The Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth

“You kids change partners more than square dancers.” – That 70’s Show

Marie Antoinette should have known the time was right for a revolution in France – she had a Coup Coup clock.

Okay, the title is clickbait.  We all know the Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth are Rock, Paper, and Scissors.  Oops.  I think the real answer is Rock, Rock, and Rock.  I mean, who is going to make the paper and the scissors?

Oh, wait, I said four.

Add Google®, I guess.

One constant theme of this blog since I started writing it is that I want to convince everyone I can that tomorrow may not look like today.  I think this is important, because too often we start to think that our lives of today are the lives that people will live forever.

Why?

That’s the way we’re wired, to think that tomorrow will look like today.  It’s complacency.

Dozens of my ancestors lived as kings, having all the food they wanted and the choice of the peasant maidens in the dozen miles (metric conversion of one deciliter) around the mud hovel they lived in.  It may sound dreary, but it’s still better than Netflix®.

Genghis Khan is far better known than his brother, Gingivitis Khan.  

My ancestors lived every day of their life just like that, until they died at age 32 after they got a nasty infection because they were sharpening their bronze and flint nosehair trimmer, and accidentally conquered China.  That seems to keep happening.  I blame . . . well, all the people that conquered China.

For 100,000 years our brains, as wrinkly and wonderful as they are, grew up in a world where yesterday was mostly like today, and today is mostly like tomorrow.  Except for you people who have wonderful smooth brains.  I think I have some Bernie Sanders™ coloring books for you.

There’s a danger to thinking that tomorrow will be just like today.

Let’s pretend you’re a turkey on a farm.  There’s a nice farmer that feeds you every day.  What a nice guy!  You keep gaining weight, and getting bigger.

What a nice farmer!  Farmers must love turkeys.

Then, one November near Thanksgiving the impossible happens:  the farmer fires the turkey due to the COVID-19 outbreak and his turkey 401k drops 90% and his turkey wife tells him that . . . all those eggs?  Not his.

That turkey has found a fate worse than being roasted at 350°F for three hours (6.02×1023 Watts for six fortnights).  Turkey alimony.

The point remains:  life changes in an instant, never to return to the way things were.

I shot my first turkey this year.  Scared everyone in the meat aisle, and now I’m banned from Wal-Mart.

Here’s another one (I’ve used this example before):  I’m quite sure that there was a British guy at the dock watching as the last Roman Legion left Britain in 407 A.D.  What was he thinking?

“The Romans have been in Britain since 43 A.D.  They’ll be back.  Why wouldn’t they?”

It’s nearly a 100% chance that was exactly what he was thinking.  Our hypothetical British dude had never lived a single day when Roman troops weren’t controlling Britain.  They have to come back, right?

Well, not really.

There are reasons that hordes of Roman coins are found buried in Britain.

When Rome was strong, a Denarius (Roman coin) contained about $4.00 worth of silver at today’s prices.  As Rome continued, successive Caesars trading in Rome’s military might, reduced the amount of precious metals in the Denarius until it hardly contained a whiff of silver.

I hear there are extraterrestrials living in Rome – someone said that there were Italiens there.

Then one November near Thanksgiving, the impossible happens:  the guy in Britain gets fired and the Roman 401k drops 90% and his British wife tells him that Joe Biden (who was only 35 in 407 A.D.) was elected.  The worst part?

Joe Biden is carrying the British woman’s baby.

Our Roman’s world collapses.  Everything that he knew changes overnight.

When archeologists go digging in old British trash piles, they find something interesting.  The trash at the bottom of the pile (when Rome left) contains really cool broken plates.  Archeologists love plates.

Why?

Because angry wives break them all the time, so they make it easy to date a culture by the number of wives that go crazy and start throwing plates.  Apparently, the number of mad wives that throw plates is a scientific constant like the speed of light, so trash pickers archeologists can date the change in a culture based on broken plates.

The archeologists determined this:  the broken dishes at the time the last Roman Legions pulled out of Britain were awesome.  They were great dishes.  And everyone had them.  It turns out that dishes in the Roman Empire were mass-produced in southern France and shipped everywhere in the Roman Empire.  Southern France was the Wal-Mart® of quality dishware.

You can plainly see that Indiana Jones’ least favorite band is the Rolling Stones.

Then archeologists looked at dishes that were 100 years later in the trash pile.  They knew this particular trash pile was a king’s trash.  The dishes in the king’s trash were something that a kind parent would have congratulated a mildly retarded child for because the mildly retarded child tried really hard.

But these Roman plates weren’t widely available – only a king could afford them.

History happens one day at a time.  People lived it, the hard way.  Let me give you some examples that might add some perspective:

  • A French girl born at the start of the French Revolution would have been 26 and had multiple children when Napoleon finally lost at Waterloo.
  • A German girl born at the end of World War I would have been 27 and had multiple children before the end of World War II.
  • An American girl born at the end of the Clinton administration already has 43 earrings, sixteen tattoos, and herpes.

What I’m trying to explain that there are two types of changes the first one is fast, really fast, like the turkey’s bad November day.  The second type seems fast only when viewed from 200 years in the future.  Remember, love can last for a lifetime, but herpes is forever.

In my estimation (for what it’s worth) we are in an atmosphere where both types of change will happen.  We will have sudden changes, like the turkey, or like Marie Antoinette. These will be changes we cannot go back from.  If you burn a receipt from Arby’s©, there’s no going back to get those curly fries if they shorted you.

We all burn our receipts from Arby’s™ as soon as we get home, right?  Otherwise The Man would know how much we like Horsey Sauce®, and you where that leads:

Tyranny.

I digress.

But I will* note that I had a conversation with a friend over a year ago.  He and I were talking about investing and other things.  During this conversation, I had an epiphany.  Where was my money?  Mainly in a single bank (this has now changed).

Where does the Federal Reserve hide its economic failures?  In debasement.

My question to my friend then was this:  “How much of your money is diversified?”

His response was, “Well, it’s in mutual funds, and in a wide variety of stocks and bonds.  So it’s diversified.”

I followed up:  “No, I mean how much of all of that is in dollars?”

There was a long pause.  “All of it.”

I guess this post is mainly to point out that just like we don’t buy things in 2020 with a pocketful Roman coins, and we don’t buy things with French Francs from before their Revolution, and we can’t buy things with Soviet Rubles, how long will we be able to buy things with Dollars?

Just asking.

I’m not even suggesting any particular path, though I will disclose that if everything goes well, my kids might inherit some silver and gold when The Mrs. and I pass on.  Like any turkey, I know one thing:  tomorrow generally looks like today.

Until it doesn’t.

*Standard I’m Not A Financial Wizard Blah Blah Blah And If You Listen To Me For Financial Advice You’re Insane Differently Mental Disclaimer.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

45 thoughts on “The Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth”

  2. Another charming anecdote from my days as a bank manager: it was incredibly disappointing to learn that the bank had very little actual cash. Now, on the balance sheet for my branch we had millions of dollars but in actual cash just a fraction and most of that was in 20s. It is a lesson that stuck with me: your money in the bank only exists for as long as we all agree to the con.

    It is quite possible that we are headed for what I call a high tech feudalism, where most of our economic activity happens outside of the “economy” but we can still stream old episodes of the Honeymooners at will. Their goal as part of the Great Reset is that most people own nothing and are entirely dependent on outside forces for everything.

    Of course we need money in the bank but we also need some actual cash at home and we all should have stuff that we can trade for other stuff if things get bad, whether that is a tangible asset like silver or a skill.

    The 2020s I imagined as a kid are never going to happen and what we will get instead is going to be worse in every way.

    1. Ive tried to buy Klingon money but cant find a broker….. I was told to go down to the wharf….

    2. Suppose you do have a “tangible asset like silver or a skill”, who do you expect to trade/barter with, who will have something that you want (food, fuel, fertilizer?) in such supply that they’re willing to trade it away? Once the food that’s in the pipeline is exhausted, it seems to me that there might be 40 people all trying to figure out how to be nice to each farmer, for a share of the harvest. But if the farmer still has diesel, he’s used to taking care of himself; if he’s out of diesel, he probably doesn’t have enough hoes, sickles, and flails to go around, either.

      1. This is where sons, daughters, stills, and an ability to teach all of the trivium while still being useful around the farm come into play.

    3. 100% true. A post I’m sketching out right now (next Wednesday) goes there. Money is what we agree, but TPTB want to make it as abstract as possible.

  3. People have forgotten what the real change in the dollar is going to be after the ongoing Democratic Revolution:

    https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/democrats-protest-delay-harriet-tubman-20-bill-congress/story?id=63991394

    In today’s environment, you think they’re only taking dead presidents (and Ben) off of ONLY ONE denomination? Hahahahahaha !!!!!

    Beat the rush….

    https://propmoney.com/products/25x-20-harriet-tubman-commemorative-bills?variant=31576442470447&currency=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&utm_campaign=gs-2020-06-01&utm_source=google&utm_medium=smart_campaign&gclid=CjwKCAiAtK79BRAIEiwA4OskBsQNIakTQNOO7IEyENwyZxCWXIBCBpMMY6wx2Lti0Xa6p9MC0MjTJRoCtA4QAvD_BwE

      1. I have some native American blood. I used to joke the Andrew invented genocide. Then I discovered he shut down the first central bank so I started liking him sort of. How those batards were allowed to create another one on jekyll island reminds me of how we got to today.

  4. Years ago I tried to buy a big stack of Swiss Francs since they were more stable than even gold. About the same time they put a poison pill into effect. If the value of the Franc exceeded some multiplier of the Marc, it would be devalued by 4 times. That ended my interest in foreign currency.

    Also shows how artificial money is.

    1. Agreed. I tried (2004?) to get an account denominated in Euros. My local bank would agree to denominate it in corn.

  5. All in all, regardless of the method of exchange, people have to eat, have shelter, and try to survive. Considering how easy it is to convince certain people they’ve made some mistakes, the solution should be simple….although it will probably not be simple. Too many turkeys are staring at the falling rain, and wondering why they are drowning.

  6. “(6.02×1023 Watts for six fortnights)”
    If my calculations are correct, that equals 1.21 gigawatts.
    Or 42; I forget.

    Which reminds me:
    Why did the Royal Society get all their calculations wrong?
    Because they had a Boyle removed.

    Why did Boyle get his calculations wrong?
    Because he had a mole removed.

    Also, one of your pictures was missing a key element:
    https://i.imgur.com/iVjTCaC.png

    2. Oh, sure, bring up Boyle. Everyone knows about Boyle’s Law. But what about Cole’s Law?

      We all like thinly sliced cabbage, right?

  7. Thanks for your thoughts.
    I believe that there is a sort of ‘base level’ to ideas about life. That level includes all the things the people concerned accept as being available regardless of developments, such as hot showers, Netfix, and cooked food. Personally, I believe that everyone will soon be re-educated as to what is actually in their ‘base level’ box, but normalcy bias keeps most everyone from being able to consider such changes.

    1. Exactly. And as the world gets more abnormal, how many people will become unstuck?

      Related: how long does it take to establish a new normal?

  8. “Normalcy Bias” is a term used to describe why people think that tomorrow will be just like yesterday. We upper-level primates have memories, some of which rightfully haunt us, which cause us to see tomorrow in light of our past experiences and those we have gleaned from the experiences of others. This may cause us to interpret our perceptions as if they show us we will experience what happened before and that we will experience it in just the same way. Also our bias can trick us into not seeing the subtle differences and we fail to plan accordingly leading to Titanic moments…….

    I suppose some Evolutionary Psychologist has received her coveted Ph.D. delving into the whys and wherefores of human behaviors over the many thousands of years we have bi-pedaled around. I doubt that the researchers have found a way to overcome this bias so we just gotta learn to live as biased folk.

    Blissful bias…….now, that’s my motto !

    Another good missive, John. Keep at it.

    1. We upper-level primates have memories, some of which rightfully haunt us, which cause us to see tomorrow in light of our past experiences and those we have gleaned from the experiences of others..

      Nah. My doggos are madly shocked and the one poopy-head pukes when tomorrow isn’t the same as yesterday. “Normalcy bias” is just something animals do. No need to drag in some half-baked psychoanalytic language.

      Here’s something to run with though, since you seem to like the doing thinky-thoughts thing (as do I): What is it that makes human beans *care* about Normalcy Bias?

      Go back to Mr. Wilder’s post about the Briton waving to the departing Roman troops at the dock: For half a millennia everyone who Expected Romans was RIGHT. The freak who did not, is now (finally) coming into his own, granted, but he was not the way to bet.

      So why does “Normalcy Bias” matter? Because things change. Except when they don’t, so “Revolutionary bias” is at issue.

      People are funny, no?

    3. I am a history buff. Is that why it repeats and or rhymes. I am glad I am a history buff. I woke up when bush the younger was president and the normal course of actions was not pursued.

  9. Perhaps this is why the President made the recent changes at Defense.

    Hopefully State leaders would think twice of going their own ways if we resort to the 12th Amendment provision of choosing the President due to both candidates having an insufficient number of electoral votes.

  10. Local shop occasionally has Roman coins.
    But they also have a display of “things that used to be money” from other places and timeframes. Think shells, copper bits, and some other things, I’ve taken The Boy a few times.
    They also have a bin full of “foreign coins” one can buy by the pound, some from places that no longer exist.

    But yeah, pretty much the entirety of my holdings are in dollars.
    Except…
    I did take some investment advice from “Gremlins 2”.

    1. There are even a few Roman coins for sale here in Modern Mayberry.

      Canned food and shotguns. Classic.

      Also: never wrong.

    1. I watched the National Pulse videos yesterday.

      Most of Steve Cortes’s points are good, but I think it’s normal that more people voted for Biden than Obama as the name “Not Trump” wasn’t on the ballot. Also voting rates are often higher in times of stress.

  13. I am starting to rethink my earlier pessimism that it may be too late for Trump, tho he’s still got a LOOOOONG way to go. But Matt Braynard now says that he’s identified 20K specific names of Maricopa County AZ voters who filled out a change of address form there (meaning their votes are invalid???) and Trump’s only behind in AZ by 12.5K.

    https://twitter.com/MattBraynard/status/1326421690084167681

    The pile of stinky stuff is getting higher and higher and the blades of the fan are starting to spin faster and faster.

    I stand by my earlier assessment that this is not gonna end well.

    1. Yup. But does he have the staff to do it? How many people does it take to vet individual claims.

      Crazy. But it points out how very, very bad our election system is.

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