I was asked for my view on “why the birth certificates (our) are currently used on the stock market and we can actually see the value of our birth certificate and actually see what it is trading for and who actually owns it”.
During my time studying to obtain an MBA in Finance I heard about investing in stocks, mutual funds, real estate, debt, options, futures, buildings, equipment, etc, but not birth certificates. Therefore, it surprised me to hear the claim that birth certificates were being traded like they were stocks. I spent some time looking into the issue and thinking about it to see what might be going on. Here are my thoughts on the issue…
There is a video circulating the Internet along with a set of instructions that supposedly shows people how they can see the value of their birth certificate. The video is available here:
I read some Youtube comments of people who tried the instructions featured in the video. The instructions apparently do not work for everyone, which weakens the credibility of the idea that people’s birth certificates are being traded publically. How can Person X’s birth certificate have a value assigned to it while Person Y’s birth certificate does not? In addition, people who managed to get a value for their birth certificate number had a drastically different value than the person who made the video.
- The person who made the video had a value of over $224 million while a person who commented on the video had a value of only $25,000. Unless the person who made the video was Barack Obama (maybe that’s a bad example given some people’s suspicions of him) or another major world leader and the person who commented is living in a tiny shack in Wyoming, there is no way there should be that big of discrepancy between the value of two people.
Another problem with the video and the instructions is that what people end up getting is basic information about a mutual fund. You could say that Fidelity is trying to hide people’s identity, but I do not believe this is the case. Each mutual fund has a unique identification number. Since there are a lot of mutual funds out there it is most likely a coincidence that someone’s birth certificate number matches the ID of the mutual fund.
Beyond that it seems unrealistic to me that there would be a market for birth certificates because it is difficult for me to comprehend how an investor would make money from owning someone else’s birth certificate. The value of an investment is estimated by the present value of an asset’s expected future cash flows.
- How would an investor that does not know you from John Doe be able to determine your future income-earning potential? You could argue that it might be feasible if an investor accessed enough detailed personal information about you. However, how would an investor be able to gain so much personal information about you when such information is private for the most part?
- The results displayed in the video showed that the value of the asset fluctuated periodically (daily). How could the value of a person fluctuate every trading day and who determines how it fluctuated? The only way I can see the value of a person’s birth certificate fluctuate every trading day is if someone monitored your daily actions and these actions somehow impacted your future income-earning potential. People make decisions that impact their future income-earning potential at work and at home. For some entity to have a good estimate of how your future income-earning potential changed each day they would have to spy on you closely when you’re at work and when you’re at home. Although it is possible, I find the notion that someone is going to spy on you 24/7 a little hard to believe-especially when the purpose of the spying is determine how your value changed. That same time and effort could be used to find more profitable investments in undervalued assets.
Another reason why it is hard to imagine there being a market for birth certificates is that people have only one birth certificate. The only two ways I can see an investor selling a person’s birth certificate to another investor is either through the negotiation process or through the auction process. Even if birth certificates are being bought or sold there would not be much of a market since only one person can own another person’s birth certificate at one time. In contrast, there could be millions of people who own the stock of a corporation, which can be bought and sold in a true, liquid marketplace.
Finally, assuming someone could determine your future income-earning potential and how it changed each day, how would an investor collect on the future cash flows you generate? It is difficult to imagine how an investor would receive future cash flows from owning a birth certificate unless someone showed up at the person’s door periodically and forced that person to surrender a portion of their income to the birth certificate holder. You could argue that an investor could collect money from the taxes that a person pays, but the government needs that tax revenue to operate...
At this point, I think people are so concerned about what is going on that they perceive threats that are not really there. I think the idea that there is a market for birth certificates is an example of that.
It’s good to be suspicious about what you are told because people who provide information often have an agenda. As I believe Hitler once conveyed, people are often told what the leader in power wants them to hear. However, you should not believe every conspiracy out there because the forces of evil do use some conspiracies to distract people as they hide what they are really up to. Not everything is as it seems…
