I was thinking it was actually Adam Smith… darned if I can find it or remember though. Been a long time since I struggled through “The Wealth of Nations”. I was thinking it was a well known capitalist that said it… was probably Stalin or Castro lol.
In general, studies of past wealth cycles suggest family wealth almost never lasts more than the 4th generation.
Was thinking about this the other day. Billionaires and investors have been increasingly converting their stocks into long term assets that have a fixed supply (land and to a lesser degree, houses). You can imagine a scenario where the US begins to look like Europe with our own "landed gentry". So then they would marry sometimes up or down, split land between children, and sometimes sell the land to upstarts when in need of quick cash or payment of debt due to poor management, etc. Or increasingly just not have children at all!! (Also, what is Gates' plan when he is gone? He says he isn't leaving most of his wealth to his children, so why did he suddenly buy 50k acres in Arkansas? Leave to charitable orgs? Cover the state in solar panels?)
My hunch with Gates buying up big farm properties has to do with places to build nuclear engery plants. Nuclear plant in the middle surrounded by nothing but farm land will make NIMBYism less of an opposition.
Awesome if true. I'm YIMBY on nuclear. Although I would rather utilize existing industrial space but I see what ur saying.
I’m barely getting by Neff!!!
Some of us may argue that!
Damn, now I feel real guilty.
Don't feel guilty Hank. You earned your great lifestyle. Life is too short to spend it wallowing in self loathing misery. Give Rio a pet and biscuit for me!
Everybody sees the coordination of my red and black crow kit, but they don’t see the 4:30am wake ups and the mile of back country skiing it takes just to get to the car to go work 8hrs of hard manual labor in the cold.
I remember hearing someone say that the US would have to move its entire population to Texas to get the same population density as India. Quick math check shows it is still close enough to declare true. It shows how good we have it in the US. We still have the ability to choose the 10acre place outside of town and have a lot of public land. Eventually that choice goes away for all but those with a number with lot of zeros in the bank. Unfortunately what we want the future to look like and what is possible are completely different.
With inflation, everyone can have a number with a lot of zeros in the bank.
I do agree with your narrow take - we have and will continue to change and adapt. But there are plenty of folks predicting full collapse in “near term” as a reason for government driven population regulation. This, I find weird.
Who is advocating for .gov pop-reg? I'm sure not.
Birth reductions will happen on their own. But there should be programs to encourage family to place people DNR-DNI. Over 90 should be automatic. We have become very skilled at keeping people alive. Quality of life be damned.
