site banner
birb_cromble  2d ago (text post)   298 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread 2026-06-06

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

Ground Rules

  • Remember that we're all just Internet randos. Don't bet your life savings on a hot tip from this thread.
  • Keep culture war in the culture war thread. Yes, global events may impact our personal finances, but that does not mean we have to incessantly harp on culture war aspects here. If you are going to discuss it, please stick to the practical impacts of it on an individual level.
  • Be kind. Remember that everyone here comes from different circumstances. We all have different resources available and different risk tolerances.
  • Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Better is better. Celebrate people when they take a step up and work to move their finances in the right direction. Don't flame out because they haven't followed what you consider the optimal path. Everybody has to start somewhere.
1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There is a certain investment thesis that I see increasingly on LW / AI Twitter / adjacent spaces online. Let me summarize it:

  • If AI destroys the world, or someone uses it to, money doesn’t matter and probably even the most hardcore preppers are toast. There is no use preparing for this scenario other than maybe bringing forward some bucket list items if you’re a Yud level doomer.

  • If AI leads to some incredible abundant utopia with a FOOM / hard takeoff scenario, money won’t matter and we’ll all be trillionaire emperors of our respective limitlessly abundant space kingdoms and/or VR wirehead heavens. Maybe Elon Musk will become some overlord, but the average equity investor won’t know or care.

  • If things don’t change, and/or AI gets retrofitted onto the existing economy in a fake scenario to preserve social and economic status stratification and/or private ownership of property / means of production, people who own big tech / AI companies will be best off. Everyone else will either be a UBI peasant at best or Elysium / Manna underclass at worst.

If the realistic possibility space consists of solely these scenarios, the only logical investment strategy unless you’re retired or retiring in under 5 years is to YOLO everything on AI/tech/etc stocks. But that is a big if. This thesis is especially enjoyed by tech industry workers who argue that either AI will replace them, in which case this must make money, or it won’t, in which case at least they still have a high paying jobs.

I don’t think it takes a genius to see why this is more than a little flawed.

I think Point 1 really obscures a lot of bad AI outcomes by cloaking them in the most dramatic one. It is much, much more likely that AI does (or is used to do) something "mundane" like a superengineered virus or destroying the internet. (The latter may already be happening - it won't be a one-time event, just a slow but steady string of incidents that make the internet as we know it insecure and see the migration of core functions away from it.)

Lumping all other bad AI outcomes under "AI destroys the world" is a terrible idea, particularly when considering investing. Destroying the world is very hard to do, it's much more likely that any damage done by AI is far short of "destroying the world" and there is a considerable overlap between "world not destroyed" and "very bad outcomes for human flourishing, civilization and society." If you accept what should be very obvious - that it's much more likely that AI ends up creating the conditions for a catastrophic scenario that does not instantly kill you than one that destroys the world or at least you personally - then there are pretty decent investment strategies at your fingertips.

Point 1 is directionally correct, points 2 and three are completely off.

There is a big risk of ai making individual preparation essentially worthless for everyone or at least everyone aside from a few oligarchs. That covers a variety of apocalyptic and dictatoria scenarios, but as reasoned isn't worth worrying about.

If that turns out to not be the case, then it's going to be because:

  • resources are scarce
  • Humans still end up being capable of producing some sort of value

Under those conditions, you have to understand that the market not only allocated but reflects how scarce labor and human resources have already been allocated. Even if a company builds GAI, if they ask that GAI something like, "what's the best way to cure mortality and profit?" The answer will likely start with, "well we need infrastructure and testing data, so first buy these existing pharmaceutical companies." That in the end distributes wealth through the broader market. Since in advance it's hard to predict exactly how the wealth will flow, you wnd up back at the time-tested advice to just buy index funds and sit on them instead of trying to pick winners.

AI will change how wealth is distributed. Some classes of people will rise, and others fall. But in general I predict that your social and economic status after ai will remain very correlated with your pre-ai standing.

I mean, even if you think there are only those three, there's the possibility that you investing might change the relative proportions of them; there's no point preparing for AI doom, but there's a lot of point in trying to avert it.

I think the second and third scenarios are basically screened off in the near future. Neural net alignment is probably impossible, and it seems unlikely that AI will naturally plateau at "highly profitable but not table-flipping".

Here are the scenarios I see:

  1. World destroyed by AI. As noted, the only thing relevant about this scenario is trying to avoid it.
  2. Neural nets banned or heavily restricted, all neural-net companies have 80% of their market cap go to money heaven overnight. Alignable AI may be developed at some point 30-100 years in the future, but not necessarily by the companies we have now, and even then investing in companies that are trying to cause Interesting Times risks being stiffed by those with more direct control of the singularity event (what are you going to do, sue them?).

Obviously, this means that from my POV investing in these companies might as well be throwing the money in a fire (barring Greater Fool, and even then you're risking scenario 1).

If you don’t want to get super rich but just rich I keep thinking that investing in stuff well-off now unemployable people would do more of is a good idea.

You can find cheap Italian Villas and estates. Other nice geographies exists. Argentina still has fairly affordable vacation spots throughout the country. Basically buy things digital nomads would do more of, if more people become nomads because of UBI and lack of jobs.

You probably want to pick safer places. I have no idea if cool places in Mexico become safe because of AI so I would probably avoid that met. US ski resorts had a bad year so on public markets something like MTN which is down 75% from highs might have similar return profile. Florida seems too expensive to me now. Maybe West Virginia with its scenery becomes popular when no one has jobs.

I'm trying to avoid culture war here, but it seems like this is motivated reasoning on the part of the people most likely to benefit from people following this advice.

I do wonder if there isn't an alternative approach though, if you buy into the premise?

Isn't there an argument that, if AI productivity enhancement is real to the point that it will cause job loss, that AI is a fundamentally deflationary technology? If that is true, wouldn't fixed income investing be preferable to common stock?

The thesis re fixed income which I think is more reasonable is that governments will use falling prices to borrow/print more, which will push yields back up even if the technological impact on some prices is highly deflationary. That said, I’m no economist.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats