Land More Valuable Than Gold In A Total Meltdown
Last weekend, we bought some land.
This flies against policy (our policy) of never buying anything except that which can be paid for at the time of purchase – and even though I know full-well that we won’t really own the land, just as we don’t really own the land we have (or the house that sits upon it) because owners don’t pay rent in perpetuity to the government, which we, like all “owners” must (in the form of annual property taxes) if we wish to continue to be allowed to remain on the land (and in “our”) house.
Anyhow.
We did this deed as a way to hedge against what I am increasingly convinced is coming – the destruction of the dollar, followed about five minutes after this becomes common knowledge by the final implosion of what’s left of the American economy.
Land – physical land – is a good way (perhaps the only way, in a major economic crisis) to keep at least some of your wealth intact and more importantly – if you act in time – a way to transfer the value of fiat dollar-denominated assets into something tangible, of real value.
Gold, of course, is another way to do this but it has a major disadvantage: It is only valuable as a sort-of proxy for wealth; that is, it has value only as long as someone else who has something you want is willing to trade you what he has for the gold you have – which means that he (the owner of the item you want) must believe he will be able to then swap the gold he gets from you to some other person who has something he wants, something that’s not gold. Put another way, gold is fungible only if there’s a still-operating economy.
If the worst happens and the system really does experience a catastrophic collapse, the value of gold may collapse along with it – at least, for awhile. Until civilization re-assembles itself. But in the meanwhile, what will you do with your gold? It is pretty to look at but you can’t eat it and outside of a few specialized industrial applications that won’t matter during a period of crisis, it is useless.
Land, on the other hand, not only has tangible value (like gold) and is fungible (also like gold) because you can always convert it into gold or trade/sell it for something else you value – but perhaps much more importantly, in a time of real crisis, land can give you life.
Literally.
You can grow food on land – which could mean the difference between life and death, when the system runs off the rails and Costco and Safeway are looted to the linoleum. Which – count on it – is sure to happen the moment the masses get a whiff of the dollar’s imminent collapse. And you can hunt on land, too – assuming enough acreage.
But the number one advantage to land, as I see it, is physical distance between yourself – you and your family – and the latter-day Golden Horde that is already in the process of forming itself up. (Witness the so-called “flash mobs” of “youths” in Wisconsin, Philadelphia and other places.)
Just as it is harder for a thug to assault you from 20 yards away than when he’s right up in your face, you stand a better chance of making it through what may be coming if you and yours are not in the immediate vicinity (or path) of the rampaging mobs. They may not even notice you – and more significantly, you will enjoy a greater likelihood of noticing them before they notice you. In old-school cowboy lingo, this means getting the drop on them. And that can be the difference between life and death as much as having some food and other supplies stored up to get you through a few months of hard times.
In the most extreme eventuality – minions of the Clover State [the Clovers are the authority-worshiping apologists for any action by the state, no matter how egregious--ed.] coming to round you and yours up for “relocation” to a FEMA camp or god-knows-what-else in the immediate aftermath of a SHTF-type scenario – you have the option of just…disappearing. Of going off the grid, into the heart of darkness. It will not be easy. It will certainly not be pleasant. But it is much more pleasant than the alternative.
I am in my 40s now and like most people in that age bracket, I like my comforts. I enjoy having my motorcycle and car projects; even doing the chores around the place that need to be done. But if the S does H the Fan, I will do everything in my power to make it through to the other side of whatever’s coming, which will hopefully be something better than what we have now. But above all else, I will not Submit and Obey. If they come for me and mine, if they are not willing to leave us be in return for us extending the same common decency toward them – well, then we have options.
Because we have some land.
If you are reading this, there is still time for you to do the same. I hope you will consider it – and I hope you can make it happen.
Meanwhile, let’s hope for the best and that all we’ll be doing next summer is cutting the grass…. .
Regards,
Eric Peters
http://epautos.com/2011/08/17/a-not-car-column/
Eric Peters is a Washington, D.C.-based automotive writer and frequent contributor to the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily and Washington Times, among others. In his free time, he enjoys working on old cars and currently owns a 1964 Chevy Corvair Monza coupe and 1976 Pontiac Trans-Am equipped with a modified 455 V-8.
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Whiskey & Gunpowder occasionally features commentary from financial analysts, experts, gold bugs and an array of contributors from various fields and occupations. Their diverse insights and contrarians investing ideas are hand selected by your Whiskey & Gunpowder editors.
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I agree that land is a much better investment than gold. Land actually has utility. There is a problem though with the taxes unfortunately.
However I must object to the proclamation that “the destruction of the dollar” is coming. What does that mean? Hyper-Inflation? There is no evidence for this. It looks like we have some false consensus bias or bandwagon effect going on here. I thought this blog was about fostering independent thought.
What the writer fails to recognize is that land is of little value unless you have both the skills and the resources to make it productive. Yes, it can be a place of retreat, but growing crops and livestock without our current support system is not for the faint-hearted. Where do you get the high-quality hybrid seed when the system shuts down? Where will you find fuel, fertilizers, equipment, and the necessary labor? How will you store and transport what you grow? What makes you think land will be more valuable then? Our current agricultural system is like a modern airplane….you might be able to get it off the ground initially without its support network, but you won’t be able to keep it flying for long. And as for reverting to older methods of agriculture……good luck with that. We are currently dealing with many plant diseases, weeds, and insects that have been imported from foreign lands and are only kept at bay with modern pesticides. Most of these pests are very serious threats that our grandfathers never had to deal with. Without those chemicals, and their delivery system, those pests will take 80% to 90% of your crop before it reaches your barn.
Land does have utility, but knowing what to plant or raise, knowing how to control the pests, knowing how to store and process the grain or meat properly is what will make the land valuable. I would guess that less than one in a thousand people have that kind of skill, or are even capable of attaining that skill before their 3 years supply of stored food (and ammo) ran out.
When you buy the land, you better figure on buying the whole community…..because it will take the combined skills of all of your neighbors to keep even the simplest farm operational.
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Land can be in a location which is physically safer. It can be a place for gardening–although hybrid seeds are the wrong way to go. Seeds which lead to harvesting part of the crop for next year’s seeds are what are appropriate. Many hybrid seeds are one-year’s-crop only and the result is sterile.
But the deadly weapon in all this is one’s mind: Knowledge of all the “how to” that’s needed, and the skills and strength to use that knowledge. City folks suffer notably in this.
Gold? There will always be trade. Has been for thousands of years. Might be rough in some sort of post-apocalyptic world but after some period of turmoil folks will get back to some form of normalcy. Always have, so I figure, always will.
As far as the dollar goes, no fiat currency has failed to fail.
That gold was “worth” $20.22 an ounce in 1932 and is now “worth” $1,900 per ounce merely means that the dollar has fallen in purchasing power. Gold itself is “worth” no more now than then. Economics 101 tells us that the more there is of anything, the less any single unit is worth. That’s another truism which has held for many centuries. And Lord knows that governments around the world have worked hard at printing paper for decades–and accumulating un-repayable debts.
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Oh yes the dollar devaluation, subsequent argument of skill v. no skill and implication of not being able to learn skills. On the first my very humble lay-person opinion is that the devaluation is happening, you want proof well how about the fudge numbers from the new and improved CPI? The way inflation is calculated today is not the way it was calculated previous, why is this you might ask, well the only answer I can arrive to is in the presence of a contradiction someone or something is lying and based on history you can bank on the fact that it is the government or those cronies around government who are “pulling the wool over the people’s eyes.” How about QE1, QE2 and soon to come QE-perpetuity, this just plays on the basic law of supply and demand which is stated and in shown in previous comments. As of skill v. no skill and incapability of learning, funny thing about this statement is that humans even the ones that refuse to learn are always learning whether anything is put into immediate practice or one being too stubborn to realize a new trick sure, but for the most part efficiency comes with learning and to say one human has no skill by all means does not mean that same person cannot learn that skill. In “crunch” time a person will learn just on the survival reasons alone. Will it be hard, yes, we will be embarking on a time period that has not been seen in the good ol’ United Slaves of America in a long time, but just because there is no skill yet doesn’t mean there will never be that skill, skill will come and it’s amazing how quickly that skill will come when your stomach can be heard echoing in the empty, quickly filling brain with the knowledge of survival.
When all this Glum and Doom comes to the fore front and jet fuel no longer seeps into human breast milk it will be a brighter day
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This website is getting a little ridiculous. Ya’ll are holding your breath for something that while likely to happen won’t happen soon enough to start planning for the zombie apocalypse. In the scenario you are predicting wouldn’t it make more sense to build a fortified underground bunker with a half-decades worth of food, guns, and ammo?
VERY nice, David. But…surely those who live in DC and restore old Detroit iron know lots more about thriving, not just surviving, than ordinery people?
Gee…are you even prepared for a modest storm like Irene?
Gibson…not to insult th’ city feller, but why didn’t you ask the ‘Rat to write this article? Old time readers might want to know why you didn’t ask ME! Life’s still great at the Texas Whiskey outpost. The cow herd has more than doubled and at the very least I know “Where’s th’ beef?!” hugs, Linda
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Do not forget the lessons of the past: Many people who owned their homes and land outright (no mortgage) still lost them to the tax man during periods of high inflation. You may, with the right skills, coax the land into producing food…. but you won’t sell enough vegitables to pay the taxes. You will still need gold and silver.