Didn’t know where else to muse about this, so here goes.
I consider that human population growth is the most serious problem we face in the near future.
Its natural to think about climate change and/or collapse of the biosphere but those risks become magnified when possibly ten billion people suffer the consequences. By contrast two billion could adapt and avoid the worst effects.
Anyway, on a more prosaic level this makes me nervous about preserving my hard earned savings for my wife and I, and eventually our children.
What do Dopers consider to be the safest investments over the next 30 years?
Canned food, upgrades to your house’s structure especially walls, and maybe a good reliable firearm for each member of the family and plenty of ammunition. If you think the future is all that uncertain, nothing else is a sound investment.
Population growth will mostly affect other countries.
What you need to do is to be prepared for multiple possibilities. While stockpiling canned goods, etc are good for some possibilities, for other possibilities you need to be able to relocate quickly (travel light…).
My view is fundamentally you need to prepare for a declining standard of living–so live well below your means and develop frugal habits. I expect the climate to go increasingly crazy so avoid the high flood risk, high hurricane risk, high wildfire risk, etc areas.
Gold and to a lesser extent silver are good assets to hold as part of your wealth.
In terms of jobs I would go for the types of jobs relevant to providing necessities (food, energy…) rather than luxury type goods and services.
I agree with Chronos. When resources really get scarce, common equity will mean exactly jack. It will be governments and private individuals that will control the resources no matter what the common stockholder’s piece of electronic paper says.
That said, I am not doing any of that as of yet. Part of it is if the world comes to that, it’s a world I would rather not live in anyway and so the lifestyle advantage I would get from stockpiling wouldn’t be very good because it would still really suck. Another is that I do not own a large enough home in which to do so.
But I still think that if resources and the environment start to take a drastic toll, then either physical or political possessions will be more important than legal ones. It will be governments and oligarchs who will own and control the distribution of everything on a large scale.
So on a small scale, perhaps local real estate might be a good investment. You can have personal ownership of it, physical proximity of it to make sure it is kept up and not appropriated, and will be able to develop contacts in the local government even as an individual to try to prevent anyone from taking it over through tricks or force.
On the other extreme, if we solve the resources and environment problem (which is looking to be most possible by efficiency rather than conservation at this moment,) then a broad mixture of global equities would be a worthwhile investment IMO. The economic environment might still favor private ownership rather than stocks, but I don’t see any other safe way to take advantage of the worldwide economic boom that will be coming if we manage to avoid catastrophe.
I don’t believe in an apocalypse or mankind reduced to living in mud huts. Instead its likely the majority of the world population will experience starvation, disease, and war as population pressures rise.
For those of us who live in Western democracies, we should get through this period relatively safely. However its impossible to ignore or be remote from other people in distress so there will be an impact and surely that will include the worlds financial systems.
I think you’re overly pessimistic about the future.
But if you’re correct, you’re wrong that those in Western democracies will get through this period relatively safely, if the rest of of the world is going through starvation, disease and war. If it’s that bad elsewhere, it’s going to be ugly in the Western democracies. One reason is that diseases travel easily. Also, the economies of the world are too interlinked for such a bad situation in part of the world not to affect the West. If your scenario is correct, you will want to have stocked up on guns, ammo, canned foods, etc.