A) 80 non-US (Australia)



B) I want to pursue Atlantis because it seems like a great thing to do. I have dreams of creating a city state that converts the desert(cheap undervalued land that requires water harvesting) into a great tree-abundant location.

My idea for creating the funding is to have an insurance company that sells a block of land in place of a fiat-currency-backed policy payout scheme.
[my idea for valuation of a ten acre block would be priced at AUD$ 1,560,000 for outright purchase; costing more if it is on a 'rent-to-own' payment scheme].
The idea is that a Gulch could be discreetly positioned within.
The business case I would make is creating an industrial-scale organic food production company that uses its location to create a research precinct that projects the technology prototypes necessary to engineer the environments of other planets.


Now I think that I am closer to the 'assistant' 'loaned' to Hank Rearden by the State Science Institute in being able to make it a reality but I am spending my time and money towards getting it closer to existence.



C) I want to get people thinking of frontier possibilities like that caused by America in Europe - the contrast causes reexamination of what is considered achievable.

Texas. Last hope.

geez j-quit telling us your assets! public site! delete this post!

"The behavior of the market is not being allowed to get to where it would be without artificial supports, so market timing makes no sense."
I didn't mean to buy puts to speculate on market timing. I was saying someone could buy stock indices, protect the downside by buying out-of-the-money puts, and collect premiums from writing out-of-the-money calls. I wouldn't actually do something that complicated b/c there are annuity products that do the same thing. My point is there are financial products that store value effectively.

Calls and puts are a little beyond where I want to be right now. The behavior of the market is not being allowed to get to where it would be without artificial supports, so market timing makes no sense. I have done calls and puts on unleaded gasoline futures before; they at least are predictable.

"When you get old, you are supposed to more conservative in your investing, but the return on bonds is so small right now that you might as well stuff that money under your pillow. Equities are quite overvalued. Real estate just went through a massive bubble and will do so again as long as interest rates are artificially suppressed. "
If everything sucks in the economy though, having a stable store of value is meaningless. All the value in the world is contained in things like equity in businesses, real estate located near jobs, good businesses, and nice neighorhoods. If you don't have those things, the problem is not your store of value.

I don't agree with, though, that its impossible to create a diversified portfolio of bonds, equities, and real estate. For further protection against economic fluctuations, you could either buy annuities with a guarantee or do it yourself by writing call options and using the proceeds from writing them to buy put options. You don't really need to be that sophisticated. A boring diversified will do the job.

Here it is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3zC5jD...
I thought that I had previously submitted this, sorry if I didn't. My email is the same as my name here, followed by @gmail.com, if you so choose to contact me.

What spreadsheet values, BaritoneGary? I missed something. Sorry.

When you get old, you are supposed to more conservative in your investing, but the return on bonds is so small right now that you might as well stuff that money under your pillow. Equities are quite overvalued. Real estate just went through a massive bubble and will do so again as long as interest rates are artificially suppressed.

The real numbers may astound you. Many don't want to join so they don't get "flagged". Sympathizers are rampant in the Lone Star State. It has the best possibility of becoming the fiscal and liberty capital of the world. Love your dissertation with CircuitGuy. You and I are in complete agreement about the money. What did you think about my spread sheet values?

Thanks for this detailed reply. We're getting outside my knowledge, but I'll answer each claim.
" It has created fairly consistent boom/bust cycles"
We had a major bust centered on the railroad industry in the late 19th Century. History is full of speculative manias. I'm not knowledgeable about whether the Fed Reserve has made that better or worse.
"When a society has $17+ trillion in debt officially ($50000 per person) and over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities (> $300000/person), by all reason interest rates ought to be sky high. "
It won't last forever. We should fix this before it's a crisis. Right now we appear to be waiting for trouble; then we'll fix it.-- bad fiscal policy.
"Have you ever considered why AS characters insisted on being paid in Au? It is because the same amount of Au necessary to buy a suit 100 years ago buys the same suit now. "
I agree with this, but Au is a less predictable medium of exchange than the USD-- huge swings based on supply and demand. If I had a need to store value for 100 years and I were not allowed to have a trustee tinker with it, i.e. I literally had to bury it and leave it untouchd for 100 years, Au would be my first choice. I could buy 1oz for $1300 and know there will be roughly $300 - $3000 USD2014 there when they dig it up in 2114. If I were allowed to manage it in a conservative portfolio, I could turn it into roughly a half million USD2014 in 100 years.

"What is meant to be a store of value?"
A diversified portfolio of equities, bonds, and real estate.

"The dollar used to be a better store of value than other countries' currencies. "
To me this is like comparing whether a pick-and-place machine or a Honda is a better store of value. I think the Honda may be better b/c there's less change in the auto industry, and they're more liquid. But this is silly. Pick-and-place machines stuff parts on boards. Hondas take us from point A to point B.

Put in terms that relate to me, an hour of engineering service costs around $100. An hour of legal service costs $250. This unhealthful burrito I'm eating cost $2.50. My shares of AAPL earn $6/yr and cost $100 apiece. You're saying these numbers will soon be $200, $500, $5, $12/yr, and $200 respectively.

Every year I go into Quickbooks and select "Items" to update prices. It's very easy. I also go into ezPaycheck and update people pay-- very easy compared to 940,941, SUTA, Workers Comp, etc. Taco Bell updates their menu with new styles and flavors, so it's not a huge onus on them.

It's much much harder to keep track of the fact that the brits call mm "mils", while to me that means "thousandths of an inch." But engineers make up units for fun: 5 mils = 0.25mm = 1 bee's dick = 5 gnat's asses. I see nothing hard about fluctuating prices.

What is meant to be a store of value? That is what you need to be able to retire. The dollar used to be a better store of value than other countries' currencies. That is why the dollar rose to pre-eminence amongst currencies.

"By your money standards, you will have to keep producing your products until the day you die because whatever dollars you "accumulated" in trading value for value will be worth so much less by the time you make your products in 2030."
Absolutely not. Businesses have value. Real estate has value. Consumer durables have value, but they depreciate. Capital equipment has value, but it depreciates. Currencies have value, but they depreciate. Consumer durables, capital equipment, and currencies are not bad. You need them for their intended purposes. They're not meant to be stores of value.

Unfortunately it is too small to succeed right now. I did check out their web site and listened to their president's address.

Governments adopted his philosophy because it was logical for them to do so. Looters have no self-interest in preserving their citizens' money. The goal of looters is to loot our money, and Keynesian maleconomics is how they accomplish this goal.

The dollar should be worth less than it is right now. In fact, the currencies of the entire world should be worth less than they are. Look at the national debts around the world. Those governments have no intention of ever repaying. If either we as individuals or as company owners had that debt ratio, we would be bankrupt, and our stocks would be worthless. However, because countries have the ability to generate money out of thin air (inflate their way out of debt), the people who ultimately pay that price are the people who try to save those currencies.

By your money standards, you will have to keep producing your products until the day you die because whatever dollars you "accumulated" in trading value for value will be worth so much less by the time you make your products in 2030. For one to be able to advance oneself toward either fiscal retirement or toward business domination, one's assets must be capable of being not only preserved but advancing over inflation. Regardless of what the government says about inflation, real inflation right now is about 7%, which is pretty close to what one can get traditionally in "risky" investments like stocks. When stocks look like they are in a bubble, then there is lilttle left, this is a major problem. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. Right now the US dollar is fraudulently being propped up, and because A = A, the looters are down to their last tricks to keep the illusion of wealth. Sooner or later, seniors will demand more return on investment for their nest eggs. When that happens, watch the skyrocketing debt. We won't turn into Zimbabwe, but by all rights, we should.

The Federal Reserve was ostensibly put into place to "stabilize the market". It has created fairly consistent boom/bust cycles ever since precisely because the setting of controls over the debt market cannnot possibly be done by individuals or a cabal better than it can be done by the market. When a society has $17+ trillion in debt officially ($50000 per person) and over $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities (> $300000/person), by all reason interest rates ought to be sky high. Do you remember 18% interest rates on home loans in the late 1970s? That is where we ought to be now, if not higher. Instead we are paying the banks right now to hold our money (fees > interest rates). Saving is overtly penalized in this system. It is a looters' paradise and a producer's nightmare. Have you ever considered why AS characters insisted on being paid in Au? It is because the same amount of Au necessary to buy a suit 100 years ago buys the same suit now. Inflation is a cruel master.

Yes. I know something about the Austrian school and more about the Keynesian school.

It sounds like you're saying you don't like the national bank buying debt instruments to expand the money supply. I'm fine with their free market operations to expand the money supply, but I don't like how the system is designed to be awash in debt. The theory is the financial institutions allocate capital to worthy projects via instruments of debt and equity, but it seems like a lot of debt is consumer debt in which consumers pay to have something a little earlier. You'd probably say they make that decision b/c they trust the national bank will expand the money supply in hard times, making the amt they need to pay back less; so with that "Federal Reserve put option" in place, they feel justified taking more risk. I'm not sure to what extent this happens, but it's what I like least about our monetary system. I think the biggest problem is people don't price risk well, but I don't know how much monetary policy is to blame.

"And George Soros who manipulated to bring down the British pound is now endeavoring the greatest coup of his career, the takedown of the dollar. "
If it's that tenuous that one person can change it, maybe it should be worth less than it is. A buck will buy me 60 capacitors on cut tape. Maybe in a few years it will buy me 10. This may be a big deal for people in the monetary policy world, but I don't care. A business that generates $100k in profit and is worth $500k is the same to me as one in 2030 that generates 500 e-pesos and is worth 2.5 kilo-e-pesos, or whatever we're using in 16 years.

"Are you looking forward to trading in yuan yet? "
I like making things that serve other people's needs, in exchange for something I want. I don't care at all whether it's the yuan. By 2030 it will probably be something very different from what I use today. All the value is in how you serve people. What you trade doesn't matter.

Be safe. Store up your surplus productivity in gold and silver. You're correct! It makes no sense! Keynes made no sense, yet every government in the world adopted his philosophy. Ludwig von Mises, Hajek and all the logical economists were thrown out with the bathwater. Amazing.