Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why?(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
Bill Gates is the biggest private owner of farmland in the United States. Why?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-gates-climate-crisis-farmland
21 comments
This was his answer when asked specifically about this during his recent AMA on reddit:
My investment group chose to do this. It is not connected to climate. The agriculture sector is important. With more productive seeds we can avoid deforestation and help Africa deal with the climate difficulty they already face. It is unclear how cheap biofuels can be but if they are cheap it can solve the aviation and truck emissions.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/m8n4vt/im_bill_gates_...
My investment group chose to do this. It is not connected to climate. The agriculture sector is important. With more productive seeds we can avoid deforestation and help Africa deal with the climate difficulty they already face. It is unclear how cheap biofuels can be but if they are cheap it can solve the aviation and truck emissions.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/m8n4vt/im_bill_gates_...
> (offer void in the Netherlands.)
The big island of Hawaii too
The big island of Hawaii too
I've learned a bit about farmland investments via https://www.acretrader.com recently. 690M for Gates is a small amount and is just part of a properly diversified portfolio: farmland provides steady returns on crop and some property appreciation, and is uncorrelated with many other assets.
> Gates owns approximately 242,000 acres of farmland with assets totaling more than $690m
yeah thats not that much? keyword is private owner. bill gates is one of the wealthiest individuals on earth so of course if he puts a fraction of his net worth into land then he will become the biggest private owner because the other private owners dont have as much money as he does.
he is NOT the biggest land owner in the united states because there are many companies that own tons and tons of land. they just arent being compared here because they are companies, and not "private owners"
yeah thats not that much? keyword is private owner. bill gates is one of the wealthiest individuals on earth so of course if he puts a fraction of his net worth into land then he will become the biggest private owner because the other private owners dont have as much money as he does.
he is NOT the biggest land owner in the united states because there are many companies that own tons and tons of land. they just arent being compared here because they are companies, and not "private owners"
The Brewster ranch is for sale right now, $320M gets you over 400,000 acres, so it seems the current owner would beat Gates out. I certainly agree that it is probably owned by a company currently.
Edit: to clarify it's owned by Kentucky billionaire Brad Kelley, so he probably 'wins'?
Edit: to clarify it's owned by Kentucky billionaire Brad Kelley, so he probably 'wins'?
Not sure that qualifies as "farmland"?
How soon before billionaires invest in digital land?
I remember seeing people pay hundreds of dollars for space in Ultima online for their house.
I wonder if humanity will ever have a platform shared by the entire world that wouldn’t be discarded every 10 years where people would actually want to invest long-term.
Maybe bitcoin is a type of land in that sense, it is finite and verified, and you can build on top of it?
Fun to think about at least.
I remember seeing people pay hundreds of dollars for space in Ultima online for their house.
I wonder if humanity will ever have a platform shared by the entire world that wouldn’t be discarded every 10 years where people would actually want to invest long-term.
Maybe bitcoin is a type of land in that sense, it is finite and verified, and you can build on top of it?
Fun to think about at least.
I think this is a good question to ask. But my immediate reaction is: why?
Land is scarce so it makes sense to “invest” in, ie convert dollars into land with the expectation that you will be able to convert it back into more dollars later because there will be more people and the same amount of land.
But what’s the reason when you can instantly create more “digital land”?
I have been reading Iain M Banks again recently and have been thinking about the post scarcity society where you can have as much land on an orbital as you’d like. So, what does it mean to invest in land in a situation like that?
Land is scarce so it makes sense to “invest” in, ie convert dollars into land with the expectation that you will be able to convert it back into more dollars later because there will be more people and the same amount of land.
But what’s the reason when you can instantly create more “digital land”?
I have been reading Iain M Banks again recently and have been thinking about the post scarcity society where you can have as much land on an orbital as you’d like. So, what does it mean to invest in land in a situation like that?
>I have been reading Iain M Banks again recently and have been thinking about the post scarcity society where you can have as much land on an orbital as you’d like. So, what does it mean to invest in land in a situation like that?
Did they brainwash people to stop reproducing? Given enough children, you can fill hundreds of space colonies (I'm assuming that is what you mean by orbital).
>So, what does it mean to invest in land in a situation like that?
In a post scarcity society nothing has value, why would anyone invest? To solve a nonexistent scarcity problem?
Did they brainwash people to stop reproducing? Given enough children, you can fill hundreds of space colonies (I'm assuming that is what you mean by orbital).
>So, what does it mean to invest in land in a situation like that?
In a post scarcity society nothing has value, why would anyone invest? To solve a nonexistent scarcity problem?
>> How soon before billionaires invest in digital land?
There's an entire MMO based on this concept called Entropia Universe. So I'd say it's already been in the works for nearly 20 years.
> I wonder if humanity will ever have a platform shared by the entire world that wouldn’t be discarded every 10 years where people would actually want to invest long-term.
The nice thing about physical land is that you can't discard atoms (in numbers big enough to matter), and we have a multi-millenium history of landownership being good for fostering multi-generational wealth. You can also do neat things with land like agriculture, and I don't see the opportunity to do something similar digitally, since there is always a subscription model, not ownership. Of course, governments and real estate law can change, but it does so much more slowly than digital "law," and the benefactors of the last regime often overlap heavily with the benefactors of a new regime.
IMO, any digital asset would have to have a healthy and growing market for at least a generation or two for people to start making the types of investments you see with real estate.
The nice thing about physical land is that you can't discard atoms (in numbers big enough to matter), and we have a multi-millenium history of landownership being good for fostering multi-generational wealth. You can also do neat things with land like agriculture, and I don't see the opportunity to do something similar digitally, since there is always a subscription model, not ownership. Of course, governments and real estate law can change, but it does so much more slowly than digital "law," and the benefactors of the last regime often overlap heavily with the benefactors of a new regime.
IMO, any digital asset would have to have a healthy and growing market for at least a generation or two for people to start making the types of investments you see with real estate.
Isn’t that what Urbit is trying to be? I don’t think that more scarcity is something to strive for though.
I like to imagine that domains are the modern equivalent to land. It certainly seems to fit the criteria of enduring for many years with people buying and building upon them.
He has a lot of money and he can be the private owner of many things. And farmland is cheap compared to penthouses in skyscrapers (he has many of those as well).
I started reading this article with great interest. But then, I got to the part where Bill Gates is "the white man". After reading the Bill Gates is "the white man", my interest dropped to about zero. I guess another garbage propaganda piece from Guardian. Why do I keep clicking on the articles from MSM?
The full quote is:
A white man owns more farmland than my entire Native nation!
The author is a native american speaking with his own voice not the voice of a Guardian journalist.
A white man owns more farmland than my entire Native nation!
The author is a native american speaking with his own voice not the voice of a Guardian journalist.
I am not sure how is this makes it better. The author making racist statements and Guardian printing them. Would it be Ok to say "a black man owns more ..."? No, it wouldn't be Ok to say that. And yes, there are a lot of very rich African American men (in Sports, Entertainment for example). Racism is racism, and it is wrong, no matter who prints is or says it.
its pretty ugly whichever way you look at it.
The Guardian has a compulsion to feed the pearl clutching middle class centre left with stories of exotic oppression.
Sadly, the story here is one of a Billionaire appropriating an even more unequal - and dangerous - portion of the world's resources.
The slaughter of Native American people and the reparations due to them is a vital but nevertheless separate cause.
The Guardian has a compulsion to feed the pearl clutching middle class centre left with stories of exotic oppression.
Sadly, the story here is one of a Billionaire appropriating an even more unequal - and dangerous - portion of the world's resources.
The slaughter of Native American people and the reparations due to them is a vital but nevertheless separate cause.
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And here I clicked this thinking I was going to get an informative, insightful read out of it.
(offer void in the Netherlands.)