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So, I'm frequently faced with a situation where I've got these thoughts. I don't have a lot of time. I think I can package them in a way that I can get them to you faster. And I happen to be right in the middle of a workout. So, we're going to try this thing that I think of as workout whiteboards and we'll see how it goes. So, as you know, I make these videos sometimes an entire year in advance. It's been longer than that on occasion, but it's typically an average of around six months. And so, by the time it actually gets published, it's been a while since I've been over it myself. And if I don't have anything that seems better to listen to during a workout, I'll try to get to watching or listening to my own videos during workouts. And then I get more ideas about new extensions, different ways of saying things, or maybe clearer ways of saying things. And so maybe this is a good mechanism for handling all of that. So today's whiteboard is going to be a reflection on the video I made called Old and New Wealth. I wanted to distill a few ideas in that video and make them a little bit more clear. So the transition is from asset appreciation which is what we're familiar with in living memory which means that you bought a house or you bought stocks and those things have appreciated in value. That is present wealth. New wealth is or could be characterized as loss prevention. Maybe you're familiar with this term because security people adopt the the overfancified title of loss protection. They're they're there to prevent theft. And that's actually got interesting gospel implications. When Jesus talks about himself as a good shepherd, he describes the alternative as a thief and a robber. He says, "Anything that isn't with me is a thief and a robber." They're trying to achieve the same results in some other way. And the only other way you can do it is through stealing. The long-term effect of inflation is theft. You've heard the phrase taxation is theft. Inflation is a form of taxation and it is theft because that inflation comes at the cost of those who have saved their money. Those who have earned money from what they've done that is now worth less and it had nothing to do with their choice. So they did the right thing and now they're punished for it. That is the cost of of Babylonian gain. That's the consequence of this system that's oriented towards getting gain. So in our day, that's shifting in real time. And the new wealth is not going to be like old wealth where you're just sitting on a pile of gold coins like Scrooge McDuck. It's the new wealth is just those who most effectively maintain the status quo. Those who can stretch remnants of modern prosperity into the future the longest. And that degrades because it's a state of decay. There's nothing warm and rosy about this. It's just this is the bat swinging for our heads. And so it's time to learn to do this. in that state of decay very quickly this will reduce from well I have the houses I have the cars I have the retirement account I can go to Texas Roadhouse every Tuesday with my wife until the day I die in my retirement it degrades to you have a house and I mean just a shelter you can feed yourself and you can clothe yourself that's what it degrades to. So, we're not talking about strategies to keep yourself on MTV cribs or lifestyles of the rich and famous, depending on what generation you're from. I don't know what the modern version of this is. We're just talking about the ability to care for yourself and those you're responsible for. And the key the key factor in this is how much of that you can do yourself. You see past wealth was all about how much money you have so that you can pay other people to do this for you. You go to the grocery store, they feed you. You go out to eat, they feed you. You pay for a retirement home, they feed you. You pay someone to come maintain your house, they do it for you. You don't have to get up there with the roofing shovel and rip off your shingles. You pay somebody to do it for you. You don't sew your own clothes. You just go to the store and buy them. That's all coming to an end. And it's coming to an end because the cost of all those things is going geometric. Take daycare for instance. For decades, people have thought, "Oh, here's a great idea. let's have kids and then pay for someone else to take care of them. And we're going to be a two-income family and there's going to be a a crazy amount of leftover after we pay the daycare, after we pay the babysitter, um after we pay the private school, whatever, after we pay the housekeeper, after we pay the nanny, all those things are becoming so expensive that it actually makes more sense for the wife to stay at home once again. And somebody told you that was going to be the case. I wonder who. Not sure you were paying attention, but that's another one that has now happened. Anyway, what fades out is this idea that you're always going to be earning more in the future, that you will somehow be able to outpace the cost of things. that one day you're going to have enough saved up, enough invested, enough equity in your house that you can start cashing these things out and get more out of it than you put into it. That's gone. It's not coming back. It's going to become more dramatic through time. Self-sufficiency is the new wealth defined by your ability to house, feed, and clothe yourself without paying someone else. And so I want to give you a recipe for how to achieve that with some specific examples. Okay. So what does this mean? What's the strategy? Well, the old strategy is sell your kidney if you have to, but buy equities. Sell your kidney if you have to, but buy a house. It'll only ever be worth more. Well, regardless as to how true that is in the future, the problem is whatever it's worth in terms of dollars will be worth less. Inflation ruins the value of money. So the question is not what things can you invest in counting on them to appreciate so you can sell them and then buy things that are worth more but what things can you establish now that provide what you would spend the money on if you had it namely food and shelter. Now you notice that medical care is not on this list. There's a reason for that. So much of what we presently describe, well, we presently think of as entitlement, it's even called that entitlements. And some people go as far as to describe it as a right, a human right. So many of those things are only possible with unprecedented, unmmerited wealth. As that fades away, so will those benefits. And there is no self-made alternative for penicellin. There is no self-made alternative for a hip replacement. There is no self-made alternative for um dialysis. You either prevent the problem through living healthfully now or you die. There is no magic solution for this. Okay? So, sorry to put it so bluntly, but it is what it is. So, we continue. self-sufficiency. It's the new wealth. Here are some some approaches to this. How are you going to minimize your income and property tax? And this is part of a huge um snare around the neck of so many people that they don't see. Your big old fancy house is an albatross. Why? Because property taxes are only ever going to go up and they're going to go up whether your earnings do or not. In the old wealth, old people made enough on getting gain that they could afford to keep paying them. Not anymore. Not anymore. It's going to outpace you. And your local government doesn't care because there are younger people who will move in who have the money because they've climbed the earning scale in a more inflated reality than yours than when you did in a more a time of higher inflation than when you did it. And they'll move in, but they're going to move in to smaller houses. You remember when Isaiah talked about these giant places that are uninhabited? These places where there's house to house and no room for more and they end up being vacant. That's something that boggles the minds of modern people. that more and more people are going to be forced into having multiple families in one place or forced into buying smaller houses because they can't justify a 5,000 square foot home paying crazy amounts of property tax on it. They don't have any kids. They can't afford them. They don't want them. This is a dem demographic title wave that no one's paying attention to. I keep talking about it, but but no one's paying attention to this. It's absolutely going to fundamentally change the way that life works. So, you'll want to find ways to minimize your income and property tax. One of the best ways to do this is to minimize your earnings, your book earnings, and to buy a junky home. So, I don't want to get too much onto a rant with this, but we surround ourselves with modern luxury and we don't stop to think about what the actual long-term cost of it is. Now, if you're 96 years old, it really doesn't matter anymore. But if you're 56 year years old or 46 years old or 36 years old, you need to be looking longterm and thinking, well, what is this big old house going to cost me over the years? because property tax is coming for you. And it could be the case that rather soon in in the in the scheme of things, it's not going to be so easy as just listing your house and dumping it because you have one that you need to downsize or that you can no longer afford the property tax on. You might be in a situation where you can't sell the thing for four years, six years, and you have to take way less than you thought it was worth. Or even worse, you sell it for a high price, but inflation's hit so hard that it doesn't matter anymore because you still can't do anything with the money. See, you don't have to be a prophet to see this coming because it's already the case in places like Baltimore and Detroit. In Baltimore, there are all kinds of boarded up homes that no one will buy downtown. Why? Even if the house is $1,000, no one wants to pay the property tax on the place and then you're in a in a in a neighborhood surrounded by crime. That sort of problem that you write off is like, "Oh, that only happens in the ghetto." It's coming to a neighborhood near you, so be prepared. Can you grow your own food? I've talked about that at length. How effectively can you make your own clothes? Can you even patch a hole in your clothes? Making clothes is a really big deal. It takes an enormous amount of skill and time. It takes access to resources. You may or may not have those things. You might not have a sewing machine. You might not know how to use one. Is this something that is worth spending some time on and learning how to do now while you have the internet and the ability to watch videos on it? Maybe. Maybe it is. Maybe it makes a lot more sense. See, there they're entrylevel points with all of this. Maybe you have no hope of growing your own food where you are. And to jump into that would cost some astronomical amount of money that you don't have and you're not going to have. Well, can you buy a few shirts next time they're on clearance at Walmart for a dollar? That's an easy entry point. You know, food-wise, can you buy up some food storage while wheat is still inexpensive? Can you buy some extra noodles? Right. What about learning to repair things? Skills, repair skills, maintenance skills, without getting the tools to do that. Those of you in the know already know that today you cannot buy the same quality tools as you could get 10 years ago. It's not possible for any amount of money. And to get closer to that quality is astronomically expensive. And it just keeps degrading. What about the skills? So right now you can just Google and hit a YouTube video and learn how to do almost anything. Is that going to be the case in the future? Probably not. Finally, establishing barter systems. Shifting away from this. When I need food, I go to the grocery store. When I need goods, I go to Amazon or Walmart or Target or whatever. Can you establish systems with other people where at least for consumables you have a network? Ideally with neighbors that requires living in a certain kind of a place. But what if you have a friend who makes furniture? What if you have a friend who keeps sheep? What if you have a friend that grows grain? And these might seem like ridiculously fanciful things, but again, you could start small. Do you have a friend that likes making bread? Do you have berries in your garden and you like making jam? Well, maybe you can do a swap and there are a lot of things that you can trade. So, the golden question here is can you do those kinds of things in a way that generates present money? So, all of these things cost a lot of money and time. How are you going to set things up so it's worth it? Well, it's not a this or that. There, this is a ven diagram where there's an overlap. There are things that you can do that leverage opportunities and resources in the present system so that you can get more out of less time and money. Here are some specific examples of how to do that. For example, you can set up an LLC and use that to generate some money right now. But also, more importantly, this is if you have a high earning job. If you have a high earning day job, you can set up an LLC and structure things so that these things that you need to get anyway to do these sorts of things can be tax write offs. So something as small as a sewing machine to something as big as a grain combine, you can set up LLC's so that you at least get this massive tax discount. Now that only makes sense if you've got a highpaying job right now. In other words, if you have a tax bill, if you pay taxes. Now, a lot of the people who are best situated to take advantage of what I'm talking about here are folks with younger families. If you're an older person, an empty neester, there are different set of opportunities for you versus someone with a young family. But if you are a husband and wife, you got three little kids and you want to set up a homestead, you should and you have a tax bill, you earn enough that the tax deductions on your kids don't put you to zero, then it makes complete sense to look at an LLC in order to get a tractor, a pickup truck that can haul things, whatever you need to do equipment wise to get established with growing more of your own food, maintaining your house, or making clothing, which I would probably put that last on the list because clothes last longer than food, right? And they're way cheaper to buy in store. They don't go bad. But anyway, other options are that you can use the 501c3 as a vehicle to do these sorts of things. Now, obviously the details of all this are beyond the scope of the video, but the point is to just put options on your map that might not be there right now. I mean, you might be in a situation where you look at the possibility of buying a $40,000 tractor and you just say, "I don't know how I could ever do that." Well, are you paying taxes? If the question is yes, I'm talking about federal income. State is a different ball of wax, but that's a thing, too. If you're paying income taxes, then there is a vehicle that will make that vehicle cheaper, right? There is a way. It might not make sense for you, but it might. The nonprofit is an option, too. You can also adopt what I call the Amish model, which is you will never ever be able to compete with the open market in in what you grow on a farm or what you produce with your hands. You're never going to compete with that. there's too much mechanization, economies of scales and so on. But you can uh cater to this bespoke market, this market of people that believe that buying things that are produced by an individual or a small group or an organic farm or you know freerange chickens or whatever the case may be is worth more money. Now, it's a very small set and it is rapidly becoming saturated and there's only so many of these people. There's only so much money in the market. But the Amish do this. Everybody goes on about how if the lights go out, the Amishes are going to be so well off. No, they're not. The only reason the Amish people enjoy even a quarter of the lifestyle they do is because they sell to people who don't live like they do. That's it. They have their hands deep into the pie of Babylon through the people they sell to. Now, I guess that fits their religious template and whatever. I'm not making a case for or against that. What I'm saying is don't buy into this illusion that if you do things right, your life is going to be exactly the same. You're just not going to have electricity. That's not true. It's not even true of the Amish. So anyway, but you can tap into the same people that they sell to and you can find people who are willing to pay $20 for a chicken or uh I guess to make this video less tethered to our present time who are willing to pay four times what it would cost them to buy a similar thing from a store, right? It's a small market, but it gets you what you need to legally do this through some kind of a business. and or actually make some money. Is it going to replace a full-time job? It's extraordinarily unlikely, especially if you're making six figures or more. It's very rare to find someone doing this sort of thing who's clearing more than half of that. But it is a way to check the boxes. And if you're making good money in your normal job, you can save an enormous amount on taxes in legal ways. And consult an accountant for all the details. And finally, so and and you're not limited geographically by this, right? So you can sell things via mail. And again, there are different laws for for different products, but that's definitely a way to access a larger market while it still lasts. You can leverage that. And the point isn't that that is the thing. The point is that that's facilitating the thing, which is getting to a more self-sufficient place. Finally, I just want to throw this out as another example of and and and you should watch. There's a video that I made called Riding the Tiger. Here's an example of that. You could buy a piece of land that's capable of growing some kind of of uh crop that you can convert into bofuel like uh what is it? Like flax seed. You can convert flax seed into diesel, biodiesel. Right now, it takes some equipment, but it doesn't take a whole factory. You can set that up. It's totally realistic for one family to do this. And if you can get two families to go in together on it, all the better. So now, suddenly you have the ability to generate your own diesel fuel. And you might be able to do it in a way that produces tax credits that you can claim. But even if you can't, now you have a reason if you're selling this fuel, a legal basis to start buying equipment that you need to run your homestead anyway. And now you've got shared overhead. And maybe you could even get a job as a truck driver or partner with a truck driver who's getting paid by the mile. So the company's reimbursing them for the assumed cost of fuel plus the labor of driving. and they could run your your biodiesel and then you're saving money that way. So there are ways of stacking these things to make money in the present system while getting set up for the next one. And I realize fully that all of this is beyond the scope of normal people. They don't want to think about this. They'd rather ride the train into the ground. Fine, you'll get what you want. But it's time to start thinking like this or to find people who do because as time goes on, you're going to see it's going to be more and more important if you care about eating, which you probably do.