in price to match my lack of funds. So that's part of the reason I'm thinking about how to hedge or even gain in a future that might look different from our past.

I feel like a lot of people are vaguely aware of the skewed demography in the northern hemisphere, but I don't feel like there is a lot of talk about how it will affect the way we work and invest.

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