30 predictions for 2030
Hi. My name is Renan, I’m heading a France-based venture builder firm called OSS.
As the decade ends, an exercise in thinking is to make open bets that can be audited about the state of the world ten years from now. It is a time-honored tradition that can yield fun results. I look forward to witnessing history unfold about all those topics.
To make things interesting, I’ll be willing to take any of those 30 bets for a 1000€ price tag or whatever equivalent money will be in use by then to the first to manifest herself. The indicator used along with its target and direction (more than, or less than) and with its reputable source is at the end of each prediction, under the PXi (X being the prediction #) tag. If you want to bet with me, @ me on twitter or in the comments before June 1st, 2020. I would consider a 20/30 right prediction a win.
Those bets are personal opinions and do not represent the position of OSS as a company, nor investment advice on behalf of our limited partners.
🌎World & politics
⚡ P1. Climate change changes everything
It’s real, it’s here, and it’s going to be messy.
Every single climate change indicator points to the same thing: the worst experts' predictions are about to get real. There will be significant changes in the way we produce things, our internal organizations, and political powers. It is likely our children and grandchildren will hold our generations responsible for not doing more, and that they will lead lives extremely different from the ones we led.
While the exact effects of climate change are mighty hard to predict, its far-ranging implications such as significant rise in energy pricing, open conflicts over water or natural resource access, increase in migration flows are pretty much bound to happen.
🔮P1i : The 5-degree scenario is exceeded (see GIEC report)
🇨🇳 P2. China becomes #1
Duh. Obvious ! Not so obvious.
There are meaningful growing pains that the Party does not want you to see, such as internal dissent, inequality, education system challenges, internal inefficiencies. Internationally speaking, recognition of China and the Chinese model is still an uphill battle and the economical bullying going on between the US and China is slowing the world economy along with the Chinese one, and even without a Trump second term, the US is likely to go on with the bullying as they realize China is a meaningful threat to the current balance of powers. Last, China population is aging and finding cheap ways to maintain labor productivity and healthcare costs down will prove a meaningful challenge.
Still, from a purely mathematical point of view, China is poised to become the largest economy in the world and its unique, shapeshifting “Chinese-characteristics socialism” system gets some things, such as infrastructure and technological catch-up, done at an astonishing pace. China already built the necessary economic and technological giants necessary to fuel the last part of the catch-up game and lead the next wave. Their educational system pumps out high-quality professionals in a culture that highly emphasizes education. China also benefits from a humongous internal market protected from the western influence by the party and that is still largely in the “land grab” phase. Last, China is starting to leverage the Eastern ecosystem, satellite states that are an additional resource to further strengthen its political position and market, and is relentless in using any inefficiency in the western world (intellectual property, asymmetric free trade agreements) to fuel their rise, with meaningful support from their population.
As other growing&established powers are not competing up, China will be dominant by the next decade.
🔮P2i : China accounts for 20% of global GDP or more (up from 15.3%)
🇮🇳 P3. India explodes
This one is a little more controversial.
India suffers from significant growing pains such as state inefficiency and rampant corruption, the caste system blocking individuals from unleashing their potential, antiquated puritanism and misogyny preventing half of the population, women, to unleash their potential, and petty internal politics which paralyze the country. Their turbulent and unpredictable neighbor, Pakistan, hates their guts and has the atomic bomb and they have no satellite states nor significant traction on the international scene to carve out a place for them under the sun.
Still, with the second-largest population on earth, meaningful investment and cultural focus on education, value created and potential solving of above-mentioned issues by the new generation can get India in the race as a future superpower. Furthermore, India is a young population which will mechanically boost their place in global rankings. Last, India can largely leapfrog costly and antiquated infrastructures (hello, fossil fuel systems !) and is bullish on technology and new economy, with second-generation immigrants coming back after successfully setting up and leading companies. That’s why despite obstacles, they are likely to pump out their GDP per inhabitant which still sits at the lower half of the list.
India’s catch-up will be fast, even if slower compared to China’s.
🔮P3i : India accounts for 5% of global GDP or more (up from 3%)
🇳🇬P4. Africa rises
This one is very high variance.
Africa as a continent suffers numerous, well-documented obstacles to its rise. Tribal systems and recent states filled with corruption and inefficiencies, a poorly educated workforce and structural infrastructure issues (the continent is just too big to successfully copy and paste European-style infrastructures), structural insecurity, the rise of rigorous Islamism, Confetti states that make it difficult to create a single market, European and now Chinese inference in all states matter, weak feeling of belonging to the State and the threat of climate change destroying the ability to live on a non-trivial part of the land. Last, African manufacturing, tech and talent war are mostly lost for this decade compared to India and China.
Still, Africa’s great demographic boom is yet to come and is likely to stabilize at 2 billion people up from 1.3. Its population will be young and probably want change, while several countries such as South Africa, Nigeria are leading the way in showing another economy is possible. As global trade intensifies and Chinese and Indian wages rise, Africa may prove the last low-wage place in the world for the next decade, for a possible “Chinese scenario” where Africa starts to be the factory of the world before catching up leveraging the infrastructure and trained workforce thus created.
The high variance comes from the coexistence of two scenarii : 1) a “wasted land” filled with wars, emigration and petty dictators and/or religious leaders searching personal gain, or 2) an “African renaissance” in which the new generation put enough visionaries in leadership positions and create a unique system in which the new generation can flourish and create meaningful wealth by leveraging its humongous workforce without it being pillaged by foreigners.
Early signs of Chinese interests in Africa and a generation of impressive techpreneurs in Africa make the balance switch in favor of the Renaissance scenario.
🔮P4i : Africa accounts for 4.5% of global GDP or more (up from 3%)
🇺🇸P5. The US starts to go down
This one may get some people angry.
While the US created an astonishing amount of wealth in the last decade and created the new giants of our times, the Teslas and Googles and Facebooks, significant challenges are coming ahead. The internal division is at an all-time high between the “somewheres” and the “anywheres”, those who belonged to a now wasteland and those who are happily living through globalization, hindering the country’s ability to maintain a coherent political roadmap. Whether Trump or any similarly flavored populist makes it to a second term, or a progressive leader gets elected, governing a country so divided along almost every relevant political question lowers the bar of what can get done. Significant protest against the tech giants makes it hard to further push the envelope and compete with the new infrastructures of our times such as AI and other data-intensive technologies. The historically vassalized economies such as the EU are starting to push back on US economic domination through law and public opinion. Last, the US has an aging population that will not contribute as much to their economic dominance as their previous generations.
It is likely the US will do everything in its power to maintain its dominance, including leveraging its army which will stay #1 in the world, bullying and lobbying as much of the world as possible to maintain economic dominance, maintain vassalized states such as LATAM to expand their sphere of influence. It is also likely the talent war that will intensify will let the US still be #1 in quality of education and attract as much of the best students in the world as possible. Last, for the next five years, the high-end technology war will still be won by the US, with significant investment from the technological giants and US government, the five years after that being an open question.
It won’t be enough.
🔮P5i : US accounts for 20% of global GDP or less (down from 23.5%)
🇪🇺P6. Europe crumbles
This one may be consensual.
Europe as a political body is one of the most corrupt organizations on earth and uses its power to open up all markets to foreign interests while not protecting the interests of its constituents. This fact has been gamed by the US and China alike, and a growing part of the population does not believe Europe can be carried on longer, exemplified by Brexit. There is no political traction for a unified single market with budgetary and political power, and economies of the members are too different to be united without a strong popular political will. The Euro proved a disaster for various economies and Germany gamed the system by riding China’s rise with strong automotive and machining industry exportations while strangling other nations in the midst of deep resentment. With the notable exception of SAP, Europe missed the technology train and failed to produce the tech giants needed to compete in our modern-day era. Last, the growing threat of religious fundamentalism and tensions amid immigration in a low-growth zone make almost every single European country hard to govern and no meaningful political action can be undertaken while China races to the top.
Europe still has soft power, the world’s best-trained labor force, could ride Africa’s rise to create a symbiotic zone of trade, and has an overall better image as a zone of freedom than any other place in the world.
With all the odds stacked against it, Europe’s descent will be fast.
🔮P6i : EU accounts for 17% of global GDP or less (down from 20.6%)
💸P7. Global poverty shrinks
At least some good news.
While the decade to come may seem grim, there are some almost inevitable good news in the pipe.
Such is the shrinking of global poverty: as the labor costs level around the world, that basic healthcare cost goes to zero and that new kind of infrastructure is unleashed upon the world, the case for continued shrinking of global poverty seems inevitable, which is about the best news we could think of for next decade.
🔮P7i : Number of people rated “in multidimensional poverty state” by the OPHI down as a percentage of total population by 50% or more(down from around 20% of total population as of 2019)
🗳️P8. Centralized democracy model gets challenged
It is 3000 year old and seems challenged.
The democracy model, in Europe as in the US, is deeply challenged.
While its many benefits and attraction over talents and freedom-minded folks is undeniable, this model nowadays tends to heavily get gamed by private interests and adversary states, to hinder the ability of leaders to get things done in their respective states.
Last, the sheer number and natality of not-in-a-democracy states pretty much poises that indicator to go up, which has significant implications on geostrategy.
🔮P8i : Share of the population living under a democracy state down to 50% or less (from 50.4% in 2018)
💉P9. Bloodier decade than the 2010s
This one is grim.
With the numerous challenged faced by humanity such as climate change, rarefaction of resources, the rise of a multi-polar world in which different countries with conflicting worldviews are competing for the same spaces, it is unfortunately very likely that proxy conflicts between superpowers will be on the rise, in the middle east, in Africa, and in Eastern Europe.
While a full-blown world conflict seems unlikely due to mutually assured destruction for most of the world’s superpowers, less fortunate zones are likely to attract a growing number of deaths, with local religious and ethnic conflicts being cynically used by superpowers to further their interests.
🔮P9i : Deaths in open or high conflict-afflicted zones up 40% (down from 20.6% in the 2010s)
💵Economy and markets
🚀P10. Innovators outpace incumbents
Replacing the economy is a full-time job.
Incumbents are starting to fight back on technology and new organization model, with compelling cases of old ladies packing quite a punch (Walmart, Zara comes to mind).
Still, the challenge ahead as every company becomes a technology company with its technical component, its HR component with the talent war, and its organizational component with deep cultural change (horizontality, ownership, relation to secret and information), and the large amount of capital available for innovators, will very likely prove too much for the incumbents to compete meaningfully.
🔮P10i: A theoretical basket of post-series B innovators founded less than 15 ago will outperform the rest of the economic growth by 3 to 1 at least (as per NYSE)
🐂P11. The Great Bull Run stops
Trees do not grow to the sky.
As the decade ends on records for everything from oil price to NYSE gains, the old saying “trees do not grow to the sky” may prove useful once again.
Continuing the trend line of value created through next decade would mean the greatest value creation of all times, consecutive to the previous greatest value creation of all times. It would also mean roughly 50% of the value ever created in the history of humanity would happen between 2020 and 2030, which is from an intellectual point of view highly uniquely, even if a compelling argument can be made due to the population numbers, the number of scientists alive, the interconnection between humans making value creation faster. Last, there may be a disconnect between value actually created and its measurement by markets.
Still, climate change pressure on raw material use, instability in the worldwide political climate, mathematics, and physics, the argument that last decade’s value creation was at least half explained by our ability to get more and more energy out of the earth, point to a different story, that of a slowing down of value creation. Political push by populists, not-market-friendly and free trade-skeptics leaders all around the globe also may prove a driving force in stifling international and national value creation.
🔮P11i : Growth rate from 2020 to 2030 is less than 75% of the one from 2010 to 2020
💰P12. Liquidity crisis
Printing money may not prove sufficient for a sustainable economy after all.
Central banks have lost their way. The consensus is that they are pumping money to artificially boost financial markets number, with limited effect on the real economy (aside from very cheap capital for capital operators who can consistently scale returns by leveraging cutting-edge technology and organization).
The issue is that 1) people could start losing confidence in the dollar, EU and yen, 2) in the event of a big-scale crisis, central banks are out of ammunition as negative rates along with an unheard-of level of quantitative easing are about all they could do, and 3) they cannot stop their current policies without hurting the economy short-term, which is politically unmanageable.
🔮P12i : Basket of currencies underperform the market 1 to 3 from 2020 to 2030 (as per NYSE).
💲P13. Undollarization of the economy
They had it coming.
Dollarization has been wildly studied, debated upon and described. Basically, it boils down to roughly half of the world’s economy (everything but eurozone and China) directly tied to the dollar, and the other half dependent on it (for oil most notably, but also for every sector where US’s extraterritorial law applies).
With the US’s inexorable fall compared to the other world powers, rise of other entities and structural changes, dollarization of the worldwide economy is challenged.
Early signs of groundbreaking (and largely overlooked) new trends are informational: cryptocurrencies challenging monetary transfers as well as China labeling its first significant oil trade in Yuan.
The next decade will probably change dollarization, which will go down in history books as one of the tools of the US’s temporary, post-USSR domination of the world.
🔮P13i : Global dollarization index is less than 40% or less(down from roughly 70%)
🍲P14. Food gets disrupted
The food industry was the tobacco industry all along.
Health-conscious movements are already taking the upper side of the food market by storm.
And to make it a perfect storm several external factors are playing out even more than those: takeout is bound to be a higher total addressable market than cook at home, city farming is gaining traction, public backlash against traditional agribusiness is an uphill PR battle. As such, it is very likely food will be significantly different from what we know today.
🔮P14i : A basket of all post-series B innovators in foodtech will outperform installed incumbents 3 to 1
🛰️P15. Space explodes
There’s room for everybody up there.
There’s no more eloquent way to describe the New Space industry as “a new layer of infrastructure, but over Earth”. As commercial launchers get re-usable and the price of putting something in orbit effectively gets divided by 10 or more, a new world of opportunities will be opened in the area of infrastructure, which is well known to be one of the key catalysts of value creation at scale.
Immediate applications of a layer of ready infrastructure around earth are space mining, telecommunications, localization, space manufacturing (turns out removing gravity from the equation of building things opens a new world of possibilities, for example in nanotubes manufacturing), and very probably dozens of other uses that will get discovered along the way.
🔮P15i : Space companies index outperform the market 3 to 1 or more.
🛥️P16. Goods transportation shrinks
Material goods value diminish
As the economy relies more and more on information and less and less on material things, and with significant pressure on everything transport-related due to climate change issues, goods transportation is under pressure to find a new model.
Significant reshoring is also happening worldwide due to the rise of automation and the leveling of all labor cost worldwide, which means finished products are more likely to be produced closer to their end-use location than before, limiting goods transportation to raw material.
As it is possible that more value is packed in less and less volume (see prediction 25) thanks to technology, the value transported may be on the rise but the sheer volume as measured in cubic meters is likely to diminish.
🔮P16i : Goods transportation volume growth is less than half of the total economy growth (as per OECD data)
🏦P17. Banks get disrupted
Relying on information asymmetry as a business is bad in the information age.
Banks are announcing the biggest layoffs since the Great Depression as those lines are being written. Still, it is just the beginning.
Technology is automating most of the bank of detail activity, public opinion roars against Wall Street and the financialization of the economy, hedge fund returns are larger for their managers than for their limited partners, and big tech is going for banking as their next growth leverage.
While banks have assets, political leverage, ability to attract talent, it very likely will not be enough in the face of this perfect storm.
🔮P17i: Existing bank's total value growth is less than half of total asset growth (as per NYSE)
📏P18. Wealth inequality shrinks among capital taxation
As if you could tax something less than zero. No, ECB, it’s not a challenge.
In a time where nothing about value creation made sense anymore because of senseless quantitative easing, central banks are out of options to create magical money out of thin air to give it to banks who don’t lend anymore to the real economy.
Also, public outcry over never heard of levels of wealth inequality may prove to be fact-based, between the complicated and morally obscene tax evasion worldwide system, the intensity of capital and automation possibilities giving structurally less leverage over labor, the growing sentiment among the masses is that a new deal is needed.
As such, next decade will very surely bear new and meaningful taxation on capital.
🔮P18i : Global taxation rate change as a % of the capital is greater than the labor taxation change as a % (as per Piketty’s seemingly personal sources to calculate them)
👷P19.Everyone is a contractor
No more bosses. No more hours. Lighter contracts. More insecurity.
With the inexorable rise of giants who do not employ a single body but operate the largest workforces on earth, one can think the movement of “self-employed, powered by algorithms” may be limited to services and platform-compatible markets, a larger trend is emerging as high-skill and low-skill labor is turning self-employed alike.
On a deeper level, this trend has to deal with the relative ease of organizing work thanks to automation and software and the deep specialization trend which makes the case for workers to not be limited in a single company anymore.
As such, individuals who are not starting their own large-scale company are more likely to be self-employed.
🔮P19i : Share of self-employed contractors in labor force is 50% or more(up from 30%)
🗿P20.The giants crumble
No monopoly lasts long. This is a bold one, I’m pretty sure someone will take the bet.
While the start of the decade probably will be amazing for our favorite giants the GAFAM, various calls to split them up, to moralize them, to break them down, to diminish their power, to tax them are on.
Additionally, the GAFAM are American. Being in a country that is losing influence and is politically so divided is not a good place to be in. Even if their operations are international, their culture and ultimately their protective authority is the American government.
🔮P20i : Total market capitalization of GAFAM goes down in the 2015–2020 period (as per NYSE)
🤖Technology
🏦 P21. Crypto mainstreams wealth transfer
There are difficulties, but the math is too powerful.
While crypto as competing protocols still faces significant challenges such as the cost of different proofs, adoption by the end-user and meaningful use cases that are not speculation, the math highlighted in Satoshi’s white paper along with the significant technologist's community racing to bring crypto to adoption is just too powerful to be overlooked.
In addition, in political times such as the ones the world is entering, with more uncertainty, multilateral world no longer tied to the dollar, and the challenge of established currencies, people are more likely to secure assets and means of payment away from political tinkering. Early signs of those behaviors can be found in edge cases such as currency crisis in Latin America this year. Last, China publicly claimed they wanted to earn the title of “crypto nation”. All signs are there, and the math is powerful.
🔮P21i : Crypto-backed wealth transfers in 2029 year accounts for more than 5% of all transfers of that year.
📩P22. As everything gets rebuilt w. crypto, everyone becomes an investor
Sharing is caring is investing.
The value created by the “free product, pay with your eyeballs” model over the last decade was tremendous. However, it is in crisis as even tech giants won’t possibly squeeze more eyeball time in our already cat picture-filled life.
As such, we are witnessing the rise of competing models where a significant share of the value created gets given back to the end-user. Further than that, the value sitting in our bank accounts, idle processors and such will likely be monetized and given back to some extent to its owner.
🔮P22i : At least 2% of personal median income is made through some sort of micro-investing and/or get back money from tech products (up from negligible today)
💡P23. As energy goes green, prices go up
Bar a technical revolution, it’s bound to happen.
Energy is advocated to be the next great battle of our generation: with the obvious climate change issues, its newfound importance on the economy as a whole, political headaches with nuclear power and new geostrategic questions around the new resources needed for renewables, energy is at the center of just about everything that will unfold over the next decade.
While technology can be wild, and nuclear fusion or Dyson sphere could happen sooner than expected, all pointers are in the direction of restricted access to cheap power.
🔮P23i : Inflation-corrected usage-weighted average price of a Kw is more than that of 2020 (as per EIA)
👓P24. Consumer-facing VR/AR finally dies out
It has been dragged for too long anyway.
VR/AR has been thoroughly touted as the most groundbreaking force in form factor for consumers for more than a decade now.
Famous companies such as Oculus are trying to pave the way fueled by VC money. While most VCs (minus Oculus) who bet big on VR/AR most likely won’t see their money back, it is time to reflect and ask the big question: was it a good idea all along?
The bull case for VR/AR is that it’s seamless, use directly one of our senses that occupies the largest part of our brain and that it’s coherent with our technological capabilities, in particular regarding to networking capabilities, image recognition
The bear case is that it’s too invasive, that most use cases can be done with less costly form factors such as a phone or an earpiece, and that battery use makes it hard to find a compelling equation for its use. Bear case also includes the fact that Apple is not significantly betting on AR/VR, and more on getting a computer in your ear through airpods that make you look like a member of the 1%. The most widespread use of non-phone business application is in fact a connected headset in Amazon factories that tells its worker where and when to pick and scan boxes.
As such, while VR/AR is finding its place in niche case such as medical and some commercial use, it will die out in the next decade to be successfully replaced by another form factor.
🔮P24i : AR/VR as a sector total valuation is less than 2010 (as per NYSE)
🧰P25. Hardware comes back
Those who are serious about software should build their own hardware.
Apple’s legendary rise to relevance came from a simple realization: while software is eating the world, hardware and software combined for seamless user experience are winning the biggest bets of our times.
Five years ago, the giants of our times were adamant about not owning assets, developing software that scales, and staying away from hardware, with few exceptions. Yet Google is moving into hardware, Microsoft is releasing their Surface brand, Baidu thinks about buying hardware capabilities.
Thus, it is very likely most of the giants will be a mix of hardware and software with a significant shift towards hardware.
🔮P25i : Out of the ten largest capitalizations worldwide, at least 5 are making hardware for more than 10% of their GP (up from 2 today).
🚗P26. Self-driving finally gets done
It was a matter of time.
While self-driving has been pushed for about a decade and was promised sooner, early signs that the technology could become mature enough to storm our roads are there.
In addition, the Chinese strategy of overhauling the infrastructure (change the road, not the car) to make self-driving available may prove a winning bet as miles driven by Chinese cars are more accident-free than their US counterparts.
🔮P26i : Share of miles driven by autonomous cars and trucks is more than 25% (up from 0%, a reputable source will need to be found by then)
🔐P27. Semi-open protocols balkanize markets
It was the norm in the past, so was technology just a particular time?
Last decade’s technological value creation largely sits on top of fifty-year-old open protocols that were created in a hippie, sharing culture back in SF. Those open protocols permitted anyone and everyone to communicate, build on top of each other and deliver incredible value to the end-user.
Still, most of the world relies on semi-open protocols that are effectively preventing value creation in less innovative sectors: from train tracks to automotive standards to manufacturing standards to repairability, the majority of use cases of open protocols are not grabbed. While the case for open protocols to become the norm, in and outside information technology, was popular opinion at the beginning of the decade, it is less and less likely to happen.
The importance for the national security of limited interoperability across frontiers especially for physical transportation and manufacturing, easy-to-create protectionism through hidden standards and norms that shape markets without popular approval nor understanding, in a context of rising nationalism and tensions are pleading for a different story.
As such, protocol uniformization will actually go down during next decade.
🔮P27i: Protocol uniformization index in information technology goes down 50% (down from 65%)
🏠P28. Owning becomes optional
The economics are just too good
The intensity of capital is just going up and up and up. Automation, asset utilization and market pressure to make the most out of capital are some of the driving factors behind the sharing economy.
While sharing economy has produced some booms such as Airbnb, or to a lesser extent Uber, the decade to come still has to unwrap that phenomenon, especially in B2B where penetration of that kind of model has been slow, and in a new category of assets (self-driving cars comes to mind).
As pressure increases on physical things due to climate change and resource depletion, and information processing gets cheaper and more efficient, it is very likely that every single bit (well, atom) of physical thing will be used with greater efficiency.
🔮P28i : 25% of personal asset use is done through some kind of sharing economy platform or service (up from less than 5%)
🤗P29. Creativity and Emotion are the new human edge
And the robots won’t do it
As white-collar and repetitive-thinking jobs get automated in the next big wave of change in the landscape of human occupation, humans will once again have to switch majority occupations to something completely different.
Past performance does not predict future returns, as every good fund manager will remind you, but looking back at what happened can inform us. We went as a species from 90% of worked hours dedicated to farming, to 75% of worked hours dedicated to making things in factories, to 60% of worked hours dedicated to pushing information around, processing them and taking decisions.
As machine learning, software and sensors replace at a neck-breaking pace those last 60% hours, what’s next ? Early pointers such as the whole mental health debate, increased stress level, dire need for feeling of human belonging across developped economies, and explosion of the budget dedicated to culture, entertainment and general creative work may prove that the future of human occupation is caring and creation.
🔮P29i : Job share in creativity and emotion-related gets to 50% or more (down from 20.6% in the 2010s)
📈P30. Moore’s law halts
It was getting ridiculous anyways
Moore’s law is the famous law upon which the number of transistors per square meter is multiplied by 2 roughly every two years. It can be argued Moore’s law is one of the most driving factors behind the two last decades of changes in technology and the global economy, as transistors are powering computers, and software is eating the world.
It has been consistently verified over the last 15 years, with very early signs of slowing down debated by experts, understandably as Moore’s law has been declared dead consistently every two years for two decades now.
However, there is a strong argument to be made about physical limitation and resource shortage that would put Moore’s end to stop. As economics say, exponential tend to grow fast and then disaster happens.
🔮P30i : The number of transistors per square meter growth in the 20s decade is lower than x32 (down from x32 roughly)
That was a fun exercise. Thank you for reading it !
A lot of topics did not make the cut. Whether I could not form an opinion, it was not in the top 30, it was too specific, or it was too consensual, those are fun nonetheless: LATAM, Russia, Balkans, creation of a world listing, colonization of another planet, proof of life outside Earth, cold fusion, world government, the whole gender debate, racism, strong AI, entertainment share of the GDP, average distance to the place of work, average size of a company, legal status of companies, tax evasion, recognition of animal as individuals, amount of meat consumed, world population number, religiousness numbers in the world.
Also, while my personal portfolio reflects to a certain extent those predictions, bets, and line of thought, especially the ones that are controversial versus the market, I’m always interested in hearing out if you agree/disagree with some of those bets, and how you would put your money where your pen as reflected in a portfolio and/or financial instruments. Some prediction I think are not priced in as of today (P1,P2,P28) while some are pretty much already priced in, so the whole debate is whether it is priced in at the right level (P23).
