Sat 21 Jul 2007
If you really want to aggressively bet on a singularity approaching, you could do some pretty reckless things with the latest thing from Wall Street: life settlement backed securities.
From Business Week: Profiting From Mortality
Death bond is shorthand for a gentler term the industry prefers: life settlement-backed security. Whatever the name, it’s as macabre an investing concept as Wall Street has ever cooked up. Some 90 million Americans own life insurance, but many of them find the premiums too expensive; others would simply prefer to cash in early. “Life settlements” are arrangements that offer people the chance to sell their policies to investors, who keep paying the premiums until the sellers die and then collect the payout. For the investors it’s a ghoulish actuarial gamble: The quicker the death, the more profit is reaped.
July 27th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Wouldn’t this lead to investors putting marks out on the sellers? You could supplement your bet by investing heavily in the hitman industry.
The only thing that makes life insurance work is the fact that most people are highly attached to their life and thus won’t want to “cash in”. The minute you separate the system like that you end up with a very dangerous situation. I’m almost certain that this will eventually become illegal.