Time Travel discussion

As a part of my job, I have to request financial documents from students and/or sponsors to prove they have enough money for their student visa eligibility forms. Today I got one that says that the 20-year-old student's father (who I have been corresponding with by email) has been a customer of their bank since the year 1914 and that they have been dealing with him for more than 97 years and 6 months. Of course, this sends up serious red flags. Is this guy's father really 97+ years old? Is this a family account that's been passed down through the generations?

As I was mulling this over, I realized how difficult it would be for a time traveler to deposit money in a savings account in 1914 and then collect the money and interest in 2012. Obviously, you can't say that you're the same John Doe that opened the account in 1914. You certainly don't look that old. How could you even have access to the money in 2012 unless you time traveled to, say, 1950 and changed the account owner to yourself (the "son/daughter" of the 1914 version of you) and then time traveled again to 2000 and transferred the account owner to the 2012 version of yourself. Still, who would believe that you'd owned the account for 50 years and didn't look 50 years old? What paperwork could you even own to prove that you were the grandson/daugher of someone who opened the account in 1914?

So, anyhow, what other get-rich-quick schemes are there for a time traveler that don't come with such technical baggage. And then where are you going to store and retrieve your money once you get it?

Buy up as much gold as you can and bury it. Then dig it up and sell it at today's record high prices.

Why would you deposit it? Convert it into diamonds and bring them back to the future with you.

But, the truth is, any wealth without adequate documentation is going to be an issue.

Well I wouldnt have any money left to save for the future once I've spent it all on the time machine or cryogenic storage rent!

When I wake up 100-200 years later, I'll make my earnings as an historical correction adviser and publicity appearances wooing the public with my ancient "Old English" lingo.

With horse racing, you do have paradox issues, because racing results will change when you bet, because it's a pari-mutual betting pool. And, if a race had been fixed, the winner might also change when payoffs go down, because the trainer/owner hold off the win until the next race when odds are better.

Investing in companies with short-term results might work. Otherwise, you have the same issue as in the first message -- collecting your gains after long-term growth, being unable to identify yourself. For example, $10K of Iomega stock grew to about $6M over a single year back in the 90's.

Collect objects that would have value today, a Gutenburg bible, a few paintings by a great masters, a couple of documents signed by famous people, etc. & hide them in a trunk where you could 'find' them today & then go on Antique Road Show & act suprised when they told you everything was legit.

Have a look at "Compounded Interest", a short story by Mack Reynolds, for the proper way to do this.

And don't Swiss bank accounts call only for a number, not a name?

A.K. and Brenda: Yes, I think either of those solutions would be good ones. I'd thought of the Swiss bank account solution, but not the solution of creating a company account. That's a brilliant idea.

You don't get a lot of interest with a Swiss account. What you want to do -- what the guy in COMPOUNDED INTEREST did -- is to invest the dough in a business that you know will be successful and pay off big. The guy in the story invested in the Polo brothers' importing business, in Venice.

Brenda

But the problem is collecting the results of the investment in the future. You have to be able to identify that you are the recipient of the proceeds.

If you can fake an identity to collect it, so can someone else.

Yes Randy, I agree that's the fatal flaw in any such investment scheme.

But it wouldn't apply if you went on Antique Road Show.

Just act suprised, as I said.

Write a best-selling book about your adventures. That's what HG Wells did

With your foreknowledge, it would not be very difficult to select investments that would do very, very well indeed. (Who among us is not sorry that they didn't invest with those eight geeky people in a Seattle garage with Bill Gates?) The only difficulty would be to get money back into the past -- you can hardly bring your Visa card. You need to work it out with precious metals, like gold. I believe the guy in the Mack Reynolds story traveled back to 14th c. Venice with some gold coins. They were worth nothing as coin, but as precious metal they were perfectly fine.

John wrote: "Buy up as much gold as you can and bury it. Then dig it up and sell it at today's record high prices."

How do you get the gold? Gold today has the same purchasing power per oz as it did back when-if you can afford to buy the gold back then, you'd have to have an equal (accounting for inflation) equity to buy it.
I like Steven Gould's Wildside for a get rich quick time travel novel - the heroes of the story went back in time to Sutter's Creek in California before any people were around and picked nuggets out of the stream.

I had another idea, one that Auther C Clark missed but you, as a time traveler could take advantage of.

Clark wrote, years before the fact, of satellites that beamed information around but HE NEVER PATTENED THE IDEA.

Go back in time & do so, then every business that uses such technology (a lot of companies these days) would owe you a royalty.

This is a right protected in the US Constitution.

Happy Birthday America.

The original patent term under the 1790 Patent Act was decided individually for each patent, but "not exceeding fourteen years".[6] The 1836 Patent Act (5 Stat. 117, 119, 5) provided (in addition to the fourteen year term) an extension "for the term of seven years from and after the expiration of the first term" in certain circumstances.[7] In 1861 the seven year extension was eliminated and the term changed to seventeen years (12 Stat. 246, 249, 16). The signing of the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act[8] then changed the patent term from seventeen years from the date of issue to the current twenty years from the earliest filing date.

I was going to remark on the length of a patent pre-Clarke, but then I realized that even if you patented a com satellite, the government would just take it over as national security.

K55f, OK, OK, I guess I'll stick to my Road Show idea, no experation there.

Better work out those schemes. Cox Communications now has time travel available. This morning, they sent me an email to tell me they scheduled an appointment for a technician to come out to the house on the morning of 06/07/2012.

Ya gotta love it when they try to solve the problem before it happened. :)

An acquaintance of mine is writing a TT novel. His get-rich-quick scheme is simple. Go visit the treasury of the Inca king, just before Pizarro looted it. Bring a hand truck.

That's what they tried to do in the beginning of the movie TimeCop -- hijacking a Confederate gold shipment during the Civil War.

Good question! I was just thinking about this last night while watching one of the Pawn shows on the History Channel. I would go back to 1972 and purchase a few brand-new muscle cars for $2600 each. Then I would park them in a garage or some storage facility that I knew would be around in my present time. I imagine some collectors would be interested in buying them for big money.

This assumes that you can pay the garage in advance for that many years of storage (they had better be honest!) and that they do not go out of business or suffer a buyout from some corporate raider who will loot the assets and then decamp.

Buy the oil, diamonds, name the resource before its found and own the land when it is.

need some capital but it would pay off.