[Music] [Music] [Music] And we're back, and today we're joined by Rick from Land of Land. How you doing, Rick? Great to see you today, Chris. Fine, thank you. Likewise. So, we had an off-camera conversation on the current political climate, economic climate, the precipice that we find ourselves at here in America. You made some really interesting comments, and I wish I had had the record button going at the time, but I didn't. So, if you could maybe share those thoughts with our audience before we dive into this topic of land banking, that would be great. Well, to be frank, our problem is selfishness and ignorance. You know, decades ago, John F. Kennedy said, Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. We find ourselves in the position where, as a result of a variety of special interests on both sides of the aisle seeking benefits that help a few at the expense of the many and the American taxpayer.

ultimately, the US dollar. We're not looking out for the long-term well-being of our country. It's kind of like a bratty kid being given a piece of candy to shut them up temporarily, to buy yourself 5-10 minutes of peace before they come back wanting another piece of candy because that's what they're trained now to do. That's the obvious reaction when they have that experience. You know, we need an adult in the room, and with the election coming up, I'm disappointed to see that both sides, frankly, seem to be trying to get voters with money, with incentives, with ways that are going to give certain segments of the population pieces of candy, right? And you know, obvious examples would be the $25,000 home buyer credit, which is just going to inflate the housing market, or forgiveness of student loans, which obviously benefits a few at the expense of the US government's budget. And you know, at

the end of the day, uh, you people don't realize that the United States facilitates the world's trade at our expense. You know, we've got our Navy patrolling all parts of the oceans, uh, allowing, you know, companies in countries like China and India and the Middle East to ship their oil and goods freely without risk of, uh, pirates or, or, you know, major problems so that things run smoothly. And to the extent we continue down the path where we are, where we're approaching $50 trillion in debt over the next decade, and you know the interest expense naturally is growing, uh, you know, we're going to be hitting close to $2 trillion of interest expense within the next decade, and we're only bringing in $5 trillion in revenue now. So, you know, that's 40% of our current budget, uh, is going to be allocated to interest expense, and you know our politicians are not going to say, Listen, we need to raise the retirement age, you know, by 10 years because you know the

the percentage of the eight, the percentage of a lifespan where you're on the government Dole, is simply too high to be sustainable. And so, some grown-up in the room has got to stand up and say, Listen, we need to make some drastic changes, or we're going to bankrupt our country. We're not going to have the means with which to continue to patrol the oceans and to facilitate fair trade and to keep everything sort of on an even keel throughout the world. The world is going to become a much more dangerous place. And when we have the world's reserve currency, people say, 'Well, that's our safe haven, that's our protection.' You know, I look at it the other way. You know, my feeling is there's only one way to go, and when we're no longer the reserve currency of the world, you start to see some major changes. And that means people start allocating their capital in other places other than the US Treasury markets, which causes interest rates in the US to go up considerably.

which really exacerbates our debt problem. And we could see a situation in which the interest expense as a percentage of our total federal receipts exceeds 40%. And then it's a snowball rolling down the hill, and it gets bigger and bigger and is not stoppable. So we need someone to stand up now and say we need to make some major structural changes, major cuts in government spending where the spending is the least efficient in anywhere in the economy, um, and put our big boy pants on and understand that, you know, we need to look out for the long-term best interest of this country. And we're not, you know, Rick, we've got all kinds of connections uh in the Navy, uh, currently serving and formerly served all the way up to the rank of Admiral. And we're talking some super intelligent guys, and none of them or any of our other subject matter experts that we have on sdn have ever made the argument that you did. And it's not an argument, it's a fact that

We're facilitating this world trade that our Navy patrolling around the world essentially ensures the safe shipping of goods. That's really interesting. I learned something new today, and it's so interesting that the next time I have guys on like Admiral Robert Harward, who's retired, I'm going to ask him for his perspective on that. He's a very intelligent man, but kudos for bringing that point up. Well, thank you, and I'm fearful for our children and grandchildren and future generations and the instability that's going to come with failure to grasp long-term problems now instead of doing what we're doing, which is how do we retain power for the next four, six, eight years instead of doing the right thing. And there's not enough doing the right thing, and my personal concern is that we're never going to be able to balance the budget. We're almost past the point at which it's feasible. It's certainly not feasible in this political environment.

where you know no one is going to be doing what they can for the government. Everybody's got their hand out. How do I, you know, protect myself? How do I get something for me? How do I get something for my family? Not, I'm gonna be self-sufficient and I've got the pride of, you know, working and taking care of myself and my family, but rather, you know, How can I milk the government in the best way possible? and, you know, Dangle votes or voting blocks in order to get paid, to get paid in whatever form, whether it's, you know, outright contributions or tax credits or policies which are going to be, you know, favorable to any specific demographic group at the expense of the many. Now, the problem with that is once we get to the point we can't sustain our budget. I personally don't see any way that we can work our way out of it other than issuing more shares or dollars, in this case. We're talking about Boeing.

and Boeing's running into all kinds of problems, and they're talking about developing the Next Generation plane, but they don't have the capital. So, uh, I've heard some Wall Street pundits talk about the need for a secondary offering of stock in order for Boeing to raise the additional capital necessary for them to continue to develop their business plan. Uh, you know, the US government doesn't have shares of stock, but it has dollars. And you know, a dollar is no longer secured by any tangible asset like gold or silver. And consequently, uh, the dollar's value is a simple formula of the numerator is the Full Faith and Credit of the US government, which is in great decline. It's significant, but it's something, not infinity. And the denominator is the number of dollars in circulation, right? If there were only 1 dollar, it would be worth a ton of money. But as we add more and more dollars as the only way with which we're going to be able to repay our debt, uh, then the individual value of each dollar declines.

and inflation occurs. You think that inflation over the last couple of years was tough. Wait until we start to get to the point where there's a general realization in the market that the only way you're going to get paid back on a 30-year treasury bond is with confetti, right? Dollars which are worth a lot less. And then suddenly people are going to demand a much higher interest rate. So instead of a 4% weighted average cost of capital for the US government, it can go up to 5, 6, and when you're looking at 50, 60, 70 trillion dollars of debt in coming decades, it starts to become overwhelming. It becomes more than half of our entire federal budget. So I personally believe that there's not much that I'm willing to do myself in terms of stepping into the political arena and exposing myself to the kind of scrutiny that otherwise qualified potential politicians might endure, but rather protect your family. How do you protect

yourself because I'm not going to be able to change the world or turn the battleship around. So, so, so what do you do? And my bottom line is, you know, you want to get out of paper assets and into something tangible. And as I've mentioned to you, I'm a big believer that land is the best way to go. Well, so in a former conversation, offline conversation, you used the term land banking, and I'd never heard of that term before, but it makes a lot of sense as you explained it. So maybe give our audience the education that you gave to me as far as what is land banking and the benefit, I guess, is what you just stated. It's tangible, right? It's always there. They're not making any more of it. But as an investment strategy, I think it's more than an investment strategy, though, which is what interests me. So yeah, it's probably good from a financial perspective, but it's also important from the perspective of if you have land, you always have somewhere to homestead you.

always have somewhere to live with your family, raise your family, have a garden, and all these other things. So, if you don't mind, Brick, just expand on the concept of land banking. Sure, well, land banking in short is simply accumulating land, you know, owning a bunch of properties. You know, we tend to focus on domestic land, but you know, land banking is the process with which someone would accumulate a bunch of land for whatever purpose. Now, the point you're making is that land has utility. You know, you can protect your dollars and your savings over time by buying a bar of gold, but there's not much you can do with it other than use it for a paperweight. But if you have 40 acres of land, you can go hunting, you can go fishing, you can sell grazing rights, you can have a second home, you can take your family there. There's a lot of things that you can do, grow crops. I have a quick question.

just your Tweet me here, Rick. So, are you familiar with China's Belt and Road program? I am. Okay, so for those people watching who aren't familiar with it, essentially, China will go to second and third world countries and offer to give them these low-interest loans to build up their infrastructure. But in reality, they know they're not going to get repaid, which means the collateral is the land. Is that essentially a land banking initiative on the part of the CCP to some degree? Uh, I honestly think that their strategy is brilliant. Uh, from a strategic standpoint, it enables them to take over the infrastructure of uh, countries that are uh, wobbling financially, ranging from, you know, Pakistan to Russia, and also give them access to ports all around the world where they can dock some of their incredibly fast-growing Navy. Um, and that's happening, you know, pretty quickly. And the point you make uh, is a valid one that, you know, they don't expect to be paid back in many cases, but

instead uh secure their investment with 99y year leases or uh you know the first first right to be able to use the uh you know highspeed rail that they're putting in um allowing them to uh Patrol the the Seas themselves or to ship their own Goods right so um they they act like a giant hedge fund and they they do it very intelligently from a debt perspective but also with what is essentially like a uh an equity picker in other words they they have the beneficial ownership uh but they're also at the top of the capital structure so uh yeah that's that's a a well played hand on their part and we would be wise to emulate it yeah that that's really astute Rick like I said you've got my wheels turn here I remember I want to say maybe last year the year before I read an article that was by somebody who was formerly very high up in the Navy ringing the alarm bell saying that China's industrial capacity to manufacture ships was something like 400 or 500 times what our

capacity is here in America, and I can think way back to when I was a senior in high school, and I wrote a paper on why we won the Second World War. It was all predicated on industrial capacity. We took typewriter factories and turned them into gun factories. We took the big three auto manufacturers and turned them into jeeps and tanks and all that sort of stuff. We've lost a huge portion of that, and it seems like China by far has more manufacturing capacity across the board, number one. And number two, just on the survival dispatch side, we get sent just a t T of products from vendors that say, Would you have a look at our product? Could you put it on your channel? Less than 10% actually make it onto the channel, but I can tell you something I've noticed in the past three years. The days of saying everything coming out of China is junk are gone. At least 50% of the stuff that were sent, whether it's an American-owned company or not, but manufactured in China at

least 50% is really high-quality stuff. Well, make no mistake, the United States saved China and saved Russia during World War II, right? It was our industrial output that gave Russia the necessary equipment, tanks, trucks, and so forth in order to repel the German invasion. And as you know, the Japanese had already invaded China, and we, you know, stepped in and basically saved China. So, you know, for all the people that claim that the United States is this big evil Satan, I think that history refutes that. And I don't believe that we're given the due credit, and you know, that gets back to the ignorance of the population and the ease with which people's viewpoint with regard to our country and its value to the world is skewed. Yeah, that's a fair comment. So, I mean, I love discussing stuff with you, Rick. You've got just such a broad base of knowledge, but I want to reel this back in to discuss more of the

benefits from land banking as far as like you use the word utility. The first time you used that, I wasn't sure what the context was until you explained it, and then I got it. But from a utility perspective, you can do a lot with the land, right? You can, as I think I mentioned already, you can grow a garden on it, you can have livestock on it. Just kind of go through what you think are the top bullet points or reasons why we should consider land banking. I mean, ironically enough, my wife and I do the same thing, nowhere near your scale, but I'm sitting in our property in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We have property in Florida, we're looking for property in some of the surrounding states, and it's funny, all those value ads that you mentioned were all things that are on our checklist, okay? Is there running water on the property? If there's not running water, is there standing water on the property? You know, small lake or whatever the case may be. And you said in

a previous conversation as well that there's an opportunity to make money by allowing other companies to use your land for a whole plethora of things that I'd like you to expand on as well sure and we have had experience dealing with utilities seeking to pay us to put lines across the property. We've leased some land to solar farms you know and generate income that way. We've got billboard income. We've had companies approach us about oil and gas leases. We've sold grazing rights. We've created a hunting refuge so that people can come and you know pay money to be able to hunt poor animals on our property. So those are all ways in which money can be generated. Obviously, there's growing crops which you can do commercially or for your own benefit. Those are all money generation opportunities. If you look past that from a personal use perspective or I guess you could lease out camping rights which we have not done. You can go

hunting on your property. You can go fishing on your property. You can just have an escape place to go to the extent there's, you know, chaos in society. It's nice to have a back door, another plan. And you know, the thing that I like about it is there's clearly a finite supply. You know, when you talk about Bitcoin and mining Bitcoin, that you're going to wind up with an increasing number in circulation. And you know, how is that going to be regulated? And what the long-term impact is going to be is a little unclear to me. You know, gold and silver don't have the requisite utility. But, and I don't know what the next supercomputer or medical breakthrough is going to be, but I know that the population is growing, and people are going to need to eat and have a place to stand. And with the internet, you can work from most places, so people are spreading out. So, this evolved from a perspective of, you know, what do I think is the smartest thing to do for

myself, and it has sort of evolved into an opportunity for others to share in the strategy. So, that's what land of land is about. Yeah, it's really interesting, and you tweaked me with, I think it was a couple of weeks ago that we spoke on this topic, but you said something along the lines of people who are invested in the stock market or precious metals or Bitcoin, that there's a lot of stress that goes with that. Like, I don't, you know, I'm not sure where I put my phone. Here it is, you know, where people are constantly checking what the market is doing, and it goes down, and their stress level goes up, and that's really not the case when you invest in land. Without question, being able to sleep at night is an important component of my strategy. And, you know, the 2008 financial crisis was a highly tumultuous time during which, you know, stocks were taking a dive every week, and, you know, there were people committing suicide because of the stress.

that they were under that they no longer were going to be able to support their family and have enough money to, uh, you know, pay their mortgage every month. So, part of the strategy, uh, certainly was, uh, a stability perspective, and I, I can sleep at night, so that's, that's important to me. So, yesterday, we were recording a bunch of content at Jason Saier Homestead. JJ Morris was with us, uh, Joe Paisley, former Special Forces medic, and something came up. I don't even recall what the topic was, but it's something in the current news cycle, and Jason Soler said to us, You say that again? Oh, I, I didn't hear that. He said, My life is so boring. I'm just worried about my chickens and my garden and all that stuff. And I thought to myself, Man, I would, I would trade for that in a New York minute to not be plugged into all the insanity and stress that goes with it, whether it's investment or otherwise, and just worry about my chickens laying eggs, you know.

right something to be said for simplification, right? You can choose to be involved on whatever level you wish, but your core holding shouldn't be something that causes you anxiety on a day-to-day basis. Yeah, exactly. So, Rick, I'd like to ask a favor of you. Our conversations are always really enlightening for me. I mean, I'm super impressed with the breadth of knowledge that you have. I'd like to have you back on these one-on-one chats more frequently. I mean, you're always welcome to join panels on Survival Dispatch news, or the audience also thinks highly of you, but if we could get together a couple, three times a month, something like that, for some updates on this stuff, that'd be valuable. Because it's funny, I'm thinking to myself how Jason wasn't aware of whatever this thing was that's top of the news cycle, and then I'm thinking about myself, thinking I don't really follow the investment side of our economy very much or very well. I think

that's part of the reason I enjoy talking with you is because I feel like I'm getting schooled in these topics, and it's valuable information. I think at the end of the day, this is truly a survival strategy. Like, if you have no land and the markets crash and the banks crash, and the FDIC can't, you know, ensure all of the, you know, money that was deposited. I don't remember what the number is. You probably know what it is, but I think the FDIC, what they would cover if there was a banking collapse, is a very minuscule amount. But I'm just thinking off if all those things happened, so like some sort of economic SHTF event that could be tied to some other SHTF event. If you don't have land in real estate, boy, you're going to be in a pretty precarious position. What, $250,000 per individual? And I certainly agree. I think that land should be part of everyone's portfolio. It happens to be a large part of mine, but

It might be, you know, some element, and I think it's an underserved tool for portfolio diversification perspective. You know, the 60% stocks, 40% bonds really should be adjusted from my perspective, and you know, I would throw in a percentage of land for all the reasons that we've discussed, financial as well as all the utility associated with it. All right, well, listen, Rick, I'm just going through my mind and thinking of all these different conversations that we have. I'd like next time, if it's okay with you, to discuss the bug-out piece as far as land is concerned because I think you were actually on an episode where we discussed it, and I mentioned 80 to 83% of Americans live in cities. They don't have anywhere to bug out to, and when we look at things like when Baghdad fell, and we just recently discussed this with my buddy Randy Nance, who's a Green Beret, and he served when Baghdad

collapsed. I don't think there's that much difference between them and us when it comes to all hell breaking loose. So, essentially, when the economy, the government, everything collapsed, he said for like the first 48 hours, people were stealing everything that they could get their hands on. By the time they got to around the third day, the 72-hour mark, the Marauders were out in force. So, there were gangs of people who were then taking stuff away from the people who'd gone and scavenged all this stuff. And if we didn't have our military there at the time, lord only knows what direction it would have gone. But Randy said it took another two weeks for our military to restore peace and order in that type of scenario. Um, so I'm just thinking if I live in a city and I don't have somewhere to go, your prospects are pretty bleak. You know, either if you have resources, people are going to find out that you have resources and take them away from you. And there's, you can be armed to the teeth, but if you're one

family, and there's a 100 people coming for your stuff. There's not a whole lot that you can do to stop them, which then leads to the next point. Can you imagine being stuck in a FEMA camp, Rick? I mean, I can't imagine a worse place to be, being a refugee essentially in your own country. So, I just want to kind of set the stage for our next conversation. If we could go down that path, discuss the benefits of having somewhere to bug out to, the economics of it. I don't want to get too deep in here because I don't want to let the cat out of the bag, but if memory serves me right, you can buy a parcel of land from Land of Land for as little as $1,000. Average sale is somewhere around $5,000, and somewhere around 50% of your holdings could be considered applicable to a bugout situation, correct? Well, all true, and I appreciate the opportunity. Be happy to chat with you more frequently, time permitting. But I'll leave I'll

leave you with one important comment, and that is imagine that the United States didn't exist, or the United States military didn't exist for the last century or so, you know, from 1900 on. And imagine what life would be like now if we hadn't intervened in the places where we've intervened and provided the stability and safety to countries that hate us and don't appreciate us. And if you think that after some consideration and contemplation that the United States, after thinking about it, really is a net positive for the world, then the question is, isn't it worth saving? Yeah, by making decisions that are in our long-term best interest and not our short-term best interest, and stop taking pieces of candy to keep various constituents happy. Do the right thing for the country long-term, not what the right thing is for you to get elected and to preserve power for another couple of years. Rick for president 20128, not me. All right, well, I've got to get to my

next meeting here, Rick. I really appreciate your time, and you'll get the usual casting call email on Sunday. If you happen to have time to join us on a panel for us again, we'd love to have you. Otherwise, we'll squeeze conversations in like this as your schedule allows. Thank you, sir. I really appreciate it, Chris. Thanks for your time. Take care of land, your trusted source for extraordinary vacant land across America that expresses your unique special passions while diversifying your investment portfolio and hedging against runaway inflation. Imagine the thrill and prestige of land ownership, owning a piece of America, making the best investment on Earth as simple as an online purchase. Off-the-grid serenity, pricing from $1,000, payable by credit card. Visit us today at landofland.com, America's premier land wholesaler for over a decade. [Music]

Unlocking Wealth: The Insider's Guide to Land Banking

Unlocking Wealth: The Insider's Guide to Land Banking