How much to own everything in 1000 years?

[Steve_Wright]

@Wendell Wagner

Peter Morris writes:

> Futurama - Fry is frozen for 1000 years, and wakes up to find his few dollars
> have accumulated billions in compound interest.

This is presumably a parody of “John Jones’s Dollar.” It’s a well known story among science fiction readers of a certain age. It appears in one of Groff Conklin’s anthologies, I believe. The Red Dwarf episode may also be intended as a parody of the story too.

It’s also the situation in H.G. Wells’s When The Sleeper Wakes (1899; revised version The Sleeper Awakes 1910).

[UltraVires]

@iamthewalrus(:3=

Well, first, it wouldn’t be everyone alive. It would only be one person per person alive now. But they’d be paid off the same way investors are paid off now, their investments go toward the expansion of production and the improvement of our lives. Bill Gates surely has $6 billion invested in Microsoft alone. How is that different than 6 billion people investing $1 each? He gets a return because Microsoft creates products that people pay for because they make peoples lives easier (cue Microsoft jokes).

But in 40 generations, Bill Gates’ wealth won’t still be concentrated in one person’s hands. There are inheritance taxes, and the fact that his three or four kids will leave it their three or four kids, etc. until it is sufficiently diluted.

Our hypothetical is the opposite of that. You make a good point, not everyone alive on earth in 40 generations, but at least six billion people (since every man, woman, and child now will invest).

If were are to go on your contention that inflation will rise at the same rate as your investment, and it won’t matter, then why do it in the short term? Why should I invest in stocks, bonds, savings, etc. if these things only rise on par with inflation. I think history shows that not to be true, so why would that happen in the long run?

[Princhester]

@jtgain

If were are to go on your contention that inflation will rise at the same rate as your investment, and it won’t matter, then why do it in the short term? Why should I invest in stocks, bonds, savings, etc. if these things only rise on par with inflation. I think history shows that not to be true, so why would that happen in the long run?

Go back and read my second post. If you invest in wealth creating assets then you may be able to achieve steady interest and experience inflation-adjusted exponential growth. This will put you in a better position than those who do not do so, which is why it is a worthwhile thing to do. By owning a wealth creating asset you can have its wealth output without doing work. This gives you wealth. You can use that wealth to buy the services of others. This makes you wealthier than them.

However, it is beyond obvious that all else being equal, you will not achieve greater growth than someone else who owns other wealth creating assets. And given that it is precisely the same people that, in a thousand years, you will be trying to buy the assets from, the whole scenario doesn’t work.

[Roadfood]

@iamthewalrus(:3=

I enjoyed it just for the quaintness of the technological descriptions. Imagine, technology made with shiny brass cylinders, having to actually speak to a person to verify a news account, and how impressive a wireless device is.

My favorite was that the cool, high-tech, multi-screen Visiphone had a chalkboard in the middle of it, complete with a little tray for the chalk! It wasn’t clear, though, if the author envisioned that the “oblong space” upon which the professor wrote with chalk was transmitting the chalk marks itself, or if there was supposed to be another camera focused on the oblong space.