If we finally (finally!) get paperless offices and Kindle replaces books, and if advances in materials science and construction mean we someday end up using, I don’t know, genetically-engineered spider silk in house construction instead of lumber… trying to think ahead blue-sky style for the next four or five decades… will demand for wood hold up? How secure an investment is forest land for the next century or so, for university endowments and Fuggerei-type institutions?

I wonder if there are any comparable assets to forestry, that have the property that they greatly increase in value over time, for free with little or no maintenance (just add sunshine and rain and the passage of time). The only thing I can think of is some kind of hypothetical genetically-engineered marine organism that accumulates dissolved precious metals from seawater into its body slowly over the course of decades, which can be harvested in the end. Perhaps along these lines, Japan is trying to extract uranium from seawater using genetically-modified seaweed.

This is a helpful reminder of owning acreage in forestry. This is not an exceptionally easy investment to make, however.

There are plenty of British endowments that are older than the Fuggerei, I am sure. Oxbridge colleges, Cathedral chests (but not the CofE funds, as these probably came from the monasteries), the London Livery companies, the Inns of Court, the London Bridges Trust (although that has toll revenues) and countless local schools and almshouses.

Many of these, though, have probably had additional endowments at points, whereas it is unclear (but unlikely) that the Fuggers re-endowed the Fuggerei. How it survived Weimar, if it did, is a miracle.

Thanks for the posting! I liked the part about thinking patterns of experience must continue unbroken….change is consistent.