Boomers who made their money in real estate often don’t understand the trade they have been a part of. Simply put it is short dollars long scarcity. The problem is the scarcity is artificial….a political moat. Land is somewhat scarce but fly across this country and you can understand how much undeveloped land there is. Technology makes more and more of it livable every year and also make higher density living viable in more places. There is no near term natural scarcity in housing and vacant land doesn’t throw off rents.
To enforce the scarcity and leech off the speculation a whole industry sprung up, agents, mortgage brokers, insurance, inspectors, contractors, service companies, management companies, escrow, appraisers, bankers, lenders and regulators.
Bitcoin is the new scarcity. We’re watching an industry form around it as well. The OG’s in real estate bought land cheap on the frontier, builders followed and then speculators and rent seekers flooded the scene to scrape every penny possible from the futures of their children. Bitcoin will be no different. The OG’s are currently taking their honest appreciation gains and selling to the builders who are developing products that pay rents (see: Strategy, etc.). The rent seekers will buy those products and spin up derivatives and future generations will be lucky to ever own a UTXO.
In the current system, the unencumbered land owner is near sovereign (except for property taxes), in the new system, the UTXO owner is sovereign, but must always defend against tax and legal schemes to ring fence them in. This might seem like a simple changing of the guard. Meet the new boss same as the old boss, but it’s not. Even if not everyone CAN own a UTXO, more people can be sovereign in this system than the old and it is less subject to government leeches. This is a phase change improvement on human freedom and best of all Bitcoin will return housing to its utility value improving the living standards of the whole world.
It’s not utopian, but it is better.
