WHAT OPPORTUNITIES WILL THE FUTURE BRING?

AGI-Panama ‏@Agipanama: what oportunities ahead in a double digit inflation economy?

Answer:

There’s two worlds that people talk about in commentaries in news. The financial world, where stocks go up and down, the dollar goes up and down, etc. And then there is the world of innovation, where people actually do things to make the world better. In “financial news” people talk/argue/slander/like about everything going wrong in the world. It’s so biased it’s painful. People want to scare you. So when you say “double digit inflation” I’m not even sure what that means nor do I want to even address it. Perhaps there will be inflation, perhaps not. Look at the conditions for hyper-inflation over history and you can make up your own mind.

So let’s just focus on what we do know. The world has problems. Smart people are working on solving those problems. And they will succeed, like they always have. The same opportunities exist regardless of inflation. The same problems will be solved. And a lot of money will be made, regardless of the value of some paper currency.

Alternative energy solutions, including fracking. Fracking, in particular, because for the past century, oil has been the cheapest energy source and now the technology for fracking is such that they’ve eliminated the pollutant issue and there’s also been plenty of discoveries in the US to make fracking worthwhile. If there’s a lot of oil discovered via fracking then there won’t be inflation in energy, for instance (which is priced in dollars all around the world).

Medical diagnostics for age-related diseases. As the baby boomers grow older: cancer, Parkinsons, Alzheimers, heart disease, strokes, depression, and so on will need to be diagnosed way in advance of full blown inception in order to best treat these diseases. Which leads to…

Cures for age-related diseases.

Social media marketing. Old school marketing means “one to many” over and over again (think: newspaper ad, super bowl ad, etc) with no direct connection to the consumer. Social media marketing is “one to one” over and over again. You get your customer, you talk to them, you engage with them, and you can do so for the rest of their lives (unless they “opt out” of talking to you. We are in inning zero of social media marketing and mobile marketing. That will change.

Clean water solutions. One out of two hospital beds worldwide are filled by people who are suffering from polluted water related diseases. This will change as companies and countries build the technologies to filter water better, faster, cheaper.

Food production solutions. In the early 1970s, economists – people with Phds that other people thought were actually smart – thought the world (even the US) was going to run out of food in a decade. Well, we’re still here. Food has gone from agriculture with people to agriculture with machines, to agriculture with genetically enhanced seeds, to hydroponics, to aeroponics, to vertical farming, and so on.

You say “inflation” but look at the past century. A unit of light has gone from horribly expensive to infinitely cheap. Food production has gotten infinitely cheaper. Most forms of production, because of technology and outsourcing, have gotten cheaper per unit of productivity. Housing has massively deflated because that bubble is over (although government measures of inflation DO NOT include housing prices). Technology has massively deflated per unit of processing power. What else has deflated. Almost everything. Sure, there probably will be double-digit inflation in order for the US to pay down it’s debt. Good for us.

Work on the innovative side of your life. Not the side that wants to constantly warn and scare you.