[cube]

One of the things that we have learned in high school economics is "value moves up", meaning the big profits are made in "adding value" and NOT producing raw commodities.

1) For example an iron ore mining company would only make razor thin profit margins.
2) A steel manufacturer can buy the iron ore and smelt it into steel to make higher profits.
3) If you take the steel and instead do something more complex such as building a ship (for example a barge) the profits are even higher.
4) And finally if you take the steel and do something REALLY complex and technologically advanced such as building a liquid nitrogen cooled natural gas transporter ship then the profit margins are even higher.

The basic theory is the more complex the process, the more money you make.

However I think PO is going to change this. I think PO is going to make "value move down". The most powerful company of the 21st century is not going to be an automobile manufacture nor a software maker. The next "Bill Gates" will make his fortune in commodities and not high-tech.

my 2 cents...

[davep]

As the post-PO world will not have the global infrastructure we now have, I can't really see anyone making quite the same money as Gates et al. So, I've gone for half-baked.

[benzoil]

I don't claim to be an economist, but in an energy deficient market, getting commodities from point of origin to point of sale/demand would be much more difficult. This would (theoretically) result in depressed prices at one end and higher ones at the other. This might make the winner the water/rail-based transporter in between, no?

Another winner might be local producers. Right now it's cheaper to ship my lettuce in from California's Imperial Valley. If lettuce were $5/head instead $1, I could probably be induced to grow some in my garden and sell it locally. Repeat many times around the country. Commodity price increases, but reward is decentralized.

That said, I don't think the next Bill Gates will make his money in I.T. The first person who figures out how to profitize local agriculture on a national scale might do well though. I know it sounds dumb now but some guy at ADM is probably already working on it.

[cube]

It seems that the question of who's going to be the next Bill Gates has caught some people's attention.

PO also == peak technology

You cannot have technological advancement in a power down/die off scenario. Just like in ancient Egypt and the Mayas, ALL the great pyramids were built before TSHTF....in today's world all the great technologies has / will be invented before PO.

However there's always going to be 1 man on this planet that will get to hold the coveted "world's richest person" title. So how will this man make his fortune if it will NOT be the "high tech" industry?

[Gerben]

The richest guy will be someone trading the comodities on a comodities exchange. Not the guy growing them or digging them up. That won't change.
A new source of energy calls for new technologies. We will enter a phase of transition that will bring us new technologies to save energy and/or more efficiently capture and/or store renewable energy sources (wind/water/geothermal heat/biomass). These fields of technology are in rapid development. The development will continue when TSHTF. No money will be spent on a trip to mars, but on energy.