Update: Thanks everyone for the continuing thought-provoking discussion. I intend to post my decision spreadsheet, and still am looking for suggestions on where to do so. It might come in handy come February. A discussion that I find interesting has branched off on the topic of technological progress versus Malthusian Crunch, and I started a new article on that over here.
I would like to kick off a discussion about optimal strategies to prepare for the event that the US government fails to raise the debt ceiling before the US Treasury Department's "extraordinary measures" are exhausted, which is estimated to happen sometime between October 17th and mid-November.
This is a risk *caused* by politics, but my goal is to talk about bracing against the event itself if it happens, not the underlying politics. If you want to debate Obama-care, who is at fault, or how likely a US default actually is, please start a separate discussion.
I consider this to be an indirect existential risk because if it kicks off a national or global recession, it will likely slow or halt research and philanthropic efforts at mitigating longer-term existential risks.
Since there are obvious associations between unemployment/poverty and crime, civil unrest, and poor health, a global recession is likely to be to some extent a personal existential risk to those living in the United States or countries that have trade links with the United States.
I notice that the markets do not seem to be anticipating a bad outcome. But I heard one analyst advance the theory that investors simply don't believe the government can (his words) "be that stupid". I imagine there is more than a touch of availability bias as well-- breaching the debt ceiling might, even for fund managers who harbor no illusions about the wisdom of politicians, be up there with science-fictional scenarios like asteroid impact, peak oil, grey goo, global warming, and terrorist attacks. Moreover, there may be a dangerous feedback loop as the politicians in turn watch the stock indexes and conclude that "the market says there is nothing to worry about".
So, I would like to hear what folks who are making contingency plans are doing. Especially people who have training or experience in economics and finance. What do you think the closest parallels in 20th/21st century history are for what the worst case scenario for a US government default would be like? Is there anything you would have done differently if you had known the date for the start of the 2008 recession with a +/- 2 week confidence interval, starting in two days? Or, if you did call it ahead of time, what are you glad you did?
Okay, so I'll try to learn from recent previous experience and not flame.
Deep breath.
Very partial list of how population growth can bring down Europe, the Americas, China, and everyplace else:
Waves of refugees straining the local infrastructure past the breaking point.
Demand for petroleum rising faster than the rate of new oil reserves being discovered and faster than alternative technologies can be developed and brought to market on a sufficient scale.
Ditto for accessible deposits of some metals.
Pollution.
Pandemics spreading from regions of high population density to everywhere.
Deforestation.
Global warming and sea level rise.
Competition for resources leading to wars.
Environmentalists like to view this as our species being irresponsible. They're not seeing the big picture. At any given level of resources and technology, there is a finite carrying capacity. If we exceed that carrying capacity, we will have a die-off soon after no matter how "responsible" we are. If there were only a few million of us on the planet we could spend our days hunting endangered species from 1 mile-per-gallon SUVs that run on coal and melted plastic and still be okay.
It's not easy to migrate away from Africa and it's a matter of political willingness to accept "waves of refugees". The highest demand of petroleum and metals doesn't come from those place with high population growth. A US citizen consumes ten times the amount of energy as a nigerian. And Nigeria is a country that uses a lot of energy for an African nation because it has oil.
A Amercian house cat consumes produces more CO_2 than some Africans.
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