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Thursday, 24 May 2007

Which way to bet

Pulling back my vision to around 2037 or so, if the modern world hasn't crashed by then and I'm still alive, I'll probably need to have some decent savings behind me to help sustain Michelle and I through our later years. That's the conventional economic wisdom which leads to superannuation and other financial investment schemes.

On the other hand, the combined pressures of climate change, peak oil, peak soil, overpopulation and so on could conceivably bring the global economy to its knees and effectively wipe out any such investment. It could be argued that it would be far wiser to invest in a parcel of productive land and work to establish sustainable food, shelter and energy resources there.

Of course it's not a black and white decision - there's a whole world of choices in between the two extremes.

So what do you think? What would be the smartest things to invest in today? Perhaps there's a sensible minimum level of both those kinds of "wealth" I should be aiming towards: part practical self-sustainability and part abstract financial portfolio.

Either way, success depends on factors well outside my personal control. I suspect I'm going to end up betting both ways.

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