Borrowing our way to prosperity.

Nassim Talib asserting (among other things) that the Fed will not be around in 25 years.

We anticipate (hope!) the construction of the charter sailing catamaran Mon Tiki will take 4-6 months. Aside from the previously mentioned design and engineering fees, materials, and rent, we’ll also be hiring a small crew of local builders. (I suppose if I was hipper, I’d say “makers”.)

About a third of the cost of this build will come out of our  savings and we’ll borrow the rest.

I have not borrowed money for the purchase of capital equipment since 1992, when I bought my first professional camera system, lights and grip and gaff equipment, and a work vehicle. Since then I’ve managed to make all new capital investments with cash, and with good reason.

Nearly all of the equipment I’ve purchased in the last 20 years has been microchip driven, and as such, subject to Moore’s Law. In fact, over the last two decades, I developed a corollary to Moore’s Law which goes something like this:

“No matter how cunning you are, within six months there will be a guy down the street who has a machine that works twice as fast and cost him half as much as the one you just bought.”

Because of this, I have regarded any and all computer-related equipment purchases as expenses that must be covered by the project in which they are first deployed, like film stock or airline tickets. But I recognize this sort of conservatism has limits.

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In naval architecture there is a concept called reserve buoyancy and in sailing vessels especially, this interacts with reserve stability in ways that affect performance and safety (and often one at the expense of the other.) The very highest performance sailboats trade very thin margins of error and the willingness to suffer disastrous consequences for blazing speed.

But this begs the question of what we mean by the word “performance”, in a sailboat and our economy both.