wmartin@brl-vgr.ARPA (Will Martin ) (04/06/84)
Using time travel as an aid to the practical and mundane aspects of life has always appealed to me; I've read SF in which a housewife time-travels to do her grocery shopping during the Depression, when bargains were BARGAINS, and we've all seen references to the value of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal... However, there are some practical aspects of this that I haven't seen mentioned in SF. They may well have been, but I don't recall reading about them. Exactly what is the best way to carry on time-travel-based commerce? No matter what information you can carry with you, at some time you have to get cash or material of value in the time frame in which you need to make investments or buy goods. This isn't as easy as it sounds... (Aside: a couple assumptions to make the discussion simpler -- 1) The act of travelling in time and moving materials is easy and either free or very cheap -- if it requires enormous energy expenditures, as some have speculated, it becomes so costly as to eliminate the commercial aspects. 2) You can move to any point in space-time, though limited to stay on the planet [arbitrary restriction here]; so you can get from 1979 Cleveland to 1803 Paris with your whizz-bang time machine, without worrying about getting from 1803 Cleveland to 1803 Paris via boat or whatever... 3) You want to keep this somewhat secret -- no coming back in a blaze of glory and saying, "Hi There! I'm from the Twentieth Century and I want to trade these wonderful cassette players and Cluture Club tapes for these dingy old statues you have sitting around the Forum...") OK -- here you are in 1984 with your time machine and bank account and microfiche of the Wall Street Journal. You want to go buy Xerox when it was Haloid (or whatever), Polaroid, gold, etc., when it was at its lowest and sell at the highest peak. How do you do it? Just going to the bank and getting a briefcase-full of Federal Reserve Notes isn't going to help -- most of them will date from releases later than the dates you will be going to, and they will be considered very good counterfeits. Most of the things you could buy, take back, and sell for more than you paid for them will be anachronistic, thus violating your secrecy -- the Time Police from 4754 will come and get you, right? This leaves out peddling Walkmen and calculators in 1953. It seems that you will be best off with some sort of basic materials instead. Now, I recall that aluminum was more valuable than gold before the modern refining processes were developed. So you buy aluminum ingots and zip back to Napoleonic France, where you offer to trade this for gold. This should work for a small amount, but the problem is that, since there was so little aluminum and it was high priced, and it isn't very pretty, there's little demand for it. They made table services out of it, for ostentation, but the jewelers and smiths could only sell so many of those; your market gets glutted. Another source of income could be retrieving lost art and historical artifacts just before they were destroyed or lost -- pulling the contents out of the Library at Alexandria microseconds before the flames reach them, for example. A traditional way of avoiding changing the past but recovering from the tragedies of history. But what will you do with the carload of scrolls once you have them? Unless the fact of time travel is known, no one will believe that these new-looking scrolls came from 2000 years back, so how do you sell them? And if you try to sell them in the time when you need current currency to make your investments, you have changed YOUR past. What about land? Well, I could go back to the Pre-Cambrian and plant indestructable claim markers all over Gondwanaland. I'd have to break secrecy, but could I then claim all the continents by right of prior discovery? Somehow, I doubt that I could get the legal system to enforce my claims. So, before this gets any longer, I'll sum up by asking: "How DO I get rich by time travel?" [I just happened to come into possession of a brand-new but hot-wired 3942 Chronocruiser, with bucket seats and a hyperspatial trunk, blue with green trim, and I'm just itching to give it a spin...] Will
ss@wivax.UUCP (Sid Shapiro) (04/09/84)
> OK -- here you are in 1984 with your time machine and bank account and > microfiche of the Wall Street Journal. You want to go buy Xerox when it > was Haloid (or whatever), Polaroid, gold, etc., when it was at its lowest > and sell at the highest peak. How do you do it? Just going to the bank > and getting a briefcase-full of Federal Reserve Notes isn't going to > help -- most of them will date from releases later than the dates you > will be going to, and they will be considered very good counterfeits. Why must you buy when it was at its lowest and sell at the highest? A few small, known fluctuations in the price of a stock will quickly add up. You only need go back to last week to make some sensational stock manuevers (I am reasonably sure). Doing it this way you won't have to worry about currency problems, or even finding a stock broker who wants to know who you are and where you live! Just use your own. Instead of making 1 or 2 large transactions, make a few dozen small ones - also calls less attention to yourself!
rpw3@fortune.UUCP (04/11/84)
#R:brl-vgr:-331400:fortune:9900032:000:5361 fortune!rpw3 Apr 10 22:54:00 1984 +-------------------- | So, before this gets any longer, I'll sum up by asking: "How DO I | get rich by time travel?" | | Will +-------------------- You said it yourself. Information. Inflation. Both work in your favor. But first, there is one other rule that we must add to the game to make it non-trivial -- you may not time-travel to any time futurewards of when you would have been had you not begun travelling. That is, except for returning to a point of departure, you may not travel into the future. (The rule may be relaxed to allow "now" + "time spent in past" without changing anything.) Why do I say the game is trivial without this rule? Because if you can travel into your "personal" future, all you have to do is be in business here-and-now and occasionally hop forward a bit to bring back some useful tidbit. Nobody will question your 1984 $20 bill when you go to buy two year's Wall Street Journal (on microfiche) in 1986. "Puts and calls, here I come!" Just don't be too greedy or the SEC will come a'calling. Likewise, I must assume another "rule" -- you are not interested in setting up your major residence in a past time. Otherwise, see previous example. (Hey, dentistry gets LOTS better, every year. Just five years ago, you would have lost that tooth!) O.k., so you're going to live here, and fool around back then. Overall, the information you carry back must be of such quality as to permit you to make profits exceeding inflation. Since you want to stay secret, you cannot make a very big splash either then now. Therefore you must run a multi-pass operation, such that the incremental profits don't draw attention to yourself but the total profit is worth the work you put in. The capital you must expend is therefore -- your own subjective time (which many will say is the only true personal capital). You will expend that "capital" in setting up an alternate personality who will do the commerce. (Unless you already did this under your own name, and you're already rich and just playing mind games with "all us zombies..." [RAH]) Still, there are many things you can take back for the cash portion of the bootstrap (remember, "no splash" == "small" grubstake): 1. Diamonds. (Not gold... are you kidding?) Other gemstones. 2. Old bills and coins (but for their face, not present, value). Not that I'd want to try and handle the culture shock of that long a jump, but Confederate money is going for face (or better) value these days. If you're only hopping a few years (my choice), sort through some cash to find the cleanest-looking ones that aren't anachronistic. 3. Ancient articles which are self-identifying (but not TOO rare), such as jade, pottery. 4. Advice to others. (Have to be careful with this one. Some states have rules on who can give investment advice.) Generally, you want items that have always had SOME value, but have NOT been a good hedge against inflation. In fact, anything that was once valuable, but has recently LOST value (obsolete technology not yet old enough to be rare), is best. And you don't need very much. $10,000 will get you well set. I claim that a pocket full of $20's would be fine. From there on, play the "trivial" game defined above, for a good while. As you close on current times, you have to figure out a way to transfer "the goods" from your persona to you. Sell "him" something "he" wants. Gouge "him". Pay taxes (probably "again") on your bounty. After you have milked "him" (or "her", if you're female) dry, let "him" retire somewhere and quietly disappear. Start up another one. (You might actually have several going at once, but beware of over- extending yourself. The literature if full of warnings, e.g., "The Man Who Folded Himself".) Whatever you do in all of your personae, don't screw with the IRS! You'll be making enough to keep them and you both happy. A special case of the rule: Don't get greedy; someone will notice. DON'T make more than a few tens of thousands gambling! (There are those besides the IRS whose attentions you REALLY don't want!) --------------- Postscript: 1. If short transfers are permitted, the above hassle is totally unnecessary. You will walk in one day and tell yourself to buy 100 shares of so-and-so. Do it. You will continue to give yourself good advice (from next week). Listen. Get rich. If you are careful, people will just think you are "lucky" or "smart". Someday you will get the device (or trick or mantra) let lets you go backwards. Start using it to advise your(younger)self. Keep good notes. Someday you may find out where you got the device (or trick or mantra). Then again, you may not... 2. If short transfers are NOT permitted (as in Keith Laumer's "Dinosaur Beach"), you're in trouble. If tranfers to historical times are permitted, you just MIGHT be able to profit from your information, but it's going to be hard. The daily details (stocks, etc.) aren't recorded back very far, and how does one make money from major historical events? Might be better to take up residency back then and pop up to now for medical care. You could always sell Pompeii short. ;-} Rob Warnock UUCP: {ihnp4,ucbvax!amd70,hpda,harpo,sri-unix,allegra}!fortune!rpw3 DDD: (415)595-8444 USPS: Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphin Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065
john@hp-pcd.UUCP (04/12/84)
How to get rich through time travel. Well there are several ways to do this.In "the end of eternity" by Asimov you have a society that conducts regular trade using time ways in the same manner as we use roadways. But that is a little more organized than you probably want. I remember reading one story about a scientist who invents a time machine and goes back to the middle ages with a pocketfull of silver coins. He hires a lawyer to manage his investments and through the miracle of compound interest manages to aquire control of most of the worlds wealth. He uses this money to pay for the research needed to construct his time machine. John Eaton !hplabs!hp-pcd!john