Architecture has suffered under the fiat standard. Buildings are made from cheaper materials and need more upkeep. Can bitcoin fix this? Yes. Yes it can.
The podcast episode delves into a variety of topics surrounding the impact of the monetary system on architecture, urban planning, and the quality of life in our communities. The discussion highlights the differences between building practices under a fiat monetary system versus those under a bitcoin or hard money standard. It also emphasizes the importance of patient capital and the role it plays in creating durable, sustainable, and beautiful structures that can last for generations.
The episode features insights into the challenges faced by modern builders, like Austin Tunnell, who are striving to bring back sound architecture practices. It highlights how current financial incentives encourage the construction of low-quality, short-lived housing, leading to a cycle of never-ending repairs and maintenance, which is neither economically sustainable nor conducive to fostering strong communities.
Additionally, the conversation sheds light on the insidious effects of modern building materials and practices on both human health and the environment. It contrasts these with more traditional methods that not only stand the test of time but also contribute to a healthier living environment.
The podcast also underscores the necessity of rethinking urban planning and development to foster genuine community interactions and connection. The importance of small, frequent, and organic interactions in building a sense of belonging and neighborliness is stressed, with examples illustrating how current design trends isolate individuals and erode the social fabric of society.
Lastly, the episode suggests that bitcoin could potentially play a transformative role in real estate and urban development by shifting the focus from short-term profits to long-term value creation, thus enabling the construction of spaces that truly enhance the quality of life.
The podcast episode presents a thought-provoking analysis of how our monetary system influences the built environment and, by extension, our quality of life. The guests and hosts dissect the myriad ways in which fiat currency has led to suboptimal building practices and urban planning decisions that have far-reaching consequences for communities and individual well-being.
By exploring the themes of patient capital, sustainability, and community building, the episode paints a picture of an alternative future where the adoption of sound money principles, such as those embodied by bitcoin, could lead to the revitalization of our cities and neighborhoods.
The overarching message is clear: there is a pressing need to reevaluate our priorities and methods when it comes to creating the spaces we inhabit. While the challenges are significant, the episode leaves listeners with a sense of hope and a call to action, encouraging a return to building practices that prioritize long-term value, beauty, and the human spirit.
0:00 - Intro
5:05 - Introducing guests
14:03 - Fiat real estate and centralized planning
22:48 - Environment and psychology
34:33 - Gradually, Then Suddenly
35:12 - Efficiency can be bad for your health
44:15 - Real estate is a shitcoin
55:14 - Social breakdown and families
58:48 - Suburbs becoming slums
1:02:52 - Municipal infrastructure
1:07:43 - Community
1:17:09 - Definancializing real estate
1:22:43 - Sustainability
1:28:55 - Wrapping up
00:00:00:17 - 00:00:12:27
Marty
Leaders are allergic to the government. Yes. Gentlemen, we are live. Incredible event last night. Ter, you pumped it up on this show a couple of weeks ago and far surpassed my expectations.
00:00:13:27 - 00:00:36:27
Tuur
I'm so glad we did it. I mean, honestly. And it came together so easily. I feel like it was just bound to happen. Like, you know, it's everybody here, you know, who organizes the events that become comments was just so accommodate of. And then, of course, you know, Austin was so enthusiastic right away and Kelly was also on board, like both of them, like came in from out of state.
00:00:37:23 - 00:00:43:05
Tuur
Yeah, it was amazing. It was awesome. The energy in the room was electric. It was awesome.
00:00:43:23 - 00:00:44:29
Marty
Awesome. What was it like for you?
00:00:45:17 - 00:01:02:02
Austin
I don't remember it very well. I drove like I said, I had a two hour, two and a half hours of sleep the night before because we had a baby on Saturday. And don't worry, my family's well taken care of. I have people staying over the house. My wife told me to go to clear seven hour drive, literally right up here speaking.
00:01:02:02 - 00:01:12:00
Austin
And then at the end of it, I was like, I couldn't even really think afterward, so I don't really know what happened. I'm not 100% sure what all I said I was telling these guys this morning, but I think it went really well.
00:01:12:05 - 00:01:37:22
Marty
I did. I mean, I think I think your connection of like what you're building and like, applying a little private time preference to bringing beautiful sound architecture back to the world and connecting that to the Bitcoin standard, I think for the benefit of the audience wasn't here. You hear the presentation last night. I think it'd be good to get back Story on how you two met and share when you decided to reach out to us and to come give this presentation.
00:01:38:03 - 00:02:11:19
Tuur
Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to remember when I might have discovered building culture like Austin's company. I think maybe around the pandemic or something like, I just saw, you know, these these I think it was when you the, the original moon door project like that those those for and seeing the images float around of that and then really starting to follow it is when I was like, huh like this is this is special because like there are brick buildings around the U.S., but it's extremely rare to find builders who do this.
00:02:11:19 - 00:02:33:18
Tuur
And. And so, yeah, the boldness really attracted me and the just the kind of also what impressed me is the even though it's a young company like the the continual evolution of the style and the kind of like the ideas and then, you know, seeing that like he goes abroad to learn about like, you know, vaulted ceilings and how that can be done.
00:02:34:14 - 00:02:52:23
Tuur
And so many more, we've decided we're actually going to a format festival in Arkansas. And so we kind of planned a little road trip and was like, let's stop in Oklahoma City. And there was there happened to be an open day where the the what is it?
00:02:52:23 - 00:02:54:06
Austin
Awesome. I was hosting an open house.
00:02:54:11 - 00:02:54:21
Tuur
An open.
00:02:54:21 - 00:02:57:25
Austin
House. One of our our first structural masonry build in Oklahoma City.
00:02:57:25 - 00:03:26:13
Tuur
Yeah. So we yeah. So we went and saw it, the whole thing and they, they also, you know did the interior so it's, it's really just this incredible, um, beautiful house and Yeah, so we saw it, We were just, you know, very impressed. Unfortunately, you can just, you know, it's kind of like if this house was in the neighborhood that we want, it's like we really might have been buyers, but, uh, but we live in Austin, of course, here.
00:03:26:13 - 00:03:40:24
Tuur
So we started talking and, um, kept in touch since. And I really wanted Austin to come over to the city of Austin to, like, share his story somehow. And so eventually we just made it happen last week.
00:03:41:14 - 00:03:51:03
Marty
And it's a good way to do it. South by Southwest, I think we had some South by Southwest Overflow coming in last night. What was it what was it like for you getting introduced to the Bitcoin community?
00:03:51:21 - 00:04:05:14
Austin
It's been cool and fun because it was kind of recent, you know, And when Tor called me about it, I don't know, six, eight weeks ago or something, and I was just like, a lot of times when things like this happen, I just say, you know, because I'd met him recently, like I just say yes and then see what happens later.
00:04:05:14 - 00:04:21:27
Austin
And it was like literally in an off hand comment at the end of it where he mentions a Bitcoin standard, which then led to me reading the Bitcoin standard, which led to me being kind of my mind blowing about what I can't believe. I was just telling Kelly on the way here that over the past ten years, you know, I keep up with, you know, current events and media and stuff like that.
00:04:21:27 - 00:04:27:26
Austin
And I've known the price of Bitcoin like generally speaking, I've even owned Bitcoin and sold it, you know, and, and.
00:04:28:06 - 00:04:29:11
Marty
None.
00:04:29:11 - 00:04:53:26
Austin
Of the articles and none of the media talks about why why is it a big deal? Why does it matter? And so for me, that's the important part is like understanding the, you know, underlying philosophy of it and then so immediately made the connection. I'm like, oh, these people are shared values and that's what I look for. My company is shared values, whether it's employees or customers or trades or vendors, is we need people that share the values and the mission.
00:04:54:18 - 00:05:06:19
Austin
And so like I, I just got excited about that, you know, of talking to other people in a different group that think differently than me, that know about different things. But that have this. Yeah, shared value.
00:05:06:29 - 00:05:25:17
Marty
I think it's a it was a breath of fresh air for the bitcoiners in the room because we've been quietly screaming to ourselves like we need more people to get this. And like, I think that's what we're really honing in on is like find these tangential movements that are aligned philosophically and like, be like, Hey, we love what you're doing.
00:05:25:28 - 00:05:39:19
Marty
We think you'd love Bitcoin too, and it's just a perfect marriage, particularly when you dive into what you were talking about last night. Specifically the patient capital part, like you need sound money to have patient capital and you know this firsthand.
00:05:39:19 - 00:06:07:08
Kelly
Kelly Yeah, it's a it's it's come to a point and we kind of discussed this last night. It's come to a point where when you're trying to build things, you're reaching the end of the time horizon for what you know, credit or capital is willing to do today. So a typical development project may take you five or six years right from very beginning to very end, whether that's buying the land, getting the entitlements, doing the construction, filling it up, selling it, all these other things.
00:06:07:15 - 00:06:38:24
Kelly
So you're reaching essentially the end of a lot of people's patience to deliver a return. So when you start to combine, you know, basically the speed of construction that you need, the materials that you need to accomplish that speed, it really starts to scale back on what you can build. So when you see pictures of Austin's projects that are beautiful brick masonry stuff, and then you look at, you know, across the street even or somewhere else, it's like, how on earth did that get built?
00:06:39:09 - 00:06:59:18
Kelly
And we're we're really reaching a point. Like I said, we're we're we're at the end of what capital is really willing to put up with. So, you know, when you have a different kind of money, that's, you know, quite frankly, looking to wait, you know, like Bitcoin is when we say we have low time preference, we're we're literally discounting the future, saying we're willing to wait.
00:07:00:27 - 00:07:21:24
Kelly
So, you know, it's it's it's a very interesting point where there's two at least in our community, there's two forces that are going at each other. It's how does the Fiat system, you know, continue to function? How do we continue to stay in business when we have to work like that? And on the flip side, we know that this is coming.
00:07:22:07 - 00:07:49:28
Kelly
So how do we prepare ourselves and plan or design so that when the time is right, we can pick up and continue? And I'm sure Austin can speak to this because he's he's worked with Master Masons. It's just there's not there's not the skill today that exist in order to pick up you know, in the the patient capital low time preference construction methods and craftsmanship versus what we have to work with today.
00:07:50:10 - 00:08:27:07
Kelly
So I think it's a very interesting dynamic. But I am you know, I'm a big fan of what he talked about last night and how he put it. And yeah, I'm I was I was stoked. I think last night went great. And I hope that, you know, there's more more people within the real estate and construction business that have, you know, similar values and are thinking to themselves like, you know, we've gotten to this point now where we're quite literally worried about the durability of some of these buildings and they're being slapped together.
00:08:27:16 - 00:08:46:01
Kelly
And, you know, across the street, if asked to build a brick house, you know, everybody's looking at each other. They're looking across the street at this house and saying, you know, wow, where's you know, why can't I have a house like that? Or why isn't there more houses like that? So patient capital, I think, is really what opens the door for that.
00:08:46:06 - 00:08:55:05
Kelly
The VR system's not necessarily set up for that. It's probably the antithesis of that, but I'm very much looking forward to that. Changing.
00:08:55:10 - 00:09:24:05
Marty
Yeah, that's crazy to think. I think Bitcoin is the fiat standard is here on the bookshelf and it talks about all areas of our life where fiat money is corrupted systems, whether it's health care, education, finance, whatever it may be. But I think the most visibly where it's most visibly pronounced is like real estate and housing and going like where the it's an industry where the incense has been so perturbed that what you're doing.
00:09:24:05 - 00:09:36:24
Marty
Austin is like a heroic act almost because the incentives are such where you're incentivized to build cheap, shitty houses that are not durable and are basically built to last for 30 years.
00:09:37:11 - 00:10:03:03
Austin
Yeah, no, it's hard what we're doing and talk like we don't. We're constantly having to, you know, now that we're building houses, you know, we're almost done building spec houses because we can't do it anymore because the system so broken that, you know, like I said, we build a great house. Everyone loves it. The buyer even wants to pay for an appraiser come in and just says the house next door is worth X, you know, So that's what your house is worth and that's what the bank loan on it.
00:10:03:03 - 00:10:25:05
Austin
And so then the buyer can't buy the house, even though it's a way better house. They're just saying this shitty house over here, you know, it's just so stupid. And that's just one example of the million things we have to deal with. And, you know, and then when you're raising money for a project like what Kelley is doing, more development or what we're doing too, and you're looking investors in the eye and saying, we're going to do this, you know, and then timelines start getting messed up or whatever.
00:10:25:23 - 00:10:45:14
Austin
Budget overages, you have to value engineer or you'll never do another deal again. You know, it's not like people are bad that are doing this. And that's why I finally realized it's like the key here is patient capital. It has to be. But I do think you can still do it on a fiat system, you know, like it's I don't know how long it's going to take for like what is going to happen.
00:10:45:14 - 00:11:03:06
Austin
Like, this could be a very long thing that plays out over a long period of time. But I mean, you see more because the Fiat, if you can create great places in architecture that people love, it's going to be desirable for a long period of time. It's going to cash flow for a long period of time, inflation, market turnover, whatever.
00:11:03:06 - 00:11:19:17
Austin
It doesn't really matter if you've got no debt or low debt on it. And so that's kind of what my bet, current bet, is, that I'm going to start working on this, trying to find people that think that way, even if they're not Bitcoiners per se, although I think the Bitcoin like mindset is awesome for it, but like, hey, who wants to?
00:11:19:17 - 00:11:31:01
Austin
Rather than trying to like put try to get a five year, seven year exit, put your money in, keep it there for 20 years and know look what we get to build with that look. You've helped contribute to the world and I think there's people out there like that.
00:11:31:01 - 00:11:34:13
Marty
Yeah. I mean turn your presentation. Your are like, it is going to be bitcoiners. I mean.
00:11:34:14 - 00:11:35:06
Tuur
I believe so.
00:11:35:06 - 00:11:41:27
Marty
I mentioned this two weeks ago. I've never seen you more bullish last night's presentation. You're like, we're going to take over the world and rebuild it in a beautiful way.
00:11:42:08 - 00:12:08:13
Tuur
Yeah. I mean, like if you look at then that's what was my point in the presentation is like just we always think of ourselves as like, you know, we are bitcoiners and we want to do certain things. But at some point the scale of Bitcoin becomes so big that we really start becoming an important part of global culture and not just in terms of production of ideas, but actually producing physical footprint in the world.
00:12:10:00 - 00:12:35:16
Tuur
So like based on the the estimates of Glassnode, there is now 2500 people in the world. We don't know who they are and it's a good thing who, um, who have more than $50 million worth of bitcoin. Um, and that means they are 1% of the global financial elites of global ultra high net worth people. So if we go to $1,000,000 Bitcoin, that becomes 10%, 10% of the global elites.
00:12:35:22 - 00:12:58:29
Tuur
If we go to $5 million Bitcoin, all of a sudden we're talking 30, 40% of global elites are people that have kind of, uh, the foundation of their wealth is a was in Bitcoin just like how the dot com entrepreneurs really made a huge dent and became like the most prominent wealthy people. Just like how in the the early 19th century you had the oil barons and things like that.
00:12:58:29 - 00:13:37:11
Tuur
So, so it's just this is like a new era is what I truly believe. And so, you know, we want to we're also like we have these strong values, like we want to do things differently and leave a mark and like, kind of like show that we we really care about durability, about utility, about beauty. And so I think it's going to it's going to mean that we're going to lean into classical architecture again, which which means, you know, just building solid, amazing, sturdy buildings for the next generations to to kind of also, you know, it's it's it's great, it's beautiful, but I think it's also going to show the world that like, hey, just
00:13:37:11 - 00:14:06:23
Tuur
like when you go to Venice and you see those Renaissance building, it's like that period was special. Like, you know, it takes a special thing to build a special building. And so I think there's going to be a lot of enthusiasm for, for, um, and I want to further explore that, that idea of like, what does it even mean, Bitcoin urbanism, you know, where do we want to take it to kind of go from Fiat slums to like, you know, Bitcoin neighborhoods, You know, what does that look like?
00:14:06:23 - 00:14:09:27
Tuur
And that's why I wanted to, you know, help, help start this conversation.
00:14:10:09 - 00:14:16:02
Marty
Yeah. You get you got a clip from the club Web lab builder down there as you're going on the bricks.
00:14:16:04 - 00:14:18:24
Austin
I just heard that it's called Pueblo. And that was very funny.
00:14:20:24 - 00:14:46:24
Marty
The, uh, no, it's like the building. And I really like what you Kelly asked me to focus on last night. We're like, How do we fix this? And, Kelly, you mentioned, like, centralization got us into this problem. You can't. There's no top down design that's going to fix it. It's got to be block by block. And we were shortly discussing before you hopped on stage, I think I'm a huge fan of Chuck Malone in Strong towns, I think changed my perspective on how to look at these things.
00:14:46:24 - 00:14:59:01
Marty
And it is the right way. It's going to take a lot of hard work. It's literally going to be block by block. And I think Bitcoiners, it's funny you say block by block in the physical world and like that's literally like a Bitcoin.
00:14:59:23 - 00:15:01:21
Tuur
That confused me for a moment when he said that it's like.
00:15:01:29 - 00:15:19:15
Marty
Yeah, because we think block by block that was a part of it. When it's going to be a long, arduous road, but it's literally just going to be small acts by individuals and companies like builders culture to like materialize and go attack this massive problem.
00:15:19:23 - 00:15:40:15
Austin
And that's what's, you know, you mentioned block by block, and that's exactly how we think about it. Like the the the little rendering I showed last night of what we're doing. It's about half of a block. It's a little over an acre. We don't have full block quite yet, but we're already making that work in kind of normal environments, even though we'll probably be doing concrete block because we're really about masonry based systems.
00:15:41:16 - 00:16:11:01
Austin
But, you know, if you have patient capital and if you are actually building something truly great that is creating real value that people love, you can actually, you know, you can buy it. What we do is we buy blocks, you can buy blocks and blow them up. You know what I mean? Like buy blocks, tear down the old houses that are, you know, a tiny 1000 square foot house and a 7000 square foot lot and completely remake it and just create a little village per block, essentially, is what you can do.
00:16:11:07 - 00:16:26:05
Austin
And that's really possible because in the current fiat system, you could say capital has a real it's less about fiat system, just the time horizon of an investment. Like you really can't do that because you have to like you can only pay so much for the house if you want to buy that block. You know what I mean?
00:16:26:05 - 00:16:45:20
Austin
But if you actually have patient capital and you've got kind of a 20 to 30 year time horizon, you can pay 50,000 extra for that house and it's not going to matter. And you can beat everyone else out at it doing it. And then you can create an amazing place, you know, And by the way, the people you're displacing, right, If maybe if you're offering them, you know, above market, they're just like, take my house and love it and go.
00:16:45:20 - 00:17:01:05
Austin
And you can also do swaps and say, hey, if we let this buy this, well, you know, let you buy this at the same price. So you actually stay in the same neighborhood. And that's why I talk about relationships, too. It's so important that you can't just come in and pose stuff. You know, we talk about being anti centralization and that's why I think it really is important.
00:17:01:05 - 00:17:28:04
Austin
You know, strong towns point a ground up thing, people on the ground that know their neighborhood. KELLY And in Scottsdale, you know, people in Austin, me in Oklahoma City and Edmond, you know, where I know the place and I know the people and I care about the place and the people and and we can build real places like that, you know, and respond because, man, people are complex, you know, And we want to make people not complex, you know, as if we're just like robots or something or widgets.
00:17:28:04 - 00:17:41:17
Austin
And we just need like food and shelter. It's like, no, no. I mean, humans are profoundly deep and emotional and connecting all sorts of other things that I think we really have to keep in mind when we're we're building these places.
00:17:42:14 - 00:18:15:18
Marty
Yeah, well, the other side of the coin there too, is like humans are complex, emotionally driven individuals, and that's like it's like we've never dove into this the first time it came on the show, but like the physical space that you live in literally affects you psychologically. In the physical space that has taken over a world in America is ugly, brutalist And the day in the life examples that you gave yesterday, it's like, how do we get away from the typical day in the life in America now to the one that you put forth that exist in Europe in a few cities in America?
00:18:15:18 - 00:18:27:06
Marty
I I'm from Philadelphia, and I do think Philadelphia is a great downtowns, great walking city. It's got its problems, obviously. But you can see that it was built in the time before fiat money in a lot of areas. Absolutely.
00:18:27:18 - 00:19:03:09
Tuur
Yeah. And like look, I grew up in a in Brugge in Belgium and so I remember recently a friend of mine like fell on hard times like you financially and he his life is actually not that different from before like you know he can in terms of like, like he doesn't even need a car like, he's like bike around and and just like, there's so many beautiful places that are just available and that are exactly built in the way that you're talking about these, like, you know, tiny little parks that are just kind of hidden inside a block, Very, very narrow streets, things like that.
00:19:04:13 - 00:19:26:17
Tuur
It really is is quite amazing what it does to like the quality of life to it. Whereas like, if you're poor here in Austin, I imagine your life changes dramatically. Like as soon as you lose access to a car like that, it just turns everything upside down. Yeah. And, and then and then you're relegated to whatever housing projects and you kind of like being siloed, you know, and you get more and more.
00:19:26:29 - 00:19:47:28
Tuur
I feel like it's more of a trap. Um, even though I still think mobility is way, you know, more powerful in the U.S. still than in Europe, like you, you can work your way back and things like that. But structurally, yeah, it's a huge, uh, there's a huge relationship between quality of life and how you're built environment looks.
00:19:47:28 - 00:19:48:07
Tuur
Yeah.
00:19:48:29 - 00:20:07:21
Marty
In your example, like section eight housing, it's perfectly perfect. Example of like you have a Section eight housing. It's typically poor people. If they do make it out, the first thing they do is leave and not, I think, the one, the most powerful thing you said with that examples like you don't, you know, you, you leave and you take your example of like picking yourself up from your bootstraps and your.
00:20:07:21 - 00:20:29:28
Austin
Connections because that's what like mobility is all about, connections, meeting people, meeting you guys, right? Like, who knows what combustible collisions come from that. And that's really what, you know, people with better means, like they have more access to people. And for those kind of random moments of serendipity happen that suddenly, wham, the job. If you're isolated in suburbia without a car and you're poor, how are you going to like, you know, the Internet changed a lot of things, which is great.
00:20:29:28 - 00:20:57:26
Austin
But still, you know, yeah, it makes it tough. I mean, you mentioned the science stuff of how we feel, you know, based on the architecture. And you had a book out in Suskind's book, I forget what it's called, cognitive architecture or something. I mean, basically it's, you know, these humanist cities from the Renaissance that they really were trying to embody kind of these higher ideals of humanity in the city, you know, is really thinking about the city as a piece of art.
00:20:59:07 - 00:21:20:08
Austin
And they kind of came to that conclusion from a non-rational way of thinking. But now we're actually proving the exact same thing with science. Like actual science is showing us that the chemicals released in our brains and we see and experience certain things are profoundly different based on what we're looking at. And people want to say there's not such things as real beauty in the world.
00:21:20:20 - 00:21:36:10
Austin
Okay, I get that there are subjective natures to beauty. Of course there are. It's both objective and subjective, but I mean, 90% of people agree what a beautiful woman is. 90% of people agree. What a beautiful neighborhood is, and they might not want to live there. Right? They might be like, I love this a living here. I don't want to live.
00:21:36:10 - 00:22:07:14
Austin
It's not my favorite style. But like people generally agree about what is actually beautiful and life giving, and then those things are actually good for us and healthy for us. And that's kind of what I mean by that. People are complex and I think we're probably going to learn a lot more about how like over the next 50 years about how our environment in our day to day lives really does affect us in our and not just our emotions, but kind of like even at a deeper level, you could say like even spiritually or something like that.
00:22:09:00 - 00:22:09:22
Austin
That's what I think.
00:22:09:29 - 00:22:33:27
Tuur
Don't you guys think it's funny that, you know, proponents of modernism and postmodernism like they can't help but tacitly acknowledge what you're saying by just if you look at their advertising, it's always like, ooh, this lush forest. And then, you know, the house emerges and you know, it's always like they, they just or like, ooh, then you see like a classical house in the reflection all of a sudden, right.
00:22:33:27 - 00:22:44:26
Tuur
It's like, you know, they know that this is what people love is like that sense of nature and connection. But like, and, but, but, but they're trying to sell you a cardboard box, so they have to, like, find a way to spruce it up a bit.
00:22:45:01 - 00:23:01:02
Kelly
Here's your glass cube in a rival forest. Don't look at you. Right. Which I want you to buy it for. This is what it's about. It's like, Wait a minute. Right? Yes. I'm a modern architect and I built that. But that's not what's important here. So are you sure? I'm pretty sure this is what you're trying to do.
00:23:01:02 - 00:23:04:04
Austin
Do you have to explain it? You probably didn't build great architecture.
00:23:04:23 - 00:23:37:09
Kelly
And then you go back to it like what Orson was saying. Yes. So when they when they're measuring people's emotions, when they look at the buildings and stuff, like they have eye tracking movements, and that's like the biggest tool that an Sussman and Justin Hollander. And there's another report I read it was about the same thing, but a different granularity or different distances and granularity of the the ornamentation of buildings and stuff, how it quite literally affects your brain and what you look at subconsciously, right?
00:23:37:16 - 00:23:58:13
Kelly
So when you see beautiful arches and all this stuff, you know, your eye looks at it and if there's ornamentation, your eye looks at it, even if it's just for like a split second, right? Your brain absorbs that information and you are essentially pleased with what you see. Whereas if you look at modernist design and construction, your brain quite literally just ignores it.
00:23:58:24 - 00:24:23:23
Kelly
So in the eye tracking it, it's not there's no focus points, it's just people see it, but they don't see certain things. They don't see the arts or they don't see the ornamentation or, you know, they don't see the ornamentation on the door when they're ten feet away. Right. So when we when we talk about places, humans, you know, basically evolved to see certain things at certain distances, right?
00:24:23:23 - 00:24:46:06
Kelly
So when you are in, let's say, an old European square, the distance is typically I think it's just like 21 meters. So that's about the distance that you can see the whites of somebody's eyes. So you can tell whether or not they're looking at you. Right. So if you're in the social space and you don't know whether or not somebody is intent on being social with you.
00:24:46:06 - 00:25:08:09
Kelly
Right. So, you know, if you meet eyes across the room, that's usually a manner of engagement, right? That you would meet up and discuss or talk or whatever. So, you know, the human environment is way too complex when interacting with each other to have built the built environment or even homes or places where it's designed to be the opposite.
00:25:08:21 - 00:25:27:15
Kelly
Right? There was there was something on Twitter the other day where people were talking about the width of roads and then the mandatory setbacks for like the front of the house. And the idea was that the distance from one person's front door to another person's front door across the street was over a hundred feet or is about 100 feet.
00:25:27:29 - 00:25:49:15
Kelly
And that totally negates the idea of like, well, you know, if you're thinking that I want to see my neighbor or something, you know, the 21 meters to notice what they're looking at, well, they're just too far away. So you you end up in an environment where you you know, you can't see your neighbors. They're they're too far away to even look at to begin an interaction.
00:25:49:24 - 00:26:07:20
Kelly
And and this is something that Austin talked about last night. You know, when you when you build a subdivision and you have a detached sidewalk, it's not like let's go for a walk around the neighborhood. It's like, okay, I guess we're going for a walk around the neighborhood. It's it's a manner of just getting outside and being essentially corralled.
00:26:08:07 - 00:26:35:14
Kelly
And it's not it's not a humanist environment where you can go outside and interact with people. Jane, I just forgot. Her name doesn't lie for cities. Jane Jacobs Jane Jacobs wrote about what's it called, The sidewalk. The sidewalk ballet, where people essentially have interactions with each other that are totally unplanned, they're serendipitous. And you know what becomes of that?
00:26:36:01 - 00:27:09:26
Kelly
So, you know, we live in an environment that's been stripped of that essentially by decree. And it's not, you know, there's not some central planning authority in Washington, D.C., Right. It's your local your local jurisdiction that that does that. So, you know, I got a little off on a tangent, but there there is certainly an emotional reaction to your built environment and that that emotional reaction evokes essentially nothing in the way that we live.
00:27:09:26 - 00:27:26:23
Kelly
And that's partially why, you know, I think, you know, depression and all these things are so high in these neighborhoods because there's nothing to engage in, right? When you're by yourself or you're not, you're not able to engage with other people because it's literally designed to separate you. So.
00:27:27:23 - 00:27:49:21
Marty
Yeah, it feels like outside of these circles, most people don't recognize this as a problem. I like to think this a solution to depression, alcohol, like all these addictions and drug abuse today is like therapy, a pill or something else. It's not like, Oh, why don't we go look at our physical environment, how it's affecting us? Maybe we change that and it will begin to push these things.
00:27:49:23 - 00:28:25:21
Tuur
It's the boiling frog syndrome, right? And I feel like I also an economist would really like hear all this and be like, Yeah, this is the result of interventionism where the more governments intervene, the more problems are created, which beget even more interventions, which then make other things worse. So there's all these knock on effects that eventually lead to this very sterile environment where, um, you know, maybe they're tempted to intervene even more and be like, yeah, why wouldn't we have like, you know, government planned ten minute cities and, you know, it's kind of like that's the height of hubris, right?
00:28:25:21 - 00:28:46:18
Tuur
That they think they can solve it. Whereas what we really need is as hands off and like ease off on these zoning requirements, ease off on a lot of these things so that, um, capital can, can start doing its work and, and the market can just experiment with how do we even fix this? I wouldn't know. I wouldn't have some grand plan to fix Austin or any other city.
00:28:46:18 - 00:28:49:22
Tuur
It's like the solution has to come from the bottom up.
00:28:51:09 - 00:29:04:16
Marty
That's my big problem with Austin. It's not a good walking city. My whole life I've lived to walk in cities where it's Philadelphia, Chicago or New York and like here, just living two miles of two and a half miles away. I can't walk here because there's too many, like large roads.
00:29:04:19 - 00:29:20:26
Tuur
Even a place like Bastrop. It's like. Like a wonderful little town's beautiful. I think it has the most, um, uh, old buildings of any town in Texas. But, like, they have that road, it's just like, going right through it all. That traffic is going just straight through it. And, um.
00:29:21:17 - 00:29:24:12
Kelly
Good old fashioned stroke, just ruining strolling.
00:29:24:12 - 00:29:28:20
Tuur
Yeah. What is that? Mixing street and road rodeo? Uh.
00:29:29:03 - 00:29:48:01
Marty
No, I think about even in our neighborhood. It's funny you mention, like, you don't notice the ugly architecture. I mean, what's going on in the neighborhood? I live in here in Austin. It's like they're knocking down a bunch of the old ranchers and building these square boxes. I think people say they're like California design, modernist, disgusting things. My wife hates them.
00:29:48:01 - 00:30:04:23
Marty
We take walks to the playground around the neighborhood all the time, and she's like, every time we walk by, like all these new houses coming up, she's like, These are hideous. I can't believe anybody would buy this. And we we rent a a rancher that was built in the sixties, and it's it was built in a modular fashion.
00:30:04:23 - 00:30:30:26
Marty
It's actually pretty cool is rancher And then they built an addition for like a second floor loft that we have a guestroom up there. But you can see in that old design they made it in a modular way and you can tell the design of the house was in such a way that was conducive for the environment here with the heat like we have, like natural shade and things like that, the naturally cool the house and its little design aspects like that that I don't think are even thought about with these huge square boxes.
00:30:30:27 - 00:30:32:18
Kelly
Now just buy a bigger air conditioner.
00:30:32:18 - 00:30:35:03
Tuur
Because like all the clamoring for more.
00:30:35:03 - 00:30:35:19
Kelly
Products.
00:30:35:19 - 00:30:53:21
Tuur
Which is like it's like isn't it like helplessness, like on display where it's like, you know, they're like clamoring for the U.N. or whatever to fix climate change where it's like, yes, if the temperature goes up, you can actually build and respond to that. Like, look at how people live in Iran. Look at how people have lived for hundreds and thousands of years in like very high heat environments.
00:30:54:08 - 00:30:59:11
Tuur
There's perfect solutions for that, you know, But but it has to you know, it takes a more patient approach.
00:30:59:11 - 00:31:06:15
Marty
These things as new guys build with temperature in mind and local climate. Yeah, in.
00:31:06:15 - 00:31:24:00
Austin
Terms of insulation and things like that, we do. But like from temperature wise, yeah, like I'm not that concerned about it. I'm like, Hey, can we just solve clean energy? You know, why are we putting all of it on the building to be energy efficient? Like that's we I think it's because it feels like people can control it and it's frankly coming down from code officials.
00:31:24:00 - 00:31:35:05
Austin
But like, it's so cultural now. Like when someone walks into our house, they'll ask like two main questions. They'll say where the mechanicals go and what's the r-value? Because people have been programed.
00:31:35:06 - 00:31:35:27
Marty
Let's see our value.
00:31:36:02 - 00:31:52:11
Austin
Insulation like kind of insulated capacity. And sometimes they might say r-value because they kind of like, know it's a little bit fancy word, but it's basically saying, what's the insulation? How energy efficient is it? Because we programed people to be like, that is the most important thing about the house. How energy efficient is it? And it's not that they don't care about energy efficiency, it's just about down here.
00:31:52:11 - 00:32:12:08
Austin
I'm about creating the best possible house, and that's going to be context and beauty and the health of the materials and the durability, the interiors and yes, the energy efficiency. But by the way, energy efficiency can also work in direct inverse relationship to indoor air quality, because in the old days, you know, we had these I mean, I live in 100 year old house in Oklahoma City.
00:32:12:11 - 00:32:29:21
Austin
It's his old two by fours with old one by 12 on a diagonal for the kind of the sheeting and then a brick veneer on the outside and the inside. It's called lath and plaster, these little strips of wood and then plaster over it. And, you know, when I moved in that house, I was going, Man, this 100 years old, and I feel like this house could go another hundred years.
00:32:29:21 - 00:32:45:16
Austin
It needs some help, but it could go another hundred years. I've been kind of crapping on, you know, wood framing. What's the difference here? And then I also was doing some historic remodels. I started to really understand even the difference between what we were doing just 100 years ago, even though they weren't like structural masonry buildings, like what I'm doing now.
00:32:46:01 - 00:33:03:02
Austin
But they were old growth, two by fours, they were old growth one by 12. I mean, the rings on them are just, you know, unbelievable versus today, they're like 7 to 10 year old trees, which are highly prone to rot, highly prone to termites. Then instead of all my tools for putting plywood, was relying on glues which are going to degrade over time.
00:33:03:14 - 00:33:30:08
Austin
Then we started insulating them when we realized, you know, energy efficiency is a big deal. So we started insulating those cavities, but then we realized, oh my gosh, that's causing major problems because our house isn't really airtight or watertight. So water was getting in, the insulation was trapping it. So then we started obsessing about enclosing the house completely so that, you know, basically turning into refrigerator, which I actually understand that does make sense to actually need to do, because you've got a different environment outside than a different environment inside.
00:33:30:08 - 00:33:48:23
Austin
But the problem is we're using all these materials that are so prone to moisture and they're so vulnerable and a highly complex system. And so that's why I would talk about masonry is so much more forgiving because you can have it can handle water a lot better in these other things. But that's part of the problem today is water is going to get inside your walls.
00:33:49:07 - 00:34:08:15
Austin
The question is when and does it do damage? And the problem is with how we build today is it does do damage and and it does have really bad health impacts for people like people don't get. That's new. But I think in 30 years people are going to be obsessing over mold in the House and things like that.
00:34:08:15 - 00:34:30:02
Austin
And it can be all sorts of codes about them. We already tried it. You know, you mentioned dehumidifiers. We're trying to put dehumidifiers in air systems, whole home filtration systems in because of indoor air quality can be five times worse than outdoor air quality in urban environments. That's crazy. And a lot of that is from the materials we're putting in our house is from the furniture and the, you know, all the stuff in the bromides and the fire retardants and all sorts of stuff.
00:34:30:21 - 00:34:33:09
Austin
But we just do this without any thought to human health.
00:34:33:26 - 00:34:37:29
Tuur
So you're saying like we basically live in plastic bags with a few breathing holes?
00:34:38:06 - 00:34:38:22
Marty
Yeah. No.
00:34:38:28 - 00:34:41:22
Kelly
Yes. It's more like a giant chemistry said yes.
00:34:41:22 - 00:34:42:03
Marty
Yeah.
00:34:42:03 - 00:35:03:00
Kelly
Yeah. And, and to what I am saying is like when you're, when you're building something, you have to consider like where, where's the water coming from, Where's it going to enter the house and how does it get out. So when you use brick these older, better building materials, you don't necessarily have to worry about that because it's more of a natural defense against that.
00:35:03:06 - 00:35:21:28
Kelly
You don't want to build, you know, an airtight brick house necessarily, but, you know, you may have to. Now, that's definitely not the case with like a two by four. If you're doing sticks right, you have to you have to seal the house. You have to make sure that there's not going to get any there's not going to be there's not going to be any water that gets in there.
00:35:21:28 - 00:35:45:00
Kelly
And if it gets in there, is it going to get trapped? Because that's you get mold. That's when you get all these other problems. The I mean, even on like jobs that we have now, we have a special a special consultant that reviews the plans for water to make sure that any any flat surface actually is sloped away from the building.
00:35:45:24 - 00:36:04:01
Kelly
They review all of the penetration details and make sure that like, hey, is there any special is there any water that's going to get in around the windows, around the doors? And then I have special inspections for all of that stuff. And this is just required by the insurance company because, you know, they're the ones that get sued and lose the money at the end of the day.
00:36:04:15 - 00:36:26:05
Kelly
But, you know, when you when you go back to you know, better building materials, it's not necessarily as much of a problem. I mean, like your your brick, your typical brick brick house is not like a chemistry set, like a house today is you know, you've got, like you said, all the things in the wood for flame retardants, which is like almost pointless.
00:36:26:14 - 00:36:44:07
Kelly
The whole idea is just to buy, you know, an extra 30, 30 seconds to a minute of time for somebody to escape. But then, like even the stuff that's in the floors, like the carpet or if you have like LV t the glue, I mean, there's so much glue in houses that people would be absolutely blown away that they literally live in like, you know.
00:36:44:17 - 00:36:45:12
Marty
Huffing glue all day.
00:36:45:12 - 00:36:46:29
Kelly
They're just other than.
00:36:46:29 - 00:36:48:13
Marty
Having the glue in their houses.
00:36:48:13 - 00:36:50:15
Kelly
Held together like kids, you're like, Holy cow.
00:36:50:15 - 00:36:52:14
Tuur
And this is serious. It's not just like, Oh, I.
00:36:52:25 - 00:37:15:00
Austin
I'm tired or something like that. Like, we're talking about profound effects on people. How does 41% of Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes? How are 80% of Americans overweight and like? It's not because people are just, you know, bad people or something. That environment and the lifestyle is destroying people's lives. The non the people with chronic disease in this country is skyrocketing.
00:37:15:06 - 00:37:33:29
Austin
You cannot have a productive society if you walk around and just look at like kids in high school nowadays and their health conditions and stuff, it is so sad and it's not their fault, you know? And then of course you've got people like, yeah, we got people saying eat cereal for dinner too, but you've got all sorts of problems there.
00:37:33:29 - 00:37:48:15
Austin
But another thing we don't talk about, you know, with all these glues, it's not just the people living in the house. Guess what? It's the people building the house, too, sawing those pieces of plywood, those formaldehyde and the glues and all this particle dust that you're breathing in. Yes, technically. Oh, she says wear a mask all the time.
00:37:48:15 - 00:38:03:02
Austin
No one does. I'm just going to be clear. We try to abide by all those rules. To be clear, I just mean like if you go to job sites and residential areas, if someone's getting a piece of plywood, look at they got a mask on, they do not. And their hands are touching these things. Our skin is highly, you know, porous material, absorbing all this stuff.
00:38:03:02 - 00:38:17:03
Austin
So we're destroying the people's lives that are building it, too. And of course, you know, but we don't care about that either and say we don't care about it. Most people, just the average consumer, doesn't know these things or think about these things. But as a culture and as societies and industry, I think we should talk about all these.
00:38:17:03 - 00:38:25:03
Tuur
Things well, and then regular people who get an inkling of this stuff going on are like, Well, that's capitalism for you. So then they're like.
00:38:25:18 - 00:38:27:09
Marty
We need to.
00:38:27:09 - 00:38:28:09
Tuur
Fix it all. Let's I.
00:38:28:09 - 00:38:28:25
Austin
Feel like that.
00:38:29:00 - 00:38:30:21
Kelly
The guy smoking a cigaret just like, oh.
00:38:30:28 - 00:38:37:10
Marty
No, not, not just no this is it's that's another thing that's sad.
00:38:37:10 - 00:38:37:20
Tuur
Right.
00:38:37:20 - 00:38:57:27
Marty
We've been talking about a lot or I've been talking about with a lot of people. We actually just had an economist on who worked at the Fed under Alan Greenspan episode drops tomorrow but like that was a big thing. Like he's running for Congress, like with the state of gold like convinced people like it's not capitalism, Like we don't live in a capitalist society.
00:38:58:06 - 00:39:14:13
Marty
And we've really anchored back to the first principles of us. Not living in a capitalist society is we don't have free market for money, which is the most important tool we use throughout the economy. You can't have a capitalist society if you have government controlled money, Like from that point on, everything is centralized to an extent.
00:39:14:19 - 00:39:35:09
Tuur
I love how Emily explains it to the kids. Basically, he's kind of like, just look at these buildings. Like these new buildings are ugly. They're built in a in a system where the government is everywhere. Look at the older buildings. They're amazing. This was built in a time when free markets actually had a had some room to breathe, you know, So like and.
00:39:35:09 - 00:39:53:09
Austin
Things we're getting financed by people in and you know in the area that we're doing right now. So they care because if you're often a boardroom in New York or something managing a fund or a family fund or whatever it is, you're just looking at spreadsheets to this day, decide where the next investment is going to go and you can be a great person.
00:39:53:09 - 00:40:08:21
Austin
Like, right? Some of those people are not. But I mean, some of them could be great people, but you're still just making decisions strictly based on a spreadsheet, strictly based on numbers you have. You don't care about Austin, you don't care about Oklahoma City. You just are looking at numbers and you think you can extract, you know, the most profit from this place.
00:40:08:21 - 00:40:13:22
Austin
And then when you only have 5 to 10 year holds, there is no incentive for anyone to build it really.
00:40:13:22 - 00:40:14:07
Tuur
Well, yeah.
00:40:14:08 - 00:40:15:03
Marty
Because it's going to be gone.
00:40:15:03 - 00:40:28:13
Austin
You're going to sell it. And that's why I love the old way of doing things is, I mean, just even 60 years ago or 80 years ago, developers were building and holding on to them. For a long time. There was no exit strategy in your incentives immediately.
00:40:28:15 - 00:40:42:28
Marty
Yes, it's crazy because in the world of real estate investment, the first questions are like, how, how well-built is this property going to be? Like, How happy are they going to be? Are the people that are living in it going to be It's like, what's the IRR? Yeah, like, what's my money?
00:40:43:12 - 00:40:50:27
Kelly
What's our end, what's our out, what's the air? Yeah, ten years are we doing 16%. Are we doing north of 15. Yeah. I don't want to look at it.
00:40:51:15 - 00:40:55:18
Tuur
Kelley in the car you were talking about the mobile homes like that was fascinating.
00:40:55:24 - 00:40:57:21
Marty
Yeah, we were talking about this at lunch. Yeah.
00:40:58:04 - 00:41:16:28
Kelly
And so in the summary in the conversation was that my dad and I have done a couple tours of mobile home factories in Phenix, and we're like looking around and we're like, That looks a lot like the stuff that we build, the same quality, same material, you know, cabinets are nice, countertops are probably a little bit different, maybe different flooring.
00:41:16:28 - 00:41:31:16
Kelly
But it's like, you know, overall in general, the construct ability of these things is pretty good. And then you get further into it and these guys are like, Yeah, if you want to upsize your sub, floors have thicker things. If you are ever to buy six exterior while we do all that and you're like, where you do all this?
00:41:31:28 - 00:42:01:05
Kelly
I thought, this is just something that I do on site, you know, that's just site build things that are the reason why site build is quote unquote nicer and better. But it's just gotten to the point now where, you know, their technologies have improved because they have to respond to certain markets. Right. They have different regulatory sets. But for us, it's like we're we're value engineering everything we possibly can to essentially have an affordable product on site.
00:42:01:16 - 00:42:27:12
Kelly
And then these guys are over here are like, yeah, I can do that for $0.40 on the dollar and it's just as good. And you're like, Well This is a problem. So I mean, it's just something that we're having to look at. You know, in economics we would call that substitution effect, right? Where as prices increase, people will look for essentially inferior goods because they just can't afford the price increases and wonder.
00:42:27:12 - 00:42:29:01
Austin
Why there's not affordable housing.
00:42:29:04 - 00:42:47:07
Kelly
Yeah, and and what it comes down to really I mean for for a lot of it is just, you know, the increase in the money supply causes generally an increase in prices across the board. But if your incomes don't go up 40% to afford the cost of the house, then 1 to 40%, then you have to find an alternative.
00:42:47:22 - 00:43:06:08
Kelly
So, you know, these things aren't like your your grandpa's trailer. And it's not like, you know, from trailer park boys. But at the same time, like, you know, with a few with a few changes to the countertops and the flooring and some of the fixtures in in this product, this is completely indistinguishable from what I can build on site.
00:43:06:27 - 00:43:29:00
Kelly
Right. And these guys, you know, you order it a month in advance, it takes them up to two weeks to build, depending on what you get. And they drop it off and put it on a a foundation and or excuse me, on on some stem walls or something like that. They set it and then a house and it's it's it's amazing.
00:43:29:06 - 00:44:05:00
Kelly
You know, it's amazing from both ends. Like you said, the technological increases in fulfilling a product that has to compete versus something that is site built and is just totally beaten by regulations and costs and all of these things that just eat away at it and it's it's it's sad to see. But like once you see it, you just it's completely understandable and it's like, I guess, you know, maybe this is what we should be doing now because our value and what we do is providing shelter to people.
00:44:05:06 - 00:44:22:23
Kelly
We, you know, we're developers and builders. We want to build and give people a place to live and get paid to do it. It is just what we want to do. So if I can't build an on site anymore and I have to do with, you know, modular prefab housing or something like that, then it just is what it is.
00:44:22:23 - 00:44:59:28
Kelly
There's there's no other way to solve the problem of, you know, however many people want shelter that can't afford it or can't get it based on, you know, the price. So it's a very interesting 22 where somebody, you know, we all want to have beautiful buildings and do beautiful things and build all this wonderful stuff. But, you know, the reality of the incentives is that, hey like unless you are going to do this out of your own pocket or you have a group of people that are willing to sit on this property for 30 or 50 years and have that patient capital approach, then this is what you have to do, you know, to survive.
00:45:00:06 - 00:45:00:18
Austin
And the problem.
00:45:01:15 - 00:45:02:21
Marty
As I say, is soul crushing.
00:45:03:21 - 00:45:27:05
Austin
The problem compounds because, you know, there's two points that where you're responding, you're right in the natural system, you have to provide housing because housing is even more and more badly needed because housing is getting more expensive. And so then and I think the mobile home is actually a really kind of smart response in some ways to the system because it's like providing the best quality housing you possibly can within the working system.
00:45:27:17 - 00:45:42:22
Austin
But once again, are you creating in the end great places that people are going to be using 200 years from now? No, of course not. But no one is today. You know, no one's really able to build those things. And there's two main problems with that. One is, you know, is it aimless or aimless? What the book Bitcoin, What does it say?
00:45:42:27 - 00:46:04:05
Austin
A moose. A moose. So he talks about, you know, the really the only physical limitation in the world is is human labor. Yeah. Human labor. And when you have to rebuild things every 50, 7500 years, you're just expending the same labor to do the same thing over and over again. You're never freeing that up to do something better or higher.
00:46:04:05 - 00:46:20:23
Austin
So you're kind of like stagnating as a society, just doing the same things over and never able to elevate, you know, beyond that. And then the second thing, we always complain about affordable housing. And I mean, politicians are just like, where's the affordable housing? How dare you? KELLEY, not build a hotel? How dare you? You're building brick houses.
00:46:20:29 - 00:46:35:11
Austin
Those are only for rich people. You know, I mean, we hear that a lot. And, you know, the reason well, there's a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons we don't have affordable housing, we don't have enough housing. And part of the reason we don't have enough housing is because all the current zoning and rules and regulations and all that.
00:46:35:11 - 00:46:50:08
Austin
But the second reason is because we don't build anything that lasts. So it's a supply and demand issue. We don't have housing, we don't have enough housing because there's not enough supply. And when you can't add to the actual supply, it's very difficult to add to the supply. I mean, you're just going to be in a perpetual state of problem.
00:46:50:18 - 00:46:52:03
Austin
Affordable housing is old housing.
00:46:52:15 - 00:46:55:26
Marty
You have a quite literally disintegrating supply because.
00:46:56:00 - 00:47:15:21
Tuur
Yeah, it's melting away. I mean, that's why I say it says like he says real estate is a shit coin because it literally melts away, the value melts away and the that be try to sell you on it because it's an extension of the fiat system, because all that mortgage money is like is basically coming from from them being pushed into into real estate.
00:47:15:21 - 00:47:36:18
Tuur
And so people are using have been using real estate as a as a monetary substitute to like for their savings. It's like, you know fiat money, cash money is one that melts away the fastest. Then you have bonds that melt away a little slower. And then real estate used to kind of be the best one, the best government issued coins, so to speak.
00:47:36:27 - 00:47:56:15
Tuur
And like, you know, here in Kelley stories like, well, basically we're going to slum standards. So this idea of like the American dream is like you get to own your own home. It's like, no, no, no. It's you get to own your own shack. Maybe if you can make payments on your 10% more, you know, So like that, like dream is starting to crumble.
00:47:56:21 - 00:48:21:08
Tuur
And I think that we have to question, like, the idea, like, is it really like, what is the what are you weighing what what is the the tradeoff nowadays, if you keep on pushing that narrative that everyone has to own their own home means at the expense of literally owning more bitcoin, right? I mean, that's the tradeoff. Like, are you going to have more Bitcoin or more, more equity in your shack?
00:48:21:15 - 00:48:47:12
Tuur
And so to me that that is is gone out the window. Like it's just no question that it's clearly better to own hard money and bide your time and eventually maybe buy your house in cash. You know, if if you want to. But yeah, it's it's people don't know their history either. And that like historically home ownership wasn't as ubiquitous not because everyone was poor and we lived in a feudal society, but because people had hard money and you would rather save in hard money.
00:48:47:18 - 00:49:08:14
Tuur
And then there was a specialized small part of the economy who would specialize in building homes, stewarding it for the next generation, maybe passing it on within the family. And they have a massive incentive to build high quality homes anyway and rent. But but yeah, real estate really has become a bitcoin, I'm afraid.
00:49:08:14 - 00:49:09:26
Austin
But don't worry, it all adds to GDP.
00:49:09:26 - 00:49:11:28
Marty
Everything's it's interesting.
00:49:11:28 - 00:49:14:14
Austin
It's like up he goes up.
00:49:14:14 - 00:49:16:06
Marty
We're like 2% this.
00:49:16:06 - 00:49:18:27
Austin
Year doing the same crap. We, you know, over.
00:49:18:27 - 00:49:19:24
Marty
And over and over everybody's.
00:49:19:24 - 00:49:20:18
Tuur
Working full.
00:49:20:18 - 00:49:22:23
Marty
Employment. Yeah I mean, but he's.
00:49:22:23 - 00:49:24:23
Kelly
Working to repair the house that just fell apart.
00:49:24:23 - 00:49:28:08
Marty
That they just got, Oh, we're winning. We're winning the game. Well, I.
00:49:28:08 - 00:49:30:02
Tuur
Mean, everybody was working in the Soviet.
00:49:30:02 - 00:49:40:03
Marty
Union, but it's like it's also creating this competency crisis as well. You were mentioning last night, it's hard for you guys to get bricks so hard.
00:49:40:15 - 00:49:58:28
Austin
They're everything about BRICS trades, all that. Just everything is starting to hit one. Everything's starting to centralize like brick, local family owned brick practices and stuff are getting bought up by the big companies. Private equity is coming in and buying up things like landscaping companies. And I know this in real estate, but health care clinics and things like that, it's a new big thing.
00:49:59:05 - 00:50:15:00
Austin
Kind of like, do we all want a bunch of private equity owning our health care clinics because they saw I don't know what they're seeing, but they're clearly seeing a profit opportunity. Yeah, some of that can be good with upgraded systems and all that. Like, don't get me wrong, I'm sure there can be some benefits, but my bet is going to be health care goes down.
00:50:15:09 - 00:50:33:18
Austin
Yeah, yeah. And we already spend this is crazy. 20% of our GDP. 20% of our GDP on health care in this country, the most of any country in the entire world. And we have the most some of the most unhealthy people in the entire world. Once again, how do you have a productive society when 20% of your GDP goes to health care?
00:50:33:18 - 00:50:39:07
Austin
And most of that's in the last couple of years of life or treating preventable chronic diseases?
00:50:40:01 - 00:50:40:09
Marty
Yeah.
00:50:41:03 - 00:50:42:10
Austin
It's irresponsible.
00:50:42:19 - 00:50:50:12
Marty
And like those private equity rules, they're not thinking about like, oh, let's increase the quality of health care for, oh, what's the IRR? How do hear people.
00:50:50:23 - 00:50:55:19
Austin
You know, because that's that's not good for profits. If we actually take care of people, we lose money. Yeah.
00:50:55:26 - 00:51:27:21
Marty
I mean, and it's like leading to the decay of the nuclear family is like the again going down the to to scenarios of day in the life in brutalist suburbia versus like a walkable city like one. The things that really resonate with me is like grandma, like going to pick up grandma. That's something in America that really dismays me and actually pisses me off, particularly right now, because my grandmother was living with my mom for about a year and then she just like she decided herself to move like a way.
00:51:27:21 - 00:51:45:17
Marty
It's like 65 and over community. It's like an hour away from my mom's house. I was like, What the fuck? Like, and she made that. My mom didn't want to leave, but she decided on her own. But the point being, the culture in America is such where it's like at the end of life, the people that raised us, that gave us the lives that we have today was like, all go in this whole.
00:51:45:21 - 00:51:55:05
Austin
The moment they can't drive it, you know, and the number of people over 80 years old or something like with the boomers aging I get everyone wants cars If you can't drive.
00:51:55:05 - 00:51:55:18
Tuur
A car.
00:51:55:26 - 00:52:10:03
Austin
Or by the way, do we want people that are 80 years old driving 70 miles an hour, frankly, like I've got kids in my car, You know what I mean? We're over 40. You know, there's over 40,000 traffic deaths a year in the US, and that's not including, you know, injuries and things like that or the cost of it.
00:52:12:15 - 00:52:22:15
Austin
Yeah, I think we're really I think people that age are going to care a lot less about cars when when they can't drive anymore. You know, they're going to wish they had different options for living.
00:52:22:28 - 00:52:48:16
Marty
Yeah. And it comes back to like not only quality of life, but like sound economic decisions. It's like when you have a big when you have a good nuclear family, then you have a very strong extended family in terms of aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, whatever it may be. I think that's one of the biggest problems of the world right now, and that's suburbia Day In the life that you described yesterday, it's likely two parents going to work to create two incomes just to survive.
00:52:48:16 - 00:53:07:08
Marty
And just then on top of that, they're paying daycare and schooling costs. And if you have these walkable cities where you have strong families and strong towns like the older the older generations and I'm taking care of the grandkids, it's the way it's been for millennia, the way it should be. But we've completely gone away from that here.
00:53:07:18 - 00:53:32:14
Tuur
Yeah, it's funny to or funny like kind of worrisome too, to drive around in the hill country here and just see like how the distances that people have to, like, travel to maintain their lifestyle. And you kind of like I kind of look at I remember like just looking at some development and yeah, it all has water, it has electricity, it has internet, but then it's like how much?
00:53:32:23 - 00:53:55:27
Tuur
I guess monetary energy is needed to keep the lights on in those kind of areas. And what if we go to like in an inflationary depression? Like honestly, I think a lot of the lights are going to go out in a lot of these suburban areas are just going to sit and decay. I remember visiting Spain in 2011 because they had a crazy real estate boom in 2006.
00:53:55:27 - 00:54:15:17
Tuur
The numbers were just insane. I think they were like consuming 20 or 30% of the world's concrete, you know, At the same time, they had like workers from Latin America pouring in, crazy building boom. You could basically build a house with like a thousand down. Like you could just, you know, they were just anybody was getting loans. And so then they had the bust.
00:54:15:17 - 00:54:41:15
Tuur
And I'm driving around there. I literally saw that like just completed developments that you could tell were just falling apart, were empty because they were too remote. Like the the it's literally the the the fact that socialism can calculate the fact that that you mis allocate resources during a credit bubble. Like I think we haven't seen that play out.
00:54:41:15 - 00:54:48:00
Tuur
Like that's going to happen in the next 2030 years in the U.S. like a lot of these developments aren't going to be long term sustainable.
00:54:48:12 - 00:54:56:24
Marty
Which is funny because that's counter to what the mainstream narrative is. It's like when they say when this inflationary crisis comes, you want to get out of the cities, but it's like they may have to.
00:54:56:24 - 00:55:14:16
Austin
But I have the opposite kind of thing because we already had the white flight, you know, in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties out to the suburbs. The thing is, the suburbs are now built out. You can only go so far out, you know, before life gets kind of more, more people. One of my friends says it's the more people that kind of like come to an urban environment, the better it gets.
00:55:14:16 - 00:55:32:01
Austin
The more people that go to a suburban environment, the worse it gets sometimes because traffic gets so bad and all that. That's kind of my theory is that a lot of these kind of stuff built in the past 40 years, especially the stuff built in about last 20, these kind of lower end subdivisions, isolated subdivisions, those will be the new kind of slums because you are not incentivized.
00:55:32:01 - 00:55:50:28
Austin
One, the houses are cheap too. They're actually people can't actually afford them even though they can afford to buy them. They can't afford to maintain them and those are very expensive to maintain. Three, they can't not incentivize maintain them because if they do, you know, spend, I don't know, $20,000 to do something their house, if their neighbors didn't do it, which they probably didn't, they're never going to get their money out of it.
00:55:50:28 - 00:56:05:13
Austin
So if you're smart, you actually don't maintain your house and you just sell it before. The fact is, if you maintain your house, you're going to lose money when you sell it, then once that starts happening is a little bit of degrading the wealth that people with options are going to move out. People with fewer options are going to move in with fewer resources.
00:56:05:13 - 00:56:32:13
Austin
As the House degrades property taxes start going down, appraisals start going down, the infrastructure starts crumbling that the private developer put in and then the city takes over. But the property tax don't actually cover it. That starts degrading and then basically no one wants to live there and it becomes kind of the Section eight housing thing where the only people that live there are the people that don't have choices and then they're isolated without work, without schools, without hospitals, by doctors and services, and, you know, maybe electric car, you know, self-driving cars and all that can help these things.
00:56:32:13 - 00:56:53:08
Austin
And once again, sounds I sound really like apocalyptic about that. The thing is I think people are amazingly resilient, too. And so these things will actually lead to opportunities to build something new for communities, to bond together, to take care of each other. So it's not like one all hopeless, but it's just like what we do matters. And I feel like there's just so much of the world, just like, let's.
00:56:53:08 - 00:56:55:03
Marty
Just do shit, let's just do shit.
00:56:55:10 - 00:57:10:16
Austin
And and then it's just all going to turn out great. It's like, no, this actually, like, affects people in profound ways. Like, just this is the purpose of life, you know, like, is to build a better world. And, you know, we just don't talk about that. When you talk about the spreadsheets.
00:57:11:10 - 00:57:17:14
Marty
Well, awesome. Nobody's going to bond together and build something. You need the government to build the roads. Course. Of course, of course.
00:57:17:14 - 00:57:39:13
Tuur
Actually, I was thinking of government I Bastrop, which is that town I was mentioning, historic town. They have like a 30 year plan. So you can like, download online and it's kind of like how they're going to grow the city of responsibly. And they literally the what you're talking about totally confirmed by the government. They're basically saying it's not sustainable to have sprawl.
00:57:39:20 - 00:58:01:14
Tuur
So they have that. Basically they're limiting the lot sizes and they're limiting how how, how much sprawl will be allowed over time, which I think is smart. And it's going to it's going to make it a lot more sustainable than towns that don't do that and then end up with a wasteland, basically, that they can't afford to render the services like.
00:58:01:14 - 00:58:04:08
Tuur
I mean, all these things cost money like picking a lot of money.
00:58:04:21 - 00:58:07:05
Austin
Sewer lines, I mean, gosh, expensive.
00:58:07:10 - 00:58:25:12
Kelly
Yeah. And well and that's that's something that strong towns when Chuck put it out there you know when I had found I was like, you know, oh, wow. Like I pay for all of this infrastructure to go in in, in Arizona, you have houses that are responsible for private sewer lines, private water lines, all this sort of stuff.
00:58:25:25 - 00:58:49:17
Kelly
And, you know, theoretically, the math works, that whoever lives there is going to pay to replace the infrastructure and that may have sounded good and worked like, you know, 30, 30 years ago, 20 years ago even. But now we're at a point where, you know, if MTA is increasing generally at like 8% a year, you know, are people able to afford to replace the water sewer now?
00:58:50:24 - 00:59:11:19
Kelly
You know, and like what awesome saying if if it is publicly maintained, there's absolutely no way the math works. Not not even by like longshot. You'd have to increase property taxes by like a multiple of five just to pay for stuff today, not tomorrow, not in the future, not any of that. So like I say in.
00:59:11:19 - 00:59:12:24
Tuur
Silicon Times.
00:59:12:24 - 00:59:13:07
Marty
Five.
00:59:13:17 - 00:59:38:18
Kelly
So you'd have to you'd have to increase the essentially property taxes just for the portion of infrastructure, not for like public schools and all this stuff. It has to be like a multiple of five. In some cases. It depends on the city, because every municipality does differently. It could be an entire order of magnitude more. So, you know, there is no there is no ability for especially governments to be able to do the math, to maintain or replace what already exist.
00:59:38:19 - 00:59:43:24
Tuur
But but but. KELLEY I'm locked into my 3% mortgage for 30 years. Like, I'm going to be fine, right?
00:59:43:25 - 00:59:46:24
Kelly
You're going to you're going to be locked into a 100 year mortgage with the sort.
00:59:46:24 - 00:59:47:12
Marty
Of market at.
00:59:47:24 - 00:59:48:10
Kelly
This rate.
00:59:48:10 - 00:59:51:28
Austin
Yeah. You know, what was that? It Was it Mississippi? This was two or three years ago.
00:59:52:05 - 00:59:53:07
Marty
The water pipeline. Yeah.
00:59:54:03 - 01:00:14:24
Austin
Yeah. Water pipe, the like, the whole city. I mean, I think it was the one of the big cities in Mississippi. I can't remember. I mean, they were just like out of water for wasn't just a week, months like months. Yeah. And they were like and I mean, I know Mississippi as a poor state and all that, but I think there's a lot of things like that coming as our aging infrastructure happens and there's just not money.
01:00:15:00 - 01:00:26:02
Austin
We're just not used to that of being told no, like there's not money. We're like, What do you mean there's not money? We can't. We just like, print it can't we just borrow it? Local municipalities can't do that, you know. And I think you're going to see more of that.
01:00:26:15 - 01:00:43:08
Kelly
In something to keep in mind along with all of this is that a lot of the the sewer, sewer and water infrastructure in municipalities is not paid for by those municipalities. They get federal grants for those. Wow. So like in the situation, Mississippi, if I'm not mistaken.
01:00:43:18 - 01:00:45:22
Marty
That's so bad. I don't know.
01:00:46:07 - 01:01:04:00
Kelly
This is I swear, this is not a general fund. This is not a tumor. Pod freaks. But and this harks back to the conversation to and I had, you know, the first time we talked, he said he was absolutely horrified about some of the stuff I was saying. I was like, I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just telling you, like, the facts, ma'am.
01:01:04:00 - 01:01:27:07
Kelly
You know, like, that's it. And so those efforts, all the infrastructure was originally paid for by, you know, a federal grant. And then like in situation with Mississippi, it ended up being like, I think was like a 45 or $50 million repair that had to be done because they couldn't even exist excuse me, they couldn't afford to maintain the existing infrastructure that they had at a fraction of that cost.
01:01:27:16 - 01:01:59:21
Kelly
So that's why it became such a hub of, if I recall correctly, that the the expense to repair the literal one section of the plant was so expensive that they just were so expensive to maintain that they just couldn't even do it. So, you know, it just adds the layer of complexity to an existing situation where all of this stuff can only be afforded by our ability to, you know, print money, to have debt, to afford a certain level of debt.
01:02:00:04 - 01:02:22:14
Marty
Well, that's I mean, I've got a few thoughts here. Like, I know you touched on it last night, and it's probably not the solution, but it seems like we need some form of creative destruction where we recognize the sprawls bad and it's like, let's consolidate, like let's get back into the whole figuratively, like run back and like consolidate to make sure that we don't have this large maintenance problem get worse.
01:02:22:27 - 01:02:42:24
Marty
And the other thing, like we've been checking out Chuck a lot, but I think that book is one of the most important books that's been written in the last couple of decades. But like really to attack the problem from a ground up perspective is like internalizing and people focus on revenue per square foot. That's how you're actually going to be able to maintain all this infrastructure, if you like.
01:02:42:24 - 01:02:50:29
Marty
Literally look at the square footage of the properties within your municipality. Focus on revenue per square foot and you can begin to like climb back and solve these problems.
01:02:51:03 - 01:03:05:13
Austin
Yeah, that would be real capitalism, you know, where you're like saying, Hey, you live in this area. Here's the cost of the infrastructure in that area and here's how much you have to pay to cover the infrastructure in that area. And if we did that everywhere, we would be so much better. People pay for what they're using and the way they're.
01:03:05:13 - 01:03:11:08
Austin
But I don't have a problem if you can afford suburbia, great. But we're I'm just against subsidizing it.
01:03:11:08 - 01:03:19:08
Marty
You know, it goes back to like you were you were describing last night was the drive thru for the coffee. Yeah. Like they've literally constructed it where it's like, we don't even want people to come in here. It's just.
01:03:19:13 - 01:03:19:28
Austin
You know, it's too.
01:03:19:28 - 01:03:20:27
Marty
Slow. And that's what.
01:03:21:08 - 01:03:26:02
Kelly
We've built on. It's, it's an 800 square foot box and 400 of it is the freezer.
01:03:26:23 - 01:04:10:07
Marty
Wow. It's like I think about my parents and, uh, and Havertown, like, my dad's since passed, but they had this coffee shop, like, on Derby Road, like our local, like, main road. But it was walkable and it's probably 300 square foot if that. But it was a community place. They would do artwork on the window. They had outdoor seating and it's like a place where when you were describing the drive through is completely, um, uh, take out the ability for these serendipitous interactions where I've seen it at my parents coffee shop, like it's a community meeting space where people come grab coffee, chat up the Priuses, chat up the other patrons, sit outside, maybe go
01:04:10:07 - 01:04:31:18
Marty
to yoga down the street before or after. I think that and where you temporarily in Philadelphia, where I'm from. And it's a very strong community, which I'm proud of, but because of these small businesses and I gave my dad strong towns a couple of years ago and he was like, holy shit, revenue per square foot. And like he applied that to what he was doing at the coffee shop.
01:04:31:25 - 01:04:51:02
Austin
And the community thing is so important where you're talking about because I really I think most people in this country, including myself, kind of had a confused idea of what the what community means because you see a lot of stuff marketed as community, like everything's marketed as community in this place. Every shitty suburban subdivision is marketed as luxury and community and whatever, you know, Pine Creek forest and there's no pines.
01:04:51:02 - 01:04:51:23
Austin
It creates a forest.
01:04:51:23 - 01:04:52:00
Marty
But.
01:04:53:19 - 01:05:11:05
Austin
You know, I think community, we try to make it once again about the big things where it's like maybe there's like two events a year, you know, and I'm not against those. Those can be great additive things. We actually do this in our neighborhood. I live in old neighbor. It's a great little neighborhood, but it's still kind of like 7000 square foot lots.
01:05:11:05 - 01:05:31:21
Austin
Very it should be kind of suburban, actually, but I know my neighbors directly next to me and we check take out the trash, grab the mail, whatever, and have nice little relationships. But then they archway, you know, throws two year, two events a year or something. And I go and I don't remember, you know, I'm like, Oh, what's your name again?
01:05:31:21 - 01:05:40:18
Austin
You know, like you're having the same conversation over cause you don't have any of the small touches. And it's always kind of like when you don't remember people's names. And so we think it's like community isn't about being best friends with everyone.
01:05:40:25 - 01:05:41:27
Tuur
We have so.
01:05:41:27 - 01:06:07:20
Austin
Small capacity for like friendship. Once you have like, family and work and kind of your basics, it's like, let me get together with my friends, you know, once, twice, three times a month maybe. And then outside that what you need to have an actual community, which is really, I think maybe a better term is neighborly connections because it is that like five second, 32nd, 62nd five minute interaction that actually just creates a little bonds over time.
01:06:07:20 - 01:06:34:15
Austin
And there's this book called Oversubscribed. It's a marketing book, but he uses this analogy. He calls it the 7-Eleven, 7-Eleven for real. And I can't remember the exact specifics of it, but he says in today's economy, for people to make a like an expensive purchasing choice, they need to spend 7 hours over 11 separate interactions in four different locations before they will buy from you.
01:06:34:15 - 01:06:57:29
Austin
For say so say build buying a house for me. They need 7 hours of interactions over 11 different instances and four different locations and locations could be a newsletter, a podcast, in-person, an event, open house, whatever. And you can apply this to anything. But that kind of blew my mind because I was like if that's what people need to make a purchasing choice, what do people need in terms of the amount of touches to feel a sense of belonging?
01:06:59:00 - 01:07:05:08
Austin
You know what I mean? And once again, the different context of seeing someone at the park, at the coffee shop, running into someone.
01:07:05:21 - 01:07:06:27
Tuur
It's not a big deal.
01:07:07:02 - 01:07:31:04
Austin
And that it actually allows you to have connections with people that you completely disagree with your friends. You probably want to share a lot of values. The people I want to invite into my home, that's a very intimate thing. If I want to make plans to go to dinner with you, that's a pretty intimate thing. And but just to be able to like, hey, someone could be opposite of me, but we can play, you know, in the party that our kids can play, we can on the playground or play play a game of spike ball or volleyball or something like that, or who knows what is CGI at the coffee shop.
01:07:31:13 - 01:07:34:07
Austin
There's just a million things to create those bonds.
01:07:34:07 - 01:07:55:16
Marty
Yeah, we've we've been doing this more. We I was proud last night. We were like juxtaposing what schools used to be to what they are now. Like our oldest is four and he's going to, to school and it's at like a school house. And that's where we have these small interactions drop off. And we actually started going to church at the school just because we wanted to build more within that community.
01:07:55:16 - 01:08:11:28
Marty
And it has like it, it feels more comfortable drop off now. You see somebody at church and say, What's up? It's got drop off and it is that the small feels so different. We're like here in the elevator, even here in this beautiful building. Like that's one thing I always try to do is like, say, what's up to people in the elevator?
01:08:11:28 - 01:08:14:04
Marty
But you can tell, like, most people are like, like in the.
01:08:14:04 - 01:08:15:25
Tuur
Quarter. Yeah. You stop. Interesting. Yeah.
01:08:16:08 - 01:08:17:08
Marty
Yeah, yeah. Please don't tell.
01:08:17:08 - 01:08:45:13
Tuur
Me what Awesome was talking about. Reminded me that after the pandemic, when I went back to. To Belgium, to, uh, to my hometown, I, um. It was like Sunday morning I went to get, um, um, um, pastries for, uh, for the family at the bakery that, the neighborhood bakery that, you know, I'd always go to growing up and, um, the, the lady, you know, selling the, the bread and pastries was the same lady that had been working there for 20 years.
01:08:45:13 - 01:09:07:05
Tuur
And so it had been like ten years that we had talked again and, and, uh, we had never, ever talked before. We always had those, like, little tiny interactions over a span of ten years. What I would like go there and like she trusted me enough to, like, tell her about her, like, you know, the divorce and how hard it was and like, it was like, it was pretty amazing.
01:09:07:05 - 01:09:22:17
Tuur
You know, how like, I think you're totally right. It like, all this, it it adds up and it builds so much trust, even if it doesn't, you know, one when you're in it and when you're used to it, it might not feel like much, but when you like, start living without it, it really is very different.
01:09:22:17 - 01:09:29:17
Austin
It's the disintegration of the social fabric. Yeah, it really is. We didn't I didn't understand this that like good manners and things like.
01:09:29:23 - 01:09:30:07
Marty
Mm.
01:09:31:01 - 01:09:35:13
Austin
I don't mean like, Yes, ma'am. Yes, sir. I was just saying hi. Thank you. Appreciate it. Please.
01:09:35:13 - 01:09:36:10
Marty
Holding the door.
01:09:36:10 - 01:10:01:07
Austin
Holding the door are actually little moments to just like of humanity with each other that create these small connections of like, I see you and and it's not just about me and my own little head and those that's actually part of the glue that holds society together. And I mean, there's like, that thing of if you tell someone, I don't call someone ugly, how many like compliments it takes to kind of like make up for them emotionally and it's like seven or ten.
01:10:01:07 - 01:10:21:25
Austin
I can't remember what it is, but like the amount of positive interactions to overcome a negative interaction and you're always going to have negative interactions, but you need the possibility to have lots of positive interactions. And with completely taking that away because it's just once again isolation from home, isolation and car isolation to work, you know, and you don't have the opportunities for those to unfold organically.
01:10:22:11 - 01:10:25:10
Marty
When you get the work against the cube. Yeah, yeah. Right.
01:10:25:27 - 01:10:26:08
Austin
Right.
01:10:27:12 - 01:10:28:25
Kelly
Isolated in the cube all day.
01:10:29:08 - 01:10:30:10
Marty
Yeah. I mean.
01:10:30:17 - 01:10:32:07
Kelly
At home, in the car work.
01:10:32:12 - 01:10:49:28
Marty
Yeah. We need to get away from this. It's, it's soul sucking now. Yeah. I'm thinking back to my mom. My mom now. Uh, she works for, like, a legal firm, and she got an email last week like, Oh, we don't want you listening to podcasts in your cube, like, you need to be attentive. And I was like, Holy fuck, I'm going to get you out of there, by the way.
01:10:49:28 - 01:10:51:04
Marty
But it's like.
01:10:52:20 - 01:10:53:05
Tuur
Go ahead.
01:10:53:09 - 01:11:11:20
Austin
Oh, was can say, I think what we're estimating is based on what we're doing and of course market by market but I think it's going to cost is probably between 50 to 80 million per block to really rebuild a block, you know which is really generally foreign is for foreign to be by foreign feet. Maybe it's a couple of acres or something, but that's it.
01:11:11:22 - 01:11:26:12
Austin
But we can create so much density there, you know, And I mean, but that's like what it is like when we're talking about because real estate is an expensive, expensive thing, you know, But like, it's like basically $60 million to $70 million a block for us to kind of like rebuild and create village by.
01:11:26:19 - 01:11:29:23
Tuur
Like ten Bitcoin per block sounds doable.
01:11:29:24 - 01:11:36:19
Marty
So to this point, you're like, do you think Bitcoin democratizing real estate as a store value can actually accelerate the rebuilding? Yeah. Of more.
01:11:36:19 - 01:11:37:21
Tuur
Beauty. Absolutely. Sure.
01:11:37:27 - 01:11:38:24
Austin
What was the question?
01:11:39:05 - 01:11:46:28
Marty
Bitcoin basically taking the monetary premium that exists in real estate now. People realizing like this isn't a good store value, like bitcoin's a better store of value.
01:11:47:07 - 01:12:05:18
Tuur
The word that keeps coming back there is a Belgian economist and he wrote this book called Gigantism and which I think is such an interesting work, is he's talking about like the just endless sprawl of bureaucracy and those kind of things. But but it's such a good word, I think, to to to point out those things that a lot of people call capitalism.
01:12:05:18 - 01:12:47:21
Tuur
But actually what it is, is like, you know, the fiat system, it like messes up the endocrine system of the economy and it leads to like hyper growth particular areas. And so we're growing these extra limbs that like are basically not functional. And and so what happens once you have like a you know, ultimately we'll have like a cobra little like they had in 2001 in Argentina where like the banks just closed down and like there's a massive devaluation and this big shock and what happens then is the capital retreats and I think real estate, it'll that'll reveal that real estate actually is very heterogeneous like, heterogenous in the sense that not every house is
01:12:47:21 - 01:13:10:07
Tuur
the same, not every neighborhood is the same. What you saw happen in 2001, Argentina was prices all across the country, went down massively, except when a scientist only had a dip of 20%. That's kind of crazy if you think about it, right? I mean, and that because that actually a healthy city, the backbone of which was constructed in under hard money and or free markets.
01:13:11:00 - 01:13:32:22
Tuur
And so I think that that will happen in the U.S. and Europe like once we have those shocks, monetary shocks, it's kind of like in a way, the the the the excess hormone gets adjusted and it gets normalized. And of course, the the body needs time to adjust to this new situation. But it is long term what needs to happen to regain economic health.
01:13:33:10 - 01:13:57:05
Austin
And do you think, you know, real estate isn't just like a store of value like Bitcoin is? I mean, right now, because Bitcoin is on the rise, It's honestly, it's not just a store value. It's also speculative, you know, investment. Essentially in the long run, the goal isn't really for Bitcoin to be that right, because that part of it is too stable, or at least my understanding, to stabilize and real estate where that comes in after a well now or whatever.
01:13:57:05 - 01:14:16:00
Austin
But I mean is real estate is not just a store of value, it is a highly cash flowing, you know, store of value. It's store value plus cash flow that's paying, you know, a substantial dividend every year to keep you let you accumulate another pile of money to go, you know, that you might want to store in Bitcoin and then go do something else.
01:14:16:06 - 01:14:20:16
Austin
And so I think these are two, you know, things that work symbiotically.
01:14:20:28 - 01:14:35:08
Tuur
But, but also I would say it's a way to leave a legacy. You know, like imagine like, you know, you're 60 years old, your Bitcoin, like build it like a a brick church for your community or something like what a legacy. You know, it's just those kind of things.
01:14:35:08 - 01:14:37:09
Marty
As Kelly said last night, don't let your meme speed dream.
01:14:37:10 - 01:15:00:28
Kelly
Don't let your meme just be dreams. The citadel starts in your backyard. Um, yeah. I mean, it's it's a pretty it's a pretty wild experiment. I do think that the monetary premium is slowly being siphoned, especially, you know, by people such as you and I or whoever that's renting and is not, you know, aping into a house on their W-2.
01:15:00:28 - 01:15:23:05
Kelly
Right So, you know, the idea is that if I'm if I'm going to store the value I've created and what I've been paid in in Bitcoin, you know, versus the traditional model of, hey, I need to buy a house so that I build equity so that, you know, in ten years or whatever I can trade up or I can sell and don't downsize or, you know, like lot of the boomers are trying to sell and downsize.
01:15:23:05 - 01:15:45:16
Kelly
But the problem is they have nobody to sell to. So I do think it'll get siphoned over time. And we were talking last night with the group at dinner that, you know, like what what what is the actual value of real estate if you had to price it today, You know, if you or you know, if you had priced it today on a Bitcoin standard, like what is it?
01:15:45:16 - 01:16:11:29
Kelly
What is it really? Is it the cash flowing element that it's worth? Is it the value of, you know, building a church in the neighborhood that's going to last for, you know, 500 years or whatever? How do you do that? And I think the answer is that you can't you can't do that today the way that we have money and that if you have a hard and sound money, then you can make those calculations because you have something that will protect, you know, your purchasing power over a very long period of time.
01:16:13:02 - 01:16:40:01
Kelly
I think. I think was it last night somebody was talking about the when you build a cathedral, if you have money over a hundred years, that if it stays or was at a dinner, it might have been a dinner. I think he was bit was talking about it that if you wanted to build a cathedral it would take you a hundred plus years and that if you used gold, you know, at the time, you could afford to do that because your purchasing power was essentially protected over that period of time.
01:16:40:12 - 01:16:59:16
Kelly
But if you had to do that where inflation was 2%, you'd make it 50 years, so you couldn't even afford to build the thing. And if you apply that to how we build and plan our built environment today, it's not about like, you know, even building a freeway. Yeah. Is I expect it's going to be there a hundred years, but I don't build it.
01:16:59:16 - 01:17:22:15
Kelly
So that last 100 years, you know, I don't it's a common joke in every city you go to that the freeway is still always under construction, you know, it's never finished. It's like, well, that's because the way that it's built, it can never be finished. It always has to be, you know, repaired sections, replaced, expanded the utilities under it, fixed like there's all of these things that have to happen.
01:17:22:15 - 01:17:29:14
Kelly
So it's very difficult to make, you know, the long term calculations when you know, your money doesn't even last the long term.
01:17:29:15 - 01:17:55:02
Marty
Yeah, I think we discussed this the first time you came on the show, Kelly, But when I was living in Chicago, like that was the most annoying thing was like spring and summer. It was impossible to drive in the city because there was so much construction because they had to redo the roads after it snowed and you salted and you plowed the roads and it all got fucked up and, uh, eventually became known that like it was on purpose.
01:17:55:02 - 01:18:14:16
Marty
It was just essentially this jobs program or the city would use like mid-grade gravel to repay the road every, every year so that it would inevitably get messed up in the winter during the snow time so that they'd have construction jobs in the spring and summer. It's like redo it. And it's like, Oh, that very.
01:18:14:16 - 01:18:16:00
Austin
Perverse GDP.
01:18:16:05 - 01:18:26:10
Marty
Yes, exactly. And it's like, you know, if you use a high grade cement or gravel to do this, you could construct in a way maybe have to repair it every ten years, not every every spring. Yeah.
01:18:27:01 - 01:18:34:29
Austin
I mean, the Romans figured out how to build roads. Okay, people 2000 years ago figured out how to build roads that can last longer than what we built today. I mean, come on.
01:18:35:03 - 01:18:41:13
Marty
Yeah. You go to Philadelphia like cobble street roads that were built in the 1700s. They're still there. And, you know, I mean.
01:18:41:22 - 01:18:43:22
Austin
Dutch still do it. I mean, I see pictures.
01:18:43:25 - 01:19:07:12
Tuur
Yeah. I grew up on a cobblestone street, and actually the city wanted to replace the whole thing, like just tarmac. And, uh, we organized a protest, and only because the the there was a historic building, like, was one commission able to kind of secure a part of the street to remain in cobblestone, that it was like historically authentic looking.
01:19:07:20 - 01:19:26:04
Tuur
But yeah, it's, it's sad, you know, it's it's a it's just assuming that there's always going to be money to maintain this this new way of doing things, which is like looks simpler on paper. But in the long run, the costs are far higher, you know, and also like the natural fact of cobblestones, like cars to slow down when they drive on cobblestones.
01:19:26:06 - 01:19:26:13
Tuur
Yeah.
01:19:26:21 - 01:19:54:01
Marty
And you brought this up last night because again, the Fiat system is like the big meme in the world right now, whether it's really the climate or building houses like sustainability. And they use things like LEED lead certifications and like all this insulation stuff to be like, All right, if you don't hit the certification of this insulation, you're not sustainable, which is the exact opposite, cause it is not sustainable from a physical standpoint or economically over the course of 30 years.
01:19:54:01 - 01:19:57:12
Marty
And like what you're building is way more sustainable.
01:19:57:18 - 01:19:59:05
Tuur
Like objectively.
01:19:59:06 - 01:20:07:03
Marty
Yes, like extending time horizon of sustainability. Like people think again in quarters, years, maybe a decade.
01:20:07:22 - 01:20:09:02
Kelly
And people whether or not electric.
01:20:09:02 - 01:20:13:02
Austin
Cars are going to make the world sustainable. Do you have any idea how many resources.
01:20:13:06 - 01:20:14:01
Marty
How much coal today?
01:20:14:13 - 01:20:25:21
Austin
I'm not saying it's like I'm better than combustion engine. I'm not an expert. Also pickups that twice as much as old pickups that can go 0 to 60 and 3 seconds. That sounds like a great idea, doesn't it?
01:20:26:02 - 01:20:38:18
Marty
And then like sustainable like from a capital perspective, you make a very strong argument. The opportunity cost of time capital would increase massively under an EV fleet because of the time it takes to charge the car. It'll take you like.
01:20:38:18 - 01:20:40:01
Austin
Maintainability is going to be a big issue.
01:20:40:01 - 01:20:43:04
Marty
I imagine the lines to charge your car when we get this out.
01:20:44:17 - 01:20:47:22
Austin
And the draw on the electricity grid, which we can't actually support.
01:20:47:22 - 01:20:48:01
Marty
Yeah.
01:20:48:13 - 01:21:06:21
Austin
The tire learn this one that we talk about, you know, air quality and yes, it doesn't have the combustion engine and stuff like that and those emissions. But a huge part of air quality in cities is is the dust kicked up, the silica dust kicked up off highways, and then also the tire wear of all this rubber, you know, in the air.
01:21:06:21 - 01:21:31:01
Austin
And then there are some articles that are arguing about whether electric cars have more of that because they're heavier and I don't really care. But you're saying, like even taking away the combustion emissions, you're still making the air really unhealthy your cities by focusing only as cars. And you know, I'm not against cars at all. It's more just car light, you know, like other means of getting around where you shouldn't have to have a car to do anything.
01:21:31:04 - 01:21:51:05
Austin
You know, I think that's was pretty awesome, actually. You know, I'm pretty obsessed with Dutch cities, right, Because I think they've really they're not like ultra dense, like even a Paris or something. That's all these big apartment buildings. It's actually more Rome based and a little bit less dense. I think it's like 20 average, like 2020 units to an acre stuff.
01:21:51:05 - 01:22:02:12
Austin
But they still have they've got cars, but they've got lots and lots of bike lanes, but they're protected bike lanes and they teach kids to ride bikes when they're like three or four years old or something. When you think about the independence and the health and all those things right from that.
01:22:03:05 - 01:22:28:26
Tuur
Yeah, I mean, I do feel some compassion for like the central planners. They just kind of pile them together. But because I'm just thinking about really I was reading that Robert Caro book, the first part of the LBJ biography, where he talks about, you know, Lyndon Johnson growing up here in the Hill country, like just in the 1920s, and he literally this is 100 years ago, he he went to Austin by donkey.
01:22:29:09 - 01:22:48:25
Tuur
So, you know, this is like the and so in 100 years we went from that to like everything we have around here is just like staggering was the amount of change that has happened. I mean and I think it was 150 years ago, there were only like 100,000 immigrants, new immigrants living in Texas, like and now we're what 30 million or something.
01:22:49:12 - 01:23:08:23
Tuur
But so, yeah, anyway, like, I feel like just they're very wrong and it's incredibly destructive what's happening. But kind of emotionally, it's like I kind of get that from so much change that some people can really have a reaction of like, Oh, we got to, you know, control is somehow and let the government take care of things.
01:23:09:05 - 01:23:09:27
Marty
Yeah, but.
01:23:09:27 - 01:23:10:15
Tuur
They're so wrong.
01:23:10:29 - 01:23:24:15
Marty
Yeah, I don't I don't have as much compassion for them as, uh, Kelly's got to hop on a flight. We could go on. I wish this could be a five hour podcast, so there's so much more we could talk about. But before we wrap up, Favorite city in the world.
01:23:25:10 - 01:23:33:26
Kelly
Who in the world had to be NBA for living?
01:23:33:26 - 01:23:53:27
Tuur
Austin, Texas. I love this place is like living in a startup and for kind of like, you know, the conversation talking about I mean, I, I have to say Bruges Incredible. It's incredible. Um, downtown Bruges just has everything. Everything you want and there's beauty around every corner.
01:23:54:24 - 01:23:59:22
Austin
I think I'll ultimately end up liking brews the best when I go. But like, honestly, the.
01:23:59:22 - 01:24:01:11
Kelly
Disclaimer is that it's hard to get me to.
01:24:01:11 - 01:24:02:19
Marty
Like, it's more like.
01:24:02:24 - 01:24:25:15
Austin
Just enchants me to some degree. It's not just the urbanism, the vernacular, but even, yeah, the Duomo and stuff and how that got built, what it is of course, masonry is, you know. So just even the dome itself, I wrote a whole book on it, you know, and I just, and the timing of it and all the, the cultural things around Florence you know, that were happening, I just find so inspiring and they didn't think they could.
01:24:25:17 - 01:24:31:18
Austin
That's what's crazy. It's like they're not any different than we are now. Like, we just automatically would be like, That's impossible because of blah blah.
01:24:31:18 - 01:24:32:01
Marty
Blah blah, blah.
01:24:32:01 - 01:24:38:19
Austin
Blah, blah, blah blah. And I'm like, That's stupid. Of course it's possible. All it takes is some people to decide that's possible. So that's what I'm going to build.
01:24:38:19 - 01:24:39:05
Kelly
Build, build.
01:24:39:08 - 01:24:46:04
Marty
If not you, then hell yeah, that's right. I'm not as well-traveled, severe as my favorite city that I've ever been.
01:24:46:04 - 01:25:02:03
Austin
So like when I was backpacking, that trip I talked about at the beginning, you know, that kind of set me off on this journey. I spent some time there really, really wonderful. More of like an organic, medieval city. I think it's got like the winding streets. It's don't get lost or something, you know, like Barcelona.
01:25:02:04 - 01:25:09:26
Marty
Yeah, We, uh, my wife and I got married over in Spain, and we, we started in severe. We went to Ronda where we had our our party.
01:25:10:13 - 01:25:12:20
Austin
And then and they were talking about the bridge over the gorge.
01:25:12:20 - 01:25:29:18
Marty
Yeah, that's where my profile picture on Twitter is, like under that gorge. And, um, we were supposed to go to Madrid for, like, a week and a half, and we wound up going for three days because we went back to severe. We're like, we're going back to Syria for a week. It was so beautiful. Um, but gentlemen, thank you for the work you're doing.
01:25:30:08 - 01:25:44:20
Marty
It's extremely important. Again, if not you, then who? I think we can do this one block at a time when we just need. I think more people are beginning to recognize us as well. Um, as they see it in their everyday lives. There's nothing like inflation hitting you in the face. Like, All right, what the hell is the problem?
01:25:44:20 - 01:25:57:28
Marty
And we need to fix the money. We need to fix our physical space. And I think it seems a little, uh, dark right now, but I think we can get to a better place.
01:25:57:28 - 01:26:00:01
Tuur
We're not going to let this crisis go to waste.
01:26:00:07 - 01:26:10:02
Austin
A little light in darkness goes a long ways, you know? It really does. And it starts attracting the people that see it and want to value and build off of it. So that's really what really hopeful get.
01:26:10:04 - 01:26:13:23
Kelly
You can't get yourself out of a situation unless you accept that you're in a situation.
01:26:13:24 - 01:26:17:22
Marty
Yes. All right. One more or less trope. We're going to win people over.
