Black Swans

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GandK
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Black Swans

Post by GandK »

In the thought control thread, a couple of us mentioned that we fear Black Swans. Jennypenny asked which swans. Great question.

I don't know.

The ones I think about the most are a large scale natural disaster, and the US national debt and/or pension crisis boiling over in such a fashion that our savings are decimated. Rampant inflation is probably third. However, although all of these are certainties over the very long term, I have no way of knowing which is most likely to occur in my lifetime, or within which time frame. This makes preparation a potentially very expensive guessing game. My tactic to date is to sit and marinate in my fears instead. Probably at least equally unhealthy. :?

So I ask you all: what national or global event do you fear most financially, and what steps have you taken to prepare for said event, if any?
Last edited by GandK on Tue Jun 27, 2017 4:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

IlliniDave
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Re: Black Swans

Post by IlliniDave »

This will sound trite and full of bravado, but I don't fear (in a true visceral sense) much of anything financially. I think I'm a good bit older than you and maybe it's a matter of perspective, but realistically having only 30ish years (my horizon) isn't enough time in my view for things to be carried off in the proverbial hand basket. I do worry some about medical insurance and expenses in the ~10 years I'll have to navigate pre-Medicare, but there isn't anything I can do about it other than what I'm already doing. The plan there is to accumulate a lot more money than perhaps I need to be able to absorb it. The "worry" is far below what I'd call fear.

In the past I've worried myself to the point of stress-induced illness over things, so I've gotten very strict about not letting myself worry incessantly about things that may or may not happen some day that I can't do anything about anyway. Getting to that point was a survival reflex, so I can't really tell anyone how to do it. But the way I look at things is if money becomes an issue down the road there are always ways to do something about it later. It's time that is a one-shot deal. If I have a fear it's letting worries/fears over money keep me from making the best use of the time I have left.

George the original one
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Re: Black Swans

Post by George the original one »

A war zone that reaches home territory is the event I fear most. The only survival response is to liquidate and flee, at least that's in our control, but not too soon and not too late.

Pension crisis could kill my anticipated retirement income, but with a paid-for home, our base expenses are minimal excepting health insurance premiums. Oh, dang, we might have to work for a living. Elimination of social security might damage our income, but it won't kill it.

Heavy inflation of the '70s would be bad, but not devastating if it only lasted a decade. Hyperinflation is killer and seems to be heavily tied to other turmoil (usually war), though South American countries have set some bad peace-time examples (see https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/ ... aper-8.pdf for a list of the worst hyperinflation periods).

A runup of medical expenses is probably the most likely scenario and also probably most damaging. Run out of money, unable to work... basically its a no-hope situation dependent on charity.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Black Swans

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I don't think the term "black swan" is being used correctly here. A "black swan" is not a known, can be named, unfortunate outcome with difficult to predict likelihood. A "black swan" is a not known unfortunate out come of a compounding of small change in a large complex system. For instance, two recent trends in the US are increased urban population and increased dog ownership, so resulting Black Swan might be heavy death toll when killer virus with dogs as alternate carrier emerges.

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Jean
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Re: Black Swans

Post by Jean »

As they per definition, can't be controled or predicted, I just hope to face them in a way that would make me proud if they were to kill me.

Dragline
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Re: Black Swans

Post by Dragline »

Yes, a black swan is more of an "unknown unknown" -- i.e., something we can't really imagine or that has never happened before.

Maybe nuclear war? Or people in power bent on eliminating or disenfranchising certain scapegoats who resemble you?

Other than holding an extremely diversified portfolio, they best thing would be being prepared to move. I'm reading the Michael Lewis book about Kahneman & Tversky right now and one of the questions raised for Kahneman as a psychologist who was also a Jewish refugee was why so many people refused to believe they were in danger when the rhetoric was obvious. "Why -- to speak loosely -- when a regime bent on the destruction of the Jews rises to power in Europe, do some Jews see it for what it is, and flee, and others stay to be slaughtered? These questions, or ones like them, had led Danny into psychology."

Riggerjack
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Re: Black Swans

Post by Riggerjack »

Well, my friends think I'm an optimist. I try to be a realist. So while I am aware that black swans are a possibility, and general preparation for changes in our lives is a good thing, I at least as concerned about over preparation as under preparation. Keep reading, it's a legitimate concern...

So, for money, I am concerned about recession/depression (50% in my lifetime, 50 years or so) we are overdue for a recession, and poorly prepared to deal with moderating it. So, savings.

And hyperinflation, (2-3%) again, this will work out in time, I have my plans for the first indications to prepare to get through the first few years. After that, my savings wiped out, I will just have to get by on earnings and real estate investments.

Or massive market crash (>40%) ride it out, I won't be hurt more than everyone else. React as necessary, but I don't expect huge changes here. Hopefully, it all comes back, but even if it doesn't, multiple income streams should keep us going.

Our retirement plan is 401ks, maybe pensions, maybe SS, one or more businesses, real estate, gardens and hunting, if necessary. My wife is a prepper at heart, and I owe her at least one good bunker. We've both been homeless in the past, so even that doesn't mean all that much in the big scheme of things.

War/run out of oil/zombies/nukes/hyperinflation/plague/dinosaurs roam the earth: well, we'll deal with each as necessary. I live surrounded by nukes and military bases, so running won't be much of an option. Plague is already prepped for (bleach and gloves and masks, because Ebola, etc) zombies are a city concern, oil is fixed by bikes/garden/solar cells (which we don't have yet, but will have on the retirement property). Hyperinflation is handled by massive Costco runs. A few years of food and meds, as necessary. Dinosaurs? We'll see. As a friend put it, "you guys are really prepared for the zombie apocalypse, guns, bows, axes, chainsaws, tomahawks, machetes. All you need is a flamethrower!" For the record, my flamethrower is propane powered, and has a flame only a foot long or so. But flamethrowers are really just antispider tools, and it does fine for that.

Fear comes from not being comfortable with the possibilities you foresee. So, plan for the future, but don't let the worries consume you.

Look at it realistically. If Ebola runs through Seattle, I will still need to work/shop, etc. Gardens help, gloves, bleach and masks help. But it's not like I keep things around I don't have use for. Bleach is cheap and useful. Gloves and masks, also. Where I draw the line is getting antiviral meds. I only have use for antiviral meds in that worst case. So I have prepped for the situation, and don't need to worry about it.

I don't want to store and use up a few years of food, so if hyperinflation hits, there is the plan to jump first. So my hyperinflation plan involves no prep beyond a list of actions to be taken at the beginning of the crisis. Now I don't worry about it.

If the market tanks, and my savings are wiped out, I may have to go back to work, but I'm working now. It's not bad, just time consuming. So why worry? I'm already living that worst case, and it's pretty nice.

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GandK
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Re: Black Swans

Post by GandK »

Riggerjack wrote:
Tue Jun 27, 2017 8:57 pm
Look at it realistically. If Ebola runs through Seattle, I will still need to work/shop, etc. Gardens help, gloves, bleach and masks help. But it's not like I keep things around I don't have use for. Bleach is cheap and useful. Gloves and masks, also. Where I draw the line is getting antiviral meds. I only have use for antiviral meds in that worst case. So I have prepped for the situation, and don't need to worry about it.
This is cool. I have not yet identified any lines to draw. Maybe that's part of the problem.

Re the term "black swan," I obviously did not intend for my word choice to distract from the issue.

Riggerjack
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Re: Black Swans

Post by Riggerjack »

So you have a bunch of worries that are vague, and undefined? Or you have specific worries, and haven't worked out your solutions?

7Wannabe5
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Re: Black Swans

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@GandK:

Sorry if I came off a bit Sheldon in my prior response. My other likely response would have been something like "At this moment in time, I wish I had the luxury of fretting about events beyond my personal sphere." I was kind of in distracted mode trying to job my own memory or stretch my own comprehension in this realm for the definition because I am trying or hoping to figure out what I can do to avoid the repetition of the collapse of my personal house of cards over the past 9 months.

I believe (might be wrong) that in "anti-fragility" Taleb suggests the barbell strategy as possible way to lower exposure to black swans. The analogy I remember went something like "Pick the accountant for your husband and pick the rock star for your lover.", with the implication that this is actually a safer and more likely to result in "profit" strategy than going with Joe Average across both roles. Because of the defective way my brain works, when I read that, my immediate thought was "Hmm...I wonder what would happen if you had an affair with an accountant while married to a rock star?" I think the problem with my recent lifestyle design is that it was kind of an attempt to achieve resilience my marrying 5 different rock stars at the same time. :cry:

Something is "anti-fragile" if it is likely to benefit from chaos or the unknown or the unknown-unknown (category "black swans" best fit into.) Robust and resilient are strategies for at least increasing likelihood of surviving chaos. Most of the suggestions above fall into the category of either robust or resilient insurance. I think the reason why more anti-fragile solutions are avoided is that they may tend towards stink of benefiting from tragedy of other. For instance, if you are fretting about whether your stock portfolio is resilient and/or robust enough to take some kind of unknown hit if/when the ice sheet melts off of Greenland, you could choose to liquidate your index fund and buy 80% treasury bonds or stuff-in-mattress-solution and 20% high-risk short-position on shoreline real estate. I mean, do any of us even want to attempt the exercise of "How can I profit if cultural tendency towards persecution of people based on some superficial quality increases?" As in, "Howdy, Mr. Japanese-Heritage Property Owner of 1942. I'll give you 10 cents on the dollar for that grocery store and maybe 20% for your house. Sucks to be you."*

Otherwise, I like Carol Deppe's philosophy in "The Resilient Gardener" which is to choose strategies which might cover your butt when things get really tough, but also add benefit during very good times. Choosing to learn how to grow heirloom vegetables in your own back yard fits this formula.

I think both "following the herd" and erring too much on the side of "efficiency" will tend towards increasing exposure to black swans. However, efficiency is obviously the fastest path to "robust" solution, so maybe there has to be some kind of zig-zag in overall optimum path. For example, if you are selling your top skill for top dollar 60 hours/week, you aren't just losing the resilience you would gain by developing or maintaining other skills, you are over-exposing yourself to the Joe Average market solution for all your other problems. Therefore, if some unknown cog in the system breaks, you will find yourself experiencing the exact same problem as 90-something % of the population. IOW, you can to some extent avoid your exposure to black swans just by purposefully making different choices towards the same solution than most people. For instance, you could avoid exposure to the killer pooch-to-person virus I imagined, if you chose to achieve the benefits of interaction with animals by spending $100/month on a goldfish and a time-share in a riding stable rather than keeping a dog for $100/month.

*“To prove legal title to land, one must trace it back to the man who stole it.” -David Lloyd George

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Black Swans

Post by ThisDinosaur »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Jun 28, 2017 10:12 am
"Hmm...I wonder what would happen if you had an affair with an accountant while married to a rock star?"
The accountant would get VD.

Yes, the risk barbell is an excellent concept for life and investing, and I have attempted to apply it to both. One caveat is that the true black swan would be in the "safe" investment.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Black Swans

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@ThisDinosaur:

LOL- Seems to me that since the accountant would ALWAYS choose to wear a condom, and the risk-moderating player in the middle would likely make her rock star partner wear a condom (although she might have taken her chances with the accountant) , this risk might also be less with the barbell solution.

Is it the case that the true black swan would be in the safe investment vs. the average-acceptable risk investment? I mean, if there is a bell curve with mean of "moderately conservative" in the spectrum of investment risk tolerance within the general population of investors, then it seems to me that the risk for black swan is at the mean, not at the most conservative, and therefore relatively unpopular, end of the spectrum of possible investments. So, maybe the site of black swan risk would tend towards moving with the sentiment of the crowd. Of course, this might just be a matter of splitting the semantic difference between "safe" and "conservative", because there is risk attached to conservative choice.

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GandK
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Re: Black Swans

Post by GandK »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Jun 28, 2017 10:12 am
Otherwise, I like Carol Deppe's philosophy in "The Resilient Gardener" which is to choose strategies which might cover your butt when things get really tough, but also add benefit during very good times. Choosing to learn how to grow heirloom vegetables in your own back yard fits this formula.
This is where I'd like to hang out.

I think because I tend toward avoidance when faced with stress or potential stress, my financial demons are largely nameless at present. I think in terms of "if Bad Things happen." There are problems here... I'm aware that the avoidance strategy (if you can call it a strategy) is rooted in childhood trauma for me. Sometimes the problem goes away without action and sometimes it doesn't, but I acknowledge that this mindset results in external locus of control thinking. Not helpful when identifying one's own action steps. I also know that most people's biggest financial problems tend to be either themselves or other people close to them like a spouse. Not black swans. This leads to a feeling that I needn't bother with planning for outlying events, because how likely are they? Easy to double down on avoidance, therefore... excuses for it abound.

From my POV, this thread is about naming potential demons and getting myself to move into a mindset of reining them in, hopefully without also moving squarely into a hunker and bunker mentality. I think I fear that even more than financial destruction.
7Wannabe5 wrote:
Wed Jun 28, 2017 10:12 am
...Therefore, if some unknown cog in the system breaks, you will find yourself experiencing the exact same problem as 90-something % of the population. IOW, you can to some extent avoid your exposure to black swans just by purposefully making different choices towards the same solution than most people.
If 90% of the population is experiencing extreme financial distress, and I'm in the 10%, my perception is that they're coming for me. I have trouble envisioning this happening in any other way. Is one setting oneself up for a different type of pain by solving these problems on an individual level? Just thinking out loud here, and I may have seen too much Walking Dead.

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Black Swans

Post by ThisDinosaur »

*Risk Barbell \IRL: Own your land and grow your food. Stay out of debt. That way, no one can raise your rent or hyperinflate your food cost.
HOWEVER, if drought, pestilence, or glyphosate kill your harvest, the safe asset just tanked. Then, you lose your house in a freak tornado and "you're not insured for that."

*Risk Barbell \investing: 80% STT, 20# crazy-ass bets. Use Kelly Criteria. You might get rich, but if all your crazy-ass bets tank, you've still got 80% of your life savings intact. Not too shabby.
HOWEVER, hyperinflation, collapse of US government, Ebola..... you should have just bought some property and a rifle.


Interpretation: Stay diversified AF. Own the land, own the treasuries. Own a LOT of crazy-ass bets.
GandK wrote:
Wed Jun 28, 2017 11:16 am
If 90% of the population is experiencing extreme financial distress, and I'm in the 10%, my perception is that they're coming for me.
If you are getting by on 7k a year before the collapse, most likely the Post-Apocalypse Have-Nots will think you're one of them.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Black Swans

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@GandK:

What ThisDinosaur said. Who the mobs are going to want to most drag over to the guillotine will be the authorities or advisors who led them astray. Also, complete social isolation will likely not serve you well.

As in, times are good, but you believe that there is some degree of risk of world-wide failure of 3 major grain crops sometime in next 25 years. So, you are growing delicious heirloom potatoes in your modest backyard. 10 years into this practice, maybe there has only been one year of wheat virus, so you only saved a bit of money vs. the average consumer, but you continue to enjoy the qualitative improvement of your diet, and the side-benefits of sunshine, exercise and increased knowledge/skill base. Year 27 the shit hits the fan. By now, you are pretty much a freakin expert on growing potatoes in your region, and you regularly grow enough to feed yourself and 3 others, and you have the ability to fairly readily double your production. Your less-prescient neighbors are mostly good people, and they are now having a rough time of it. So, when Mary from 3 doors down comes over and inquires about whether you would be willing to sell her some potatoes, you say "Mary, tell you what. We both know that green paper doesn't count for much these days, but I am going to give you this 40 lb. bag of potatoes, and show you how to best plant some more. All I ask in return is that you send your big boy Seth over here to keep watch a few evenings a week and help me with some digging, because I've heard tell that some of those city zombies are heading this way and my knees aren't what they used to be."

IOW, when planning for increased resilience, favor practices that will likely prove beneficial in good times and in bad, and practices that will tend towards being able to benefit both yourself and some greater community. I have found that one of the hardest things to figure out in lifestyle systems design is how to define and boundary community. I mean, it doesn't take long after you start inputting your actual flows before you realize that you have to come up with your own personal ideal for total human population of the planet in order to perform the exercise rationally and morally. In this age of globalization we all simultaneously very much are and very much are not engaged in relationship with every other human at some very low rungs on Maslow's ladder. One exercise I have done a few times that will show you how this is true is to randomly grab any item that you own and try to figure out where it came from, who made it, who provided the materials to make it, and then the mirror-image of how you obtained the money with which you bought it. Because there is so much information available, you might actually be able to see a picture of the crew of blue-smocked Chinese women who work in the factory where your son's toy was manufactured, but you can't share a casserole of yogurt cheese yukon gold potatoes with these women very easily now, or with any chance of possibility in a future where the system degrades.

@ThisDinosaur: You don't have to sell me on Diversified AF Strategy. However, I would note that downside, in addition to less than top dollar at margin, would be increased maintenance and transition costs. For instance, consider what might happen if some curious-to-the-point-of-cuckoo-bananas individual who was interested in systems theory decided that practice of polyamory might be good way to add resilience at Maslow Needs Ladder Level 2a :roll:

Riggerjack
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Re: Black Swans

Post by Riggerjack »

If 90% of the population is experiencing extreme financial distress, and I'm in the 10%, my perception is that they're coming for me.
This reminds me of when we strung up all the bankers in the deepest darkest depths of the great recession. Ah, good times...

On wait, no, we gave them millions in bonuses from taxpayer bailouts. That's right.

So, how spectacular are you anticipating your gains to be, that you would be a bigger target than they were? And how can I get in on that action?

ThisDinosaur
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Re: Black Swans

Post by ThisDinosaur »

Be sure to purchase some congressmen and invest in Too Big To Fail.

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GandK
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Re: Black Swans

Post by GandK »

Riggerjack wrote:
Wed Jun 28, 2017 1:20 pm
If 90% of the population is experiencing extreme financial distress, and I'm in the 10%, my perception is that they're coming for me.
So, how spectacular are you anticipating your gains to be, that you would be a bigger target than they were? And how can I get in on that action?
:lol: :lol: Not that spectacular!

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Re: Black Swans

Post by jacob »

A black swan is a large effect where the ostrich-effect dominates when looking ahead to be replaced with idiosyncratic "single cause" explanations in retrospect. One also needs to distinguish between issues that are personal (where nobody cares to or are able to help), regional (which can receive outside support, think Hurricane Katrina, or which happens elsewhere), and global (which happens everywhere and where the support areas have their own problems to deal with => no outside support).

Denial doesn't work for me, so I [try to] worry about "all of them", mostly at an intellectual level, not an emotional one, because I think we're prone to mainly concern ourselves with the one's we have a personal interest in while ignoring the one's that fall outside our sphere of interest. So I try to figure out what my unknown-knowns are and distribute my focus. Also, I don't think that I can "mitigate on the fly". Insofar people have democratically agreed not to worry about fire safety in the proverbial theater, I figure it's better to sit close to the exit in the theater in case someone yells "FIRE" rather than presuming that I can "adapt" to the fire or "mitigate my way through the exit along with everybody else" in case the theater is actually on fire.

My #1 concern is a continued rise in tribalism and the resulting identification of an "Other" as a minority scapegoat coupled with a callous disregard for any rights of that Other ... and in particular in being identified as belonging to that Other. The form of identification could be anything: religion, race, nationality, wealth, class, affiliation,... ideology, or even lack of ideology, etc. There is no way to pick a set that guarantees a lack of persecution other than society avoiding the potential for persecution in the first place (fat chance, because humans). This becomes particularly dangerous when coupled with authoritarianism, militarization, surveillance, or all of the above. In that case, laws (an oxymoron at such a point) could and would be made up but since it only affects individuals that the majority already disregards, sanctions could be anything: Wealth confiscation, capital controls, detention, camps, etc. "First they came for .. and I didn't care..."

My worry here is personal (becoming one of the Other) and global (that this happens everywhere). The strategy (regional out) is to identify this pattern early on and escape because there's no way to fight it and win. Strategies to avoid becoming a refugee or stuck involves establishing financial accounts in another country, having already done the research on which other countries/areas it is possible to go to, and not being glued into a location.

My #2 concern is a repeat of the Spanish Flu (H1N1 (standard flu) mutation or similar like H5N1 (bird flu)) that causes a cytokine storm or something equally deadly. Normally the flu kills 1 in 1000 and that mostly babies and the very old, whereas the Spanish flu killed the healthiest part of the position at a 1 in 5 to 1 in 10 ratio. With today's air transport, such an outbreak would quickly "touch" most people in recurring waves over a period of several months to a year or so. If 1/3 gets infected and death rate is 20%, we're talking 500 million dead on a world basis (20M in the US) and there would be nowhere to hide unless you're willing and capable of staying out of human contact for 12-24 months! There would be lots of secondary effects. First, people would argue that it's not happening. Most would keep going out to work and to shop because they need to. After it's officially a thing (expect governments to hide the fact for a while to prevent panic), people will stay home. This affects the operation of power plants, water treatment plants, etc. Certainly some people will be ordered into their possible deaths. It will also be hard to bury people at that rate of bodycount .. and again, it will be hard to find people willing to do that. After it all blows over, world population will be down by 5% or so of the healthiest people (15-45 year olds). This means less consumers, less need for offices, factories, and capital assets; higher demand for workers. Wages will rise and the stock market will utterly tank; prices on cyclicals will rise high ... non-cyclicals will go down. There will be nowhere to hide. Solution ... N95 or better masks. Lots of handwashing. Avoid people as much as possible. Work from home.

My #2.5 concern is a global crop failure. However ... I think impacts will be regional. There's also plenty of animal stock which could be sacrificed to "liberate" the calories for human consumption. It does mean that we will be eating soy beans for the better part of a year .. and paying a lot for the privilege. I would worry about this a lot more if I didn't live in a rich country. Humanity as such is not subject to "demand hardening" yet, but as we keep adding more people while reducing topsoil, etc. We're going in that direction. Solution ... store a few months of food to supplement what you can buy. Store increasingly more a few decades from now.

My #3 concern is a Carrington event. IIRC odds are about 10% per century. So may or may not happen ... but can't be entirely ignored either. While odds are low, impact is very high. Pretty much everything finance, technology, and commercial delivery (just in time) is based around electricity. Estimated time to replace this stuff if it gets overloaded enough to burn out would be 5-10 years. It would end technological civilization as we know it. We're talking trillions of dollars worth of damage (a mid-fraction of GDP... compare to how people freak out just when the economy is "only" growing by 1%) and not just in the year it happens, but cascading down the following years. In terms of financial sector impact, expect the opposite of #2. This time capital gets destroyed. There are now very many humans around with no useful skills (how many skills do you bring to the table and how much money can YOU make without access to electricity). Solution ... Ha!

I do not worry about things like climate change and oil depletion because the increasing "suck" is predictable and inevitable (humanity is pretty much committed at this point) making it possible to [adapt and mitigate] over time. The effects here won't be "shocking" on a year to year or month to month basis whereas all the above would be. These issues will make the fall out from the others worse and/or more likely though.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Black Swans

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob: May I suggest a system that makes use of carrier pigeons, a matrix of simple pin-hole cameras and a very large blackboard for continuity of forum after #3? Obviously, meat/egg production, ability to earn living in post-digital-selfie era, and countless other side benefits would likely accrue.

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