Not really discussion, but if you look at long-run low-risk investments like bonds, people invest in things that pay back in <50 years. As the risk profile incr

Not really discussion, but if you look at long-run low-risk investments like bonds, people invest in things that pay back in <50 years. As the risk profile increases and you get to high-risk investments like stock that tend to pay back in <25 years. A company like Google is 25 years old, expecting it to even exist in another 25 years involves a certain level of optimism - companies have lifespans just like everything else. But ultimately any preference is implied, it isn't the sort of thing people can be surveyed on (revealed economic preferences and all that). > For example, if someone came up with a solution for the housing crisis but it would take more than 10 to 20 years, would people view that as effectively no solution at all? That does sound like it'd be a politically hard sell. People generally expect governments to implement their solutions inside a decade. Not an entirely rational expectation, but nonetheless. To flip the burden of proof, 30 year ROIs imply that people are routinely sitting down and having serious conversations where they expect to make their money back over 30 years assuming literally nothing goes wrong. Any bankruptcies and they are in the negatives. Any stock price drops and they are probably in the negatives. If you believe that is the norm where people are comfortable, I hope to see you in the conversation next time people on HN attack stock market investors for being too focused on the next quarter!