Thursday, December 12, 2024

With no prep time, you're sent back 30 years, but unable to invest. How rich will you be able to get? Do you currently have the knowledge you'd need?

This is inspired by various threads here about time travel where people seem to generally assume that they won't have any problems getting rich if they go back in time.

Let's assume that you start with enough resources to get by for 6 months. That means you can afford rent and food, basic life stuff, etc, but you don't have "start a business" money. You're not allowed to put money into anything that works like an investment. No stocks, bitcoin, baseball cards, etc. You can buy things that happen to increase in value, but you can't make use of that value in your strategy. No profits based on just hanging onto something that becomes precious later.

You otherwise have to live life, so you'll need some income, etc. If you're older than 30 you get set to 30 so that you've got good health (if you did at 30) and probably survive the 30 years. Also you still want to live a good life, have relationships (if you care), so this isn't just a "if all you cared about was money could you do it?" type question. It's really about whether the time travel would let you make money easily.

Do you actually know enough about sports outcomes to get really rich? Do you actually have any winning lottery numbers memorized? Maybe there's enough random historical events (like elections) to get rich betting on? So if that makes it easy, then what if you also can't gamble? And then how do you do it?

I personally don't think I could get very rich. I don't know enough trivia to turn a normal income into riches just by gambling. I think I would be better off because I could direct my career a little more wisely and make some choices to join successful companies, but it probably wouldn't be all that different.


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