[HN Gopher] Bill and Melinda Gates: America's Top Farmland Owner
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Bill and Melinda Gates: America's Top Farmland Owner
Author : jelliclesfarm
Score : 486 points
Date : 2021-01-14 18:00 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (landreport.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (landreport.com)
| croes wrote:
| The important part is "private owner". Most land is owned by
| corporations, that's more to worry about.
| nend wrote:
| The title seems wrong, as the article specifies:
|
| "our researchers identified dozens of different entities that
| own the Gateses' assets"
|
| It doesn't seem to specify how much Bill and Melinda privately
| own, but it seems like the majority is owned by organizations.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Irrelevant, but is "Gateses" really the correct way to
| pluralize the name?
| sprayk wrote:
| Yes. Source: last name is single syllable and ends in -es.
| Also I googled it to make sure I wasn't making things up.
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/what-
| happens-t...
| beerandt wrote:
| For ownership purposes in most jurisdictions in the US,
| _private ownership_ is anything that 's not government.
|
| It includes individuals, privately-held & publically-traded
| corporations, and most trusts or other legal entities that
| aren't government controlled.
|
| There might be different tax polices and exemptions carved out
| for the different entities, but the legal structure of
| ownership is the same.
|
| This does not include anything federal, military, state, or
| local (including tribal) government, or is otherwise a special
| case, like some conservation non-profits, or things like public
| land trusts.
|
| But if any part the government wants to expropriate or
| otherwise seize privately held land, it has to go through the
| same process no matter what type of legal entity.
| protomyth wrote:
| North Dakota is a bit strict on corporations owning a farm.
| _"... since only a farm limited liability company may own or
| lease land used for farming or production of livestock. "_
|
| https://sos.nd.gov/business/business-services/business-struc...
| xxpor wrote:
| I don't see why. The purpose of a corporation is to provide a
| hierarchy for organization of collective effort. In order to
| farm efficiently (i.e. not a small farm that mostly grows for
| farmer's market sales) in 2021, you can't simply have two
| adults and a bunch of children running around a farm. If you're
| going to hire anyone to help, it almost always makes sense to
| create at least an LLC.
| fastball wrote:
| I worry about it because unlike most other things, land is a
| zero sum game.
|
| To my mind, corporations are only good if they 1. provide
| value 2. capture some fraction of that value, because you
| have a win-win situation on your hands.
|
| This applies well to production of products, which is
| obviously not zero-sum. Land is, however, so whenever a
| corporation is making a profit off of land ownership, it
| means an individual (or government) is not.
| xxpor wrote:
| _land_ is zero sum, but the economic value of land isn 't.
| Farming actual food or other commodities provides value,
| and the better techniques allows you to provide more value.
|
| I basically agree about pure land ownership though.
| Obviously this is one of the main leftist critiques of
| capitalist societies. I'm not sure if state ownership is
| any better on net though (in general, I'm fine with
| national parks or whatever), mostly for logistical reasons.
| There's a lot of external factors to consider with land
| too. You don't want people to do whatever and poison said
| land via poor management or irresponsible resource
| extraction.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| Doesn't the parent comment already anticipate this
| argument? They're saying that the corporation does provide
| value because it gets more from the land than individuals
| would.
| fastball wrote:
| But this is only true of _running_ the land. I feel that
| it would be better for land to be owned by real people
| (preferably citizens of whichever country it is) given
| that there is a finite amount of it. If corporations are
| better farmers, they will still be keen to rent it / run
| it for the owner.
|
| The alternative is probably a future where all land is
| owned by corporations and all people are just renting,
| which to me sounds like a recipe for disaster.
| xxpor wrote:
| I guess it'd help to explain why I, Joe Farmer, would
| care if I'm renting land from Acme Inc or Bob Gentry.
| Basically, it sounds like you believe there's differnet
| incentives for individuals vs corporations here, and I'm
| not entirely sure there is.
| fastball wrote:
| The incentives don't need to be different, it just goes
| back to my underlying philosophy of business.
|
| People will always exist. Corporations do not need to. I
| only believe corporations / companies should exist in
| situations where 1. they are providing value 2. capturing
| a portion of that value. Basically any corporation that
| is managing to do 2 without first doing 1 (or is managing
| to capture more value in step 2 than they are creating in
| step 1) is a business that should not exist.
|
| As such, companies should not exist in spaces where they
| are not providing added value, and it is impossible for
| them to do so as a land-owner, because the owner is not
| providing any value, the land was always there. They
| didn't create it. Yes, Bob Gentry is not providing any
| value either, but again people will always exist,
| companies should not unless they serve a distinct purpose
| from what a person can.
|
| But on top of that I do actually think the incentives are
| different. Companies and people are fundamentally
| different beasts. For starters, companies are effectively
| amoral.
| hntrader wrote:
| You have a point that land is a scarce and excludable good
| and there's an opportunity cost to a corporation owning
| land.
|
| The initial purchase of the land by the corporation wasn't
| zero sum, however. The previous landowner and the
| corporation both gained subjective utility from the
| transaction (otherwise they wouldn't have engaged in it),
| so the transaction itself was positive sum.
| holtalanm wrote:
| I wouldn't worry that much about it. It isn't entirely
| uncommon for a farm or ranch to be registered as an LLC
| even if it is a small family operation. That land ownership
| would count as 'corporation owned', but in practice, it is
| just a normal family farm/ranch.
|
| source: I grew up in, and live in Nebraska. Family ranch
| was registered as an LLC, but we were just a small family
| operation, and by this point nonexistent (parents sold out
| and retired).
| kickout wrote:
| Always good to see NE residents on HN...one of maybe <
| 100 i'd guess.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Because public listed companies are swayed by winds of
| speculation
| kickout wrote:
| Well, farming in 2021 is stupidly efficient. Not much
| efficiency to squeeze out really. The productivity/efficiency
| has been incredible. Take a look at first set of charts:
|
| https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-agriculture-has-and-
| does...
| AngryData wrote:
| Producing more crops in less land is not really more
| "efficient" because it requires significantly more
| synthetic (fossil fuel derived) fertilizer. Good top soil
| produces fertilizer itself, so growing the same yield on
| less acreage means higher fertilizer usage which means less
| efficiency, not more. Not to mention corporate farmland is
| more likely to grow monoculture crops and do less crop
| rotation, which also increases fertilizer usage and
| decreases topsoil depth.
|
| Corporate farming COULD be more efficient, but in common
| practice it is not.
| kickout wrote:
| > Producing more crops in less land is not really more
| "efficient"
|
| I'm open to different definitions of efficiency, but this
| isn't really in question. HOW they are getting that
| efficiency (more fertilizer, etc.) we can agree/disagree.
| But they are more efficient in the most basic sense
| possible [more production, less land].
| burkaman wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with a corporation in principle, just
| like there's nothing wrong in principle with for-profit
| universities or payday loans. In practice, it's easy to see
| that many people who run corporations use them as an excuse
| for taking entirely self-interested actions that harm the
| rest of society. "I'm sorry, but I have to act in the best
| interest of the company, you understand." Of course there's
| nothing magic about corporations, and it's perfectly possible
| for individuals and private owners to be just as cruel. For
| purely cultural reasons, it's easier for most people to act
| in self interest when it feels like they're doing it for The
| Company rather than themselves.
|
| Note that there are other ways to organize people to farm
| efficiently, like worker cooperatives.
| standardUser wrote:
| "The purpose of a corporation is to..."
|
| ...insulate management and shareholders from losses and
| litigation.
| xxpor wrote:
| Which facilitates collective action.
|
| Don't get me wrong, we need to be able to pierce the
| corporate veil a lot easier in the US, but the setup isn't
| born from pure cynicism.
| neurocline wrote:
| Per US Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service. 2.2
| billion acres of land in the US. 900 million of that is marked as
| "farmland". 400 million of that is marked as "cropland", and 300
| million of that is "harvested cropland". There's also 400 million
| acres of "pastureland", and 75 million acres of "woodland".
|
| I couldn't tell what kind of land Bill Gates owns. It does
| matter, but not all that much, because however you slice it, it's
| a pretty small amount of the total.
| chasebank wrote:
| Ted Turner owns 1.92M acres of land in the US.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Most of it is grazing land and ranch land. Farmland is rich
| fertile land with water resources and water rights.
| dathinab wrote:
| No farm land _was_ rich fertile land at some point but due to
| non-sustainable agriculture a lot of this land is no longer
| qualified to be called "rich fertile", maybe it still
| "fertile" or "somewhat fertile" but that's it.
| thehappypm wrote:
| That's a hefty claim. Got a source?
| pietrovismara wrote:
| Just duckduckgo land desertification.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning desertification. This is a very
| important and crucial problem..and one with no easy
| answers.
| qchris wrote:
| Maybe not _perfect_ answers, but letting beavers do their
| thing is somewhat easy and can lead to shockingly large
| amounts of water being conserved even in regions
| experiencing desertification[1][2]. The author of the
| linked article wrote a book about it, which is pretty
| fascinating, but there 's also been studies in places
| like Colorado that view it as important enough that I
| believe it's now part of the state plan for water
| management.
|
| [1] https://www.hcn.org/issues/50.15/wildlife-how-
| beavers-make-t...
|
| [2] https://www.npr.org/2018/06/24/620402681/the-
| bountiful-benef...
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| I didn't understand the comment. Can you rephrase it
| please?
| kickout wrote:
| He/She is claiming classifying farmland as 'fertile' is
| improper due to the depletion of the natural fertility of
| soil from intensive farming practices commonly employed
| in the US today.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Ahh. Got it. There is some truth to it as Ag is net net
| extractive.
|
| Land has to be rotated for fertility and even then it
| takes decades and decades to build an inch of top soil.
| At our current global population , we are treading on
| thin ice..or rather upon eroding top soil. Sad truth.
| pietrovismara wrote:
| I think they missed a comma after the initial "No".
| corona-research wrote:
| Gates revealed as funding a fake pandemic.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Is land a better place to park wealth than stocks I wonder.
|
| As they say "They're not making any more of it".
| binarymax wrote:
| Depends on the land and property tax assessment. I've been
| mulling buying some land since interest rates are so low
| now...but it's hard to see the value of return when you factor
| in mortgage fees and property taxes.
| bluGill wrote:
| You have to run the numbers over 30 years. Over 30 years the
| rent will increase (as will taxes), but the payments stay the
| same. Then the payments go to zero and you get a big payoff.
| If you can't commit to at least 30 years it is probably bad
| (you can change your mind as conditions change, but 30 years
| should be the plan) .
|
| You want to share-crop for part of the price. It gives you
| incentive to ensure the farmer is farming the land as opposed
| to mining it for the nutrients before leaving you with dead
| land. Because you share some of the risk (and will have to
| cover it in bad years - there will be bad 5 year stretches so
| make sure you can budget for this!) you can get a greater
| return long term.
| xyzelement wrote:
| I doubt there's a notion of "better" here and I doubt this land
| represents a meaningful chunk of his wealth. It's more about
| diversification on one hand and perhaps a good opportunity to
| buy this land on the other.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| It is a decent place to park money. Cash has inflation effects.
| Land is a lot less susceptible to that.
| saalweachter wrote:
| When I ran the numbers, it looked like farm land yields + crop
| prices + land prices made for a bad long-term investment
| relative to stocks.
|
| Assuming there isn't some ideological reason the Gates are
| buying farmland, it's probably better viewed as a
| hedge/diversification -- it may not be a very good investment,
| yield-wise, but it is decoupled from a lot of other
| investments.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Small farming is a decent side-gig. Like rental properties,
| you can earn a good hourly rate on your labor with some
| capital investment. But the return on purely hands-off
| investing is minimal or negative.
|
| I know a few people that run small, ~5-acre farms that grow
| soybeans or corn. From what I gather, they work the
| equivalent of a few weekends over the summer and earn a few
| grand an acre after costs. The gotcha seems to be equipment;
| it's so expensive that one would need huge tracts of land to
| cover the costs. One guy I know paid someone a % of yield to
| handle the plowing/harvesting. While my cousin keeps an old,
| depression-era tractor going and uses that. I imagine some
| might just lease out the land and collect just enough to
| cover property taxes.
|
| This seems like a pretty common setup in the midwest. If you
| travel down some rural back roads, you'll come up on small
| 2-5 acre plots surrounded by houses. More than likely, these
| are owned and managed by someone nearby as a side hustle.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Are you sure on the few grand per acre?
|
| Corn yields were ~180 bushels / acre for 2020, and corn
| prices were [will be, since it is still being sold] $4.85,
| which comes out to $873 / acre. You might clear a few grand
| for the entire small field, but even with a second planting
| of winter wheat I have a hard time imagining making four
| figures per acre after expenses.
| kickout wrote:
| Unless it a specialty crop like pumpkins or is an organic
| operation, not a chance this happens with corn or soy
| farms. Your numbers are good. Total operating costs for a
| corn acre in 2019 were ~700 dollars.
|
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/commodity-costs-
| and-r...
|
| Better link: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-
| products/commodity-costs-and-r...
| [deleted]
| drawkbox wrote:
| The future of farming is most likely vertical farming with
| controlled conditions or underground. Especially when humans
| start going to other planets, this will be key.
|
| Side note: Mormon church is the biggest land owner in lots of
| areas including Florida and Utah. [1][2] Also own lots of land in
| other states where they are top 10 like Montana and Idaho. [3]
|
| Ted Turner and the Wilks family are also massive land owners in
| Montana, Idaho and other areas. [4]
|
| Here's the top land owners in all of US as of 2019: [4]
|
| FAMILY ACRES
|
| John Malone 2.20M
|
| Emmerson family 1.96M
|
| Ted Turner 1.92M
|
| Stan Kroenke 1.38M
|
| Reed family 1.33M
|
| Irving family 1.25M
|
| Brad Kelley 1.15M
|
| Singleton family 1.10M
|
| King Ranch heirs 0.93M
|
| Peter Buck 0.93M
|
| John Malone is the largest land owner in the US [5].
|
| Largest land owners are mostly corporate, private individuals and
| in some states, religions.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deseret_Ranches
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-florida-
| mormons/mormon-c...
|
| [3]
| https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/money/2016/06/21/who...
|
| [4] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2019-largest-
| landowners-i...
|
| [5] https://www.thegentlemansjournal.com/article/john-malone-
| eve...
| kickout wrote:
| Nope, farming using land has free energy (sun) and more room
| (with nothing else to use it for). As such, its scale and
| efficiency will _always_ compete well with vertical farming
| which has considerable more overhead.
| drawkbox wrote:
| It isn't an either/or on Earth. Even the USDA thinks
| indoor/controlled vertical farming is key in the future [1]
|
| For other planets, we will have to have vertical or
| underground farming and controlled conditions.
|
| As more and more land on Earth gets used and population
| increases, climate changes, soil is more and more less
| fertile, the only way to meet that demand is indoor, up or
| down.
|
| Even industries like marijuana, where hydroponics and farming
| is more indoors, much of that is indoors and can be vertical.
|
| There are lots of innovations yet to be made that will make
| it more of a possibility and ultimately a necessity [2].
|
| When it comes down to it, growing in controlled conditions is
| easier and less risky, growing outdoors is harder. Though it
| doesn't work for all right now, the areas it works for those
| elements are key.
|
| Even growing a single plant indoors versus outdoors, so much
| less to think about in controlled conditions. Farmers can be
| wiped out with a flood, or an insect, all of those things are
| less risky indoors where possible.
|
| [1] https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2018/08/14/vertical-
| farming-...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming
| kickout wrote:
| Those linked articles from the USDA talk about vertical
| farming for very niche products: fresh greens mostly and
| possibly some spices. Vertical farming will not be possible
| to supply the protein, starch, or oil needs of the world.
| Only large scale farming (think US Midwest) can provide at
| this scale. People simply underestimate how many acres of
| farmland there are or don't appreciate the scale and
| efficiency of modern farming.
|
| https://thinkingagriculture.io/what-agriculture-has-and-
| does...
|
| It should also be noted that the world population will peak
| around ~10B people. We will have plenty of food to feed all
| of these people (minus corruption and politics).
| drawkbox wrote:
| Again, it isn't either/or right now. It is currently
| cheaper to use the land and needs to, over decades that
| will have to change by necessity. I surely do appreciate
| the scale as I have family in farming and it is massive.
| However, land is also in demand and will only grow,
| eventually it won't be economical for many types of crop.
| Already marijuana and herbs are mostly vertical/indoors.
| Anything that grows in a greenhouse currently is apt for
| vertical/indoor farming.
|
| Lots of innovations are underway for it.
| https://interestingengineering.com/13-vertical-farming-
| innov...
|
| The comments here are alot like the EV comments back in
| 2000, can't be done, battery tech not there, no way to
| fuel on long trips etc etc.
|
| Eventually the necessity will require it either due to
| population, climate change or other planets.
|
| Sure, right this very moment it isn't as viable, but it
| is for many industries like herbs, marijuana and as you
| say niche products. That is how all innovations start.
|
| Farming will still be massive on land when this happens
| as cattle, pigs, chickens etc need lots of land. Many of
| the biggest farms are cattle ranches so those won't be
| going anywhere much longer.
| kickout wrote:
| I'm not totally arguing against you. Indoor farming will
| have its place. I would say land is NOT in demand though,
| population trends clearly shows people/society migrating
| towards high density cities as opposed to spreading out
| where there is land (central US). You can literally drive
| around the Midwest and see _tens of millions of acres_
| that have no other purposes than....to just sit there,
| chilling.
|
| The 'buy land, they don't make more of it' is almost a
| meme at this point. We have plenty of land.
|
| ETA: I had the spice and niche crops comment in my first
| comment, so yes we agree. Most of farming is to produce
| starch,oil, or protein at scale. Spices are a very very
| very (very) small slice
| drawkbox wrote:
| I hear you on land and population. There is also climate
| changes, limitations to fertile soil and many other
| things.
|
| As I mentioned in my edited comment above, most large
| farms are cattle ranches or livestock that need massive
| amounts of land. Those also aren't as affected by
| weather. Unless people stop eating meat (they won't) then
| ranches will always exist and there will be at least a
| doubling of the need based on current populations to
| projected.
|
| For plants, controlled conditions are always better. So
| when certain crops are viable to do indoors/vertical it
| will be economical to do so with less risk. That is
| already the case with marijuana, herbs etc that are
| smaller but also big business and will grow (no pun
| intended).
|
| If people do start eating more plants instead of meat,
| and products move plant based more and more,
| indoor/vertical farming could become more necessary
| largely due to access/shipping/fulfillment and even labor
| availability. Right now current farming would not be able
| to support if everyone became vegan or vegetarian.
|
| If population does top out and people are happy in
| cities, then your prediction is probably correct. If
| people don't want to live in cities as much due to other
| situations (climate change or pandemics or politics or
| other) some of that land may be more profitable in other
| uses. As industries move more remote and housing costs
| are too high in cities, people will spread out.
|
| Efficiencies also come with indoor/vertical that you
| can't get on land: limited use of pesticides, recycled
| water or water constraints, recreating soil fertility,
| weather control, etc. Where soil is not fertile,
| vertical/indoor farming is a potential solution as it can
| go where land based farming can't always.
|
| Final point, indoor/vertical/controlled farming would
| make humans able to survive on other planets or if
| anything were to ever happen with events that might make
| outdoor conditions risky or less viable. Everybody's
| bunker is going to need a good indoor farm.
| legulere wrote:
| > The future of farming is most likely vertical farming with
| controlled conditions
|
| Not even for high price per area needed products like salad
| vertical farming is profitable yet. Most of the farmland is
| used for crops that use up a lot of space like wheat, corn or
| soybeans.
| drawkbox wrote:
| Marijuana farming indoors/vertical will probably be the crop
| that pushes innovation in this area and most is grown indoors
| at minimum.
|
| Over time, controlled conditions will be a necessity. Right
| now the cost is still cheaper for most on land, that will
| change, especially if we move to new planets but definitely
| if we don't due to population.
|
| Necessity will fuel the innovation here and solar/light
| innovation will be a big future industry.
|
| Writing off vertical/indoor farming is like writing off other
| fuel choices or EVs, until it happens everyone said it was
| impossible but necessity changes the impossible mainly due to
| changes in cost/investment and returns, as well as new
| technologies made possible over time.
|
| Lots of examples of successes already besides in marijuana.
| Essentially just green houses that can be stacked like
| modular farming.
|
| https://interestingengineering.com/13-vertical-farming-
| innov...
| bluGill wrote:
| Vertical farming doesn't work out in general. Plants tend to be
| limited by light, so when you go up you shadow horizontal land.
| There is some efficiency gain because solar panels -> LED can
| convert light wave lengths, but I don't know if it is enough to
| overcome the losses in the system plus the cost of the
| building.
|
| Vertical farms are all niches: lettuce is high value, and
| spoils fast. Thus they can get closer/faster to market by going
| vertical. They convert electric (coal and natural gas) to
| light, so they are not very environmentally sound.
| AngryData wrote:
| From the numbers ive seen (which could be off), you get like
| 250 watts per square meter of solar panels, but you need
| atleast 350-500 watts per square meter of the highest
| efficiency currently available grow LEDs. And that is
| assuming you grow them in a building with higher than natural
| air temperatures because "wasted" wavelengths aren't really
| wasted because plants need them to elevate leaf temperatures
| significantly higher than ambient temperatures. So it has
| heating costs also.
|
| Also, the reason they grow lettuce for these tests and not
| more calorie dense or nutrient packed plants is because
| lettuce requires little light and little nutrients, most of
| its weight and volume is just water and air. Growing wheat or
| potatoes or other primary food crops requires a lot more
| light and a lot more nutrients than these demonstration
| crops.
| e15ctr0n wrote:
| All the others on the list are actual farmers.
|
| * Number 2 on the list, Offutt family, grow potatoes in
| Minnesota. https://www.rdoffuttfarms.com/
|
| * Number 3 on the list, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, have many
| agricultural innovations to their name, the biggest being Cutie
| oranges.
|
| Here is an in-depth article: _A Kingdom from Dust_ | Jan 31, 2018
|
| https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-du...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19072078
|
| * Number 4 on the list, Fanjul family, are Cuban brothers who own
| sugar plantations and the Domino Sugar company.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanjul_brothers
|
| * Number 5 on the list, Boswell family, pioneered cotton farming
| in California.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Griffin_Boswell
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > Farmland in Eastern Washington and neighboring Oregon is
| blessed with abundant moisture, cheap electricity, and unrivaled
| soils.
|
| unrivaled? Try the gulf of Naples in Italy, or Eastern Sicily, or
| Eastern Japan, or a dozen other locations I'm not even aware of.
|
| Most of America is too "old" (in terms of Billions of years) to
| have "unrivaled" soils.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| "Buy land, they aren't making it anymore." - Mark Twain.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Interestingly we have more land now than the previous
| generation did. (5,237 new square miles of land since 1985)
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-coasts-idUS...
| chadash wrote:
| Bill Gates is the wealthiest person in the world (or arguably
| Arnault).
|
| You might say, no, Musk and Bezos are worth 50% (or ~60 billion)
| more. On paper yes, but that's not a great metric. When I think
| of wealth, I think of what you can reasonably acquire.
|
| If you multiply Musk's shares in Tesla times the current share
| price, sure you get 180 billion. But if he tried to sell a large
| number those shares, they'd _plummet_ in value as he was selling
| them. Without Musk, I 'd be surprised if Tesla is worth 20% of
| its current valuation. To a lesser extent, this is true of Bezos
| too, although Amazon without him is still a very valuable
| company.
|
| On the other hand, Bill Gates owns 1.6% of Microsoft, which I
| believe is his biggest holding, followed by Berkshire Hathaway
| stock. I'd bet he can sell both of those holdings completely
| without a huge hit to either stock price (but definitely _some_
| hit). Same with his farmland and other alternative assets. On top
| of that, having already sold his Microsoft shares, he 's not
| subject to as much capital gains tax as Bezos or Musk, each of
| whom pretty much owe 20% of their total net worth the second they
| want to sell.
|
| So on paper, Musk and Bezos are wealthier, but if all of them
| decided to Scrooge McDuck it and put all their money into a gold
| filled vault tomorrow, Bill Gates' vault would be the fullest.
|
| EDIT: typo above... Originally said that Musk owns 180 bn in
| Amazon stock :)
| rabidferret wrote:
| For purchases like the one in the article, you can absolutely
| purchase with stock in lieu of cash. This happens all the time,
| and doesn't have nearly the impact on the share price that
| selling for cash on the exchange does.
|
| How much cash you could get in a vault isn't really a useful
| measure of wealth since cash isn't the only object of value
| that you can exchange for goods and services (which you even
| pointed out in your comment by mentioning gold)
| chadash wrote:
| Cash, or gold, artwork, whatever... Sure you can purchase
| with stock. But you can't easily purchase with $180 billion
| in stock without affecting the stock price.
| giantg2 wrote:
| You still have to sell some to cover the real estate transfer
| taxes since the government doesn't accept stock. With a 1%
| transfer tax you're still looking at $1.7M. Not too bad
| though.
| ascorbic wrote:
| If Musk started to sell off a significant chunk of stock he'd
| have to disclose this, and the stock price would take a hit
| whether it was on an exchange or for farmland.
| hinkley wrote:
| Even if you sell it as a divestiture plan, that constant
| pressure has consequences on the stock price. I think in some
| cases you can list stock holdings as collateral on a loan, in
| which case you can derive a similar cash benefit from the
| stocks as you would get from selling it, meanwhile not
| incurring the social and political consequences of selling your
| holding.
|
| Bill, as I recall, had a much larger percentage of MSFT when he
| retired. Microsoft used to dilute their shares via employee
| stock grants, so I'm not sure how much of that is attrition and
| how much is divestiture on his part. One source on the internet
| says he was estimated to owns 4.3% as recently as two years
| ago. And I see another article from March of last year talking
| about him leaving the board of directors, and owning 1.36%.
|
| I wonder if anyone has analyzed how much of the MSFT stock
| stagnation that occurred after his retirement could be
| attributed to his divestiture plan, rather than Ballmer's
| fault.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It was reported in the 80's that Gates had regular scheduled
| (to avoid insider trading allegations and spooking investors)
| sales of MSFT stock.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Was just thinking about this the other day. Not only does the
| incoming CEO have big leadership shoes to fill, the incoming
| CEO has to deal with the previous founder CEO unloading
| shares every quarter which essentially appears to the general
| market as a vote of no confidence. In Ballmer's case he also
| had to contend with the dotcom bubble bursting.
| ender341341 wrote:
| I think unless the founder is liquidating en-masse it's
| usually a non-event. Even in the click-batey articles I
| read about those they always include something about how
| it's normal and been planned for the last year when a CEO
| sells their stock
| hinkley wrote:
| It's not a non-event, it's just invisible. A divestiture
| plan is erosion instead of a mud slide.
|
| The swing in the stock price every day is fueled by
| supply and demand. The stock goes up 20c because the only
| person selling it wants a little more than the last sale
| price. It goes down 20c when someone wants to sell at the
| last price but the only people willing to pay that much
| already bought their shares. And that's not even
| including what happens to stop and limit orders that
| trigger automatically when the stock swings just a little
| bit farther than people anticipated. Just a small shift
| changes the slope of the price trend, which may cause
| people to shift demand away from that stock.
|
| These days, when I'm mostly hands-off with my portfolio,
| more of my orders expire than actually trigger. Sometimes
| only just missing having done so.
|
| It's part of the magic thinking about the stock market.
| We don't often discuss it in this sort of thread, but we
| definitely do when people are talking about HFT and AI
| for stock purchases and sales. Your orders don't happen
| in a vacuum, and they can affect future orders.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Yes - that's probably the challenging part for the
| incoming CEO - its an invisible headwind for them. If you
| think about over a two decades - Gates/Paul Allen going
| from 50% ownership in 2000 when they both retired to 20%
| ownership in 2010 to 0% around when Nadella took over -
| it must have some impact.
| l33tbro wrote:
| Putin is the richest person in the world. While we cannot
| verify it [1], it is estimated to be around $200 billion.
|
| [1] https://qz.com/1594989/vladimir-putins-financial-
| disclosure-...
| nrmitchi wrote:
| I completely agree with your overall point, although there are
| definitely a lot of intracicies here. Overall liquidity is
| definitely important though.
|
| > Musk's shares in Amazon times the current share price
|
| This is clearly a typo/copy-paste error since you got
| Musk/Tesla right in the next sentence.
| fctorial wrote:
| They all have infinite money for all intent and purposes.
| kolbe wrote:
| Not that it matters who the wealthiest person on earth is, but
| western capitalists have a small fraction of the wealth that
| people like Putin and Xi have.
| cmpb wrote:
| I'm curious about this. Is there any easy way to determine
| how much wealth Putin or Xi actually has? Or is any
| discussion about their wealth just anecdotal?
| kolbe wrote:
| Pure speculation, but it's easy to see how people like them
| can conceal their wealth. One data point is that Gadaffi
| had by some estimates, $200b in wealth stashed around the
| globe when they unwound his estate. Bill Browder asserted
| that, when Vald was consolidating his power, he took half
| ownership in all of the oligarchs' business in exchange for
| not jailing them.
| exclusiv wrote:
| Putin's is unknown. An advisor said 70B in 2012 [1] Where do
| you see Xi having comparable substantial wealth? I see 500M
| to 1.5B.
|
| Where do you get small fraction? That's not true at all. I
| can't even see either of your examples as having more, let
| alone a _multiple_.
|
| Anyway, the wealthiest western capitalists aren't even
| accounted for. "author Malcolm Gladwell estimated the value
| of Rockefeller's fortune at its peak, in today's dollars, at
| $318.3 billion" [2] It's divided among the family at this
| point though of course.
|
| But of the living individuals that we know
| (Bezos/Gates/Musk/Zuck), and have accurate info for, your
| statement is not true.
|
| [1] https://money.com/vladimir-putin-net-worth/
|
| [2] https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/how-rich-is-the-
| rockefel...
| kolbe wrote:
| Why on earth would Xi allow his wealth to be known? The
| media in China isn't even allowed to cover basic actions of
| the CCP. But China is a country run by bribes and guanxi.
| And all bribes flow up. It is possible he has decided to
| not accept the payments, but very unlikely.
| exclusiv wrote:
| That's precisely my point. We only have some very limited
| data available. And none of that says anywhere near 200B
| or _multiples_ of that as you present as a fact.
| meroes wrote:
| Putin had $200 billion in 2017 if you believe this senate
| testimony. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/financier-bill-
| browder-says-...
| exclusiv wrote:
| That's an estimate by someone with insight, but not like
| they were the bookkeeper for Putin. And if true, that's
| still inline with the top western capitalists (which we
| have real data for). Not _multiples_ of their wealth.
| That 's ridiculous to assume and present as fact.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Here's a fun video which discusses the phenomenon you're
| describing. Its a bit click-baity but does provide an overall
| summary pretty nicely.
|
| Economics Explained - The Ranks of Global Billionaires: Not All
| Billionaires Are Made Equal:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MeRN7LE1LQ
|
| It even covers the oligarchy scenario :)
| umvi wrote:
| What I find amazing is how the richest person in the world also
| happens to be a really good person. Bill Gates generally just
| seems humble, kind, and... normal. Imagine if Bill Gates were
| instead a corrupt megalomaniac - it wouldn't be too hard to
| slip into amoral hedonism when you have that much money.
| newen wrote:
| It's the result of having a good public relations firm.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| I play board games with some friends. While we're generally
| nice guys and girls, in some of the games we go full twirling
| moustache evil, every trick allowed as long as its in the
| rules. That's an in-game persona for an hour, after which we
| revert back to our nice selves. Which is fine, BTW, we're
| consenting adults and we know its a game.
|
| I always thought of Bill as doing the same thing in
| Microsoft. Nice guy generally, but business is business, no
| hard feelings while he steamrolls your small company to
| death. Then, after having a fun work day doing what he should
| be doing, he reverts to his nice self.
|
| He was probably shocked to learn the world knew only his evil
| side.
| norenh wrote:
| You might be right, but I do feel that it is a difference
| between a board game and real world.
|
| The decisions you make for the company affects the real
| world (even thought it is in the role of a artificial
| entity, like a company) and have real consequences on
| people and the state of the world.
|
| The same in not true for the decisions you make in a board
| game or computer game.
|
| Of course some might say board games affect the real world
| but the difference in scale is so large it is negligible.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| that's clearly true, of course. I don't want to defend
| Bill or Microsoft (not that he needs me to). I simply see
| it as a way to explain his behaviour.
| notdonspaulding wrote:
| I think you find this amazing, in large part, because in 2021
| the American culture (and to an extent, the global culture)
| has equated wealth with corruption. _If_ somebody has wealth,
| _then they must have_ done something distasteful to get it.
| The wealthier they are, the more people they must have
| exploited to gain their wealth. So the logic goes.
|
| This is wrong-headed but pervasive thinking. In reality, rich
| people are just people. Politicians are just people.
| Celebrities are just people. _All_ people are corrupt to some
| degree, and some people are corrupt to a large degree.
|
| It's easy for you to imagine a very wealthy person slipping
| into amoral hedonism, but I contend that their wealth has
| little to do with it. I once visited a rural Siberian village
| where a significant contingent of the older men wandered
| around town drunk. It was so commonplace that 10-year-olds in
| the community could tell you which of the men were angry
| drunks, and which ones could be led by the hand back to their
| homes. Those men lived on food rations from the government,
| and the first thing they would do when they got their ration
| of bread was to take it to the local convenience store and
| trade the bread for vodka. There are probably lots of reasons
| why someone would wallow in drunkenness for months at a time,
| but one reason is that they're just following whatever
| desires they have at any moment in time. Amoral hedonism
| isn't strictly a rich man's game.
| zanny wrote:
| At the same time, nobody has accumulated a billion dollars
| in personal wealth with a totally clean conscience.
| Millionaires, sure, thats an order of magnitude less wealth
| though. _Billionaires_ are such a distortion of economic
| allotment that just to be one necessitates having such a
| profound influence on so much of their economic sphere that
| to have gotten into that position required someone else
| being taken advantage of at some point, and in practice its
| a lot of someones and a lot of harm caused. Its no
| different than diverting a river into a reservoir - you can
| make a small lake with minimal ecological damage, but when
| you divert into a sea or an ocean the entire environment
| shifts around it for some good and some ill with there
| always being some consequences for it happening.
|
| For a lot of people (myself included) it is not mainly
| about the ethics of _individual_ billionaires, its about
| the ethics of the existence of billionaires to begin with.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I'll agree, but I really do think being a successful
| politician is probably heavily correlated to being prone to
| corruption/other immoral acts. The type of people who are
| attracted to and capable of succeeding at political are
| necessarily immoral. Those with morals generally lose
| elections and aren't able to raise money.
| tossmeout wrote:
| The spread of this narrative is fascinating, given how easy
| it is to find counterexamples. I attribute it to a lack of
| education around business.
|
| One of my good friends is a highly-paid engineer at a tech
| company, and he told me, "Businesses want to keep people
| poor, so they have cheap labor." Which is about as sensible
| as saying consumers want businesses to be poor, so we get
| cheaper products. This is actually a pervasive myth
| believed by many intelligent people.
|
| Of course businesses _want_ to pay as little as they can
| for labor, the same way literally anyone paying for
| anything wants to pay as little as possible. But other
| concerns obviously come into play as well, e.g. the quality
| of the people you hire, the affluence of the customers you
| can sell to, your top-level revenue numbers, etc. This
| should have been obvious to my friend, who works at a tech
| company that 's happy to pay him and others $200k+.
|
| The reality is that businesses actually _prefer_ wealthy
| societies with wealthy customers who can buy more things.
| It 's a chronic problem that poor communities are _under-
| served_ by businesses, because poverty makes it harder to
| profit.
|
| And yet the myth that businesses want people to be poor
| persists.
|
| As does the myth that you can only make large sums of money
| through cheating, scamming, lying, stealing, etc.
| jjj123 wrote:
| It's important to understand that gates and his people have
| put in a _lot_ of work to reform his image in the last 20
| years.
|
| We think gates is humble, kind, normal because that's the
| image he wants to portray.
|
| I agree his philanthropy goes a little further than typical
| billionaire reputation laundering, but he still has a limit.
| For example, he said he'd vote for trump if the dem candidate
| supported a wealth tax.
| umvi wrote:
| > We think gates is humble, kind, normal because that's the
| image he wants to portray.
|
| Maybe... however, the narrative that people never change
| and that any apparent changes are but a thin veneer on an
| unchanging person rubs me the wrong way.
|
| I like to think _I_ can change - that I can iron out my
| personality flaws and become a better person (more patient,
| kind, open-minded, charitable, etc.) over the decades. So
| why shouldn 't I extend that benefit of the doubt to other
| people too? I assume a lot of people have an innate desire
| to change and improve as well since lots of people are
| religious, and the core message of a lot of religions is
| just that - that you _can_ repent of your past mistakes,
| change, and become better.
| soperj wrote:
| It's crazy what paying for better branding can do. This is
| the same guy that tried to take all of Paul Allen's stock
| while he had Cancer. He's the same, he's just worked on his
| image.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I think if you scroll back to discussion on slashdot in the
| 90s, you'd see public opinion in the tech community was very
| different back then. That said, I agree with your take on
| Gates.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Gates has a much bigger pr organization behind him than
| Mellon or Carnegie ever did in a previous era of
| monopolists and oligarchs.
|
| Since Gates funds a lot of the western media, (UK Guardian,
| BBC etc) you never hear any criticism of the WHO (which
| Gates also effectively owns) or GAVI, which is a Gates
| Vehicle. This is not a healthy situation at all.
| zwischenzug wrote:
| Gates funds the BBC? What?
| kbenson wrote:
| I wasn't aware of this, but apparently, yes, he
| does.[1][2] I think it's important to note that this
| doesn't have to be because he expects something in
| return, he could just think funding good news
| organizations is a good thing to do. It's also important
| to keep in mind that even if he doesn't expect favorable
| reporting doesn't mean he doesn't get it anyways as a
| byproduct.
|
| 1: https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/gates-
| foundation-awa...
|
| 2: https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/about/funding
| olivermarks wrote:
| Journalism's Gates keepers
|
| Columbia Journalism Review
| https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-
| journalism-fu... A useful article
| exoque wrote:
| I guess you weren't around in the 90s.
| jedberg wrote:
| It's quite a redemption story. 20 years ago Bill Gates was
| reviled as one of the most evil people in technology. He was
| a bully and a thief, and crushed potential competitors for
| fun.
|
| And then his mom told him he needs to start giving it away.
| And he said, "how can I make money if I'm giving it away".
| And she told him "you can give away what you already made
| while you make more to give away".
|
| And then he started the foundation.
| [deleted]
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| I thought it was Warren Buffet that convinced him to go the
| philanthropy route.
| jedberg wrote:
| He said it was mom that told him "has to give it away"
| but Buffet guided him on how to do it.
| hammock wrote:
| I don't expect you to change your mind because confirmation
| bias is a powerful force. I did see this video recently and
| found it interesting. Have you seen it? "Bill Gates -
| Microsoft Antitrust Deposition - Highlights"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRelVFm7iJE
| umvi wrote:
| Wow, he does seem like a massive jerk in that video. That
| said, I try not to judge people on how they acted in the
| past, but how they currently act. Compare that more recent
| interview and videos (like Mark Rober's) and he seems to
| have mellowed out a lot. Maybe it's all for the cameras and
| he's privately still a massive jerk, I don't know, but my
| impression of him lately based on stuff I've seen online
| has generally left a good impression.
| pests wrote:
| He is not speaking personally in that video but after
| hours of coaching by lawyers. He sounds rude the same way
| a suspect refuses to speak without a lawyer is rude.
| CapriciousCptl wrote:
| Another way to look at wealth is as total spending power
| between now and eternity. Taken that way, it doesn't matter as
| much if your wealth is tied up in unsaleable stock-- stock
| afterall represents your claim on the discounted future
| earnings of a company, so those earnings will be available
| given enough time.
|
| Estimating the true future earnings of businesses, and the
| amount available to current shareholders of course, isn't easy.
| But taking the stock market's approximation of that _intrinsic
| value_ is quick and dirty way to get it. Of course, the caveat
| is that stocks aren 't always efficiently priced.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > if he tried to sell a large number those shares, they'd
| plummet in value as he was selling them
|
| I think this is a good starting point to understanding the
| "real" value of Bezos' and Musk's fortunes, but I'm not sure it
| would play out like you say. As you pointed out, the valuations
| of both of their companies are held up by widely held beliefs
| about the men. A lot of Tesla's value comes from Elon Musk,
| super-genius-capitalist, being at the helm.
|
| So, if the stock value comes from trusting the humans, it seems
| possible that Musk or Bezos _could_ sell a large chunk of stock
| _with the right explanation._ Like, if Jeff Bezos said he was
| selling $30bn of stock to contribute to charity _right now_ so
| he could get critics off his back and concentrate on
| Amazon...would the price go down? I don 't see it.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| There's two parts of how the sale would effect the price. One
| effect is trust in the business due to it's shareholders,
| which could definitely be dealt with yes. The other effect
| though would be a massive amount of shares entering the
| market place, which would have purely mechanical outcomes.
|
| 30 billion dollars of amazon stock would be about 10 million
| amazon stock. About 4 amazon stock is traded daily, so that
| would be 2.5 days of total average amazon stock entering the
| market over some period of time. This means higher
| competition between people selling the stock to find people
| willing to buy it, which would lower the price. The quicker
| the stock was sold off, the more dramatic this effect would
| be. 10 million stock also represents about 1/50th of all
| amazon stock in existence. Another 4/50th's of that stock
| also belongs to Bezos. Increasing the amount of stock
| available to the general populous by a not insignificant
| amount would also lower the price of the stock, although
| probably not very dramatically.
|
| In the end, those effects probably wouldn't be too major. I'm
| actually surprised that so much of amazon's stock gets traded
| every day, I wasn't expecting 4 million stock to be traded
| daily. Still, it would have an effect that means Bezos
| couldn't liquify his position in just a day or two even with
| a good explanation.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Thank you for the notes about stock availability and the
| impacts of that! I hadn't thought about how the volume of
| available shared affects the price. Though it feels like
| market makers would feel this the most? I guess I'm not
| sure how much of a stocks' price is driven by limited
| availability.
|
| >Bezos couldn't liquify his position in just a day or two
| even with a good explanation
|
| That absolutely makes sense. I wasn't imagining a quick
| liquidation necessaraly - selling $30bn worth of stock over
| 5 or 10 years would be plenty of fuel in the fire of
| charitable giving.
|
| For reference, MacKenzie Scott just gave away $4bn over one
| year that, I think, came from Amazon stock and it doesn't
| seem to have hurt the price?
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| > if Jeff Bezos said he was selling $30bn of stock to
| contribute to charity right now so he could get critics off
| his back and concentrate on Amazon
|
| I wonder if a lot of people would view that as the CEO
| version of a politician saying "I'm stepping down to spend
| time with my family", and immediately try to find the "true"
| reason he's selling the stock. Perhaps even causing more of a
| problem than if he had said "I'm selling this stock to buy a
| _really_ fancy yacht"
| aeturnum wrote:
| Maybe? I haven't seen any reactions like that to MacKenzie
| Scott's contributions.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| There's another issue, which constantly bothered me back when
| "Jeff Bezos is richer than Bill Gates" was a big news item.
|
| These comparisons never take the Bill and Melinda Gates
| Foundation into account. Bill Gates put about half his money
| into a financial structure with favorable tax treatment. But
| it's still his money that he controls. There's no reason to
| ignore it if you're trying to assess how wealthy he is.
| ksdale wrote:
| It's _kind of_ his money that he controls. He can do a lot
| with it, but he can 't buy a yacht with it... You don't get
| the favorable tax treatment without a ton of restrictions on
| how you can spend the money.
| nevi-me wrote:
| No need to buy anything with it when he still has enough
| outside of that money. It still gets used to further his
| initiatives, although no longer personal like one would do
| with money in their direct control.
| rusk wrote:
| Yep but he chooses for it to be restrict this way
| ksdale wrote:
| To be a bit facetious, that's like saying that I still
| possess all of the money I spent on groceries because I
| chose to spend it that way... at some point it's not my
| money anymore. I agree that Bill Gates still exerts some
| control over the money, but if he can't actually do
| anything he wants with it, then it's not wealth the same
| way cash, or even stock is.
| rusk wrote:
| The point was that this is how he chooses to spend his
| money. For whatever reason I guess it makes him feel
| good. Which his cool but he has vastly more autonomy over
| his money than regular mortals - as do many other HNW
| individuals, they're not all as kind hearted as Bill
| though.
| Crye wrote:
| At a certain point it starts to become silly to talk
| about wealth as the ability to buy things, rather than
| the ability to organize a large portion of the world's
| economic systems. That's specifically what his foundation
| can do as long as it's within a fairly broad set of
| parameters.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > To be a bit facetious, that's like saying that I still
| possess all of the money I spent on groceries because I
| chose to spend it that way... at some point it's not my
| money anymore.
|
| I mean, you could say that groceries are part of your net
| worth, and immediately after purchase are roughly similar
| in value to the money you traded for them. Obviously
| people don't tend to bother counting their groceries as
| part of their net worth, mostly because they go bad or
| are consumed quickly and comprise a tiny percentage of
| most people's net worth.
|
| But, in general, yes, your net worth is the value of
| everything you own (minus your debt). It's not at all
| crazy to say that, when you buy something very valuable
| or transfer money to a foundation which you control, your
| net worth is not changing much.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > that's like saying that I still possess all of the
| money I spent on groceries because I chose to spend it
| that way... at some point it's not my money anymore.
|
| Yes, but that point comes when you eat the groceries, not
| when you buy them.
| mrits wrote:
| He might be able to buy or build a yacht with it actually.
| radmarshallb wrote:
| How? By outfitting it with facilities so that he can
| claim it has medical applications?
| krustyburger wrote:
| My understanding is that there are actually very few
| restrictions on what kind of expenses charitable
| foundations can use their funds toward. The public's
| attention was drawn to this because of media reporting on
| some of the more ludicrous outlays of the Trump
| Foundation.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Yea that's pretty much the only way. Mercy Ships is a
| major charity that does similar. And to the commenter who
| mentioned the trump foundation, it was charged with
| fraud, fined $2M, and dissolved. So probably not a great
| example.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercy_Ships
| smt88 wrote:
| He can't buy a yacht with his Foundation money, but he
| already has a yacht.
|
| Think of it this way: Gates has a certain list of things he
| wants to spend money on. The government likes some of those
| things and forgoes taxes on them.
|
| That doesn't change the fact that Gates is spending his
| money on exactly what he wants to. The restrictions are
| essentially irrelevant to him.
| criley2 wrote:
| >It's kind of his money that he controls. He can do a lot
| with it, but he can't buy a yacht with it... You don't get
| the favorable tax treatment without a ton of restrictions
| on how you can spend the money.
|
| Bill Gates would never need to buy a yacht with his
| foundation money because he would buy a yacht before he
| made it foundation money.
|
| It's like saying I can't buy a new TV with my retirement
| funds, but, I can certainly buy a new TV and contribute
| less to my retirement funds -- the end result is the exact
| same dollars went to the exact same end, I just organized
| them differently.
|
| A version of this is that every kid who got scholarship
| money or loans knows how to bucket expenses to use your
| "limited use" dollars on qualifying expenses that would
| otherwise be paid by general funds, freeing up general
| funds for things. The net result is that the loans paid for
| nonqualified expenses, but they were organized
| appropriately.
| damnyou wrote:
| Hmmmmm, I'm pretty sure by that measure Vladimir Putin is the
| wealthiest person in the world. On top of his own wealth, most
| of which is unreported, he can use state power to acquire
| whatever property in Russia he wants.
| skybrian wrote:
| > Musk's shares in Amazon
|
| I think you meant something else here?
| dheera wrote:
| > You might say, no, Musk and Bezos are worth 50% (or ~60
| billion) more. On paper yes, but that's not a great metric.
| When I think of wealth, I think of what you can reasonably
| acquire.
|
| Exactly. Stock wealth isn't real money because it isn't
| actionable. You can't sell all of it without crashing. All
| personal wealth should be measured by how much liquid cash you
| could get for it in a short term sale.
|
| That's also the amount you could theoretically donate towards,
| for example, averting a short-term humanity disaster. If you
| needed $100 billion in hard cash to pay for a bunch of things
| to avert an asteroid or nasty virus, Elon Musk wouldn't be able
| to provide that sum even if he wanted to.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I'd argue if you own a significant fraction of a large
| company, you have a significant effect on it's decisions.
| Controlling a giant company and all it's connections, levers,
| abilities, etc is way more valuable than just a hundred
| billion in hard cash
| 734129837261 wrote:
| What always annoys me with most people out there is that they
| want to take money from the super wealthy. As if Musk and Bezos
| and Gates are sitting on stockpiles of Dollars. Their income
| isn't billions of Dollars a year, that's simply-mostly-the
| increase in value of their assets.
|
| In the olden days they taxed millionaires crazy percentages of
| income tax. But that was before the digital era. Right now,
| money is digital and there isn't a gold standard. If you say:
| "Bezos, we tax you 80% of your income!" you'd see him simply
| not making any money at all and even collecting food stamps if
| he wanted to.
|
| So the next step would be taxing someone's net worth, which
| would force Bezos to sell his stocks.
|
| And guess who will be buying those stocks.
|
| Other money printing governments in the form of their wealthy
| but sponsored businessmen, mostly from China. Then in a few
| years Amazon is Chinese-owned.
|
| But yeah, Bill and Belinda Gates are at least doing it right.
| Their foundation is doing so much good for the world and their
| legacy will be immense for centuries to come.
|
| Same for Musk, who single-handedly kickstarted (I'm not saying
| he did it all himself, I know he didn't) the world to accept
| electric cars and made rocket boosters that could land again.
|
| Bezos, on the other hand? Honestly, more power to him doing
| what he does. He's playing the game by its own rules. And he's
| winning. But damn, he isn't doing much good with all those
| resources, does he? Even Amazon Prime isn't that good...
| mushbino wrote:
| If we tax the rich more we'll be owned by China? That feels a
| bit like an insincere argument. Anyone wanting to buy large
| sums of Amazon stock could do so right now. Hoarding large
| sums of money isn't really beneficial to society and the huge
| sums are far past the point of justifying innovation and job
| creation incentives.
| traskjd wrote:
| Jeff's going to be so annoyed when he discovers Musk owns 180bn
| of AMZN stock.
| chadash wrote:
| Good point :) My mistake!
| hinkley wrote:
| Clearly he's been learning from Warren Buffet about how to
| buy stock through proxies.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| Musk or Bezos can use their wealth as collateral against other
| a huge line of credit. At their level of resources, you are
| more likely to take on a lot of debt to delay realizing gains,
| they do not need to sell their shares to have other things
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Only un-leveraged wealth should be measured. Meaning Musk and
| Bezos probably don't even make the top 10.
| phjesusthatguy3 wrote:
| TFA's original title "Bill Gates: America's Top Farmland Owner"
| seems fine. Did the submitter editorialize the current title of
| "Bill and Melinda Gates revealed as largest private farmland
| owners in US" or was there some other reason for changing it?
| shadykiller wrote:
| What qualifies a land as farmland ? Is there actual farming going
| on ? Can I meet Bill Gates in a farmers market selling his
| produce ?
| bluGill wrote:
| He is probably leasing it to local farmers. Most farmers only
| own a portion of their land. I know of a few farmers who
| inherited land and got the courts to transfer that inheritance
| to the grandkids , but (living far away) because they didn't
| want to have more land in the farm even though they have been
| farming it for years. (this is also a transfer of wealth to the
| kids, but your accountant will explain in detail why is is bad
| to own too much land even if you have no kids)
| johnohara wrote:
| The BMG Foundation seems to have very specific requirements for
| land purchases that are more than just "good farm land."
|
| Aside from the land in Benton County, and it's arability, they
| paid close attention to available water, access to interstate
| transportation including road (I-82, I-84), rail (BNSF) and air
| (Tri-Cities Airport), and reasonable proximity to major
| metropolitan areas (Seattle, Portland, Boise).
|
| No doubt stable gas and electric are nearby along with high-speed
| fiber (next to the BNSF rail).
|
| It's a mistake to think of Bill Gates as the next Mr. Douglas too
| [0]. His acquisitions are consistent with a mind towards building
| "smart cities" like the one proposed west of Phoenix.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Ah, the slow creep back to agricultural serfdom, where the rich
| own the land the serfs own nothing.
| tidepod12 wrote:
| Here is another article that isn't just about farmland, but about
| land ownership in general:
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/11/25/these-people...
|
| Of note, the Gates don't even appear on this list. At first I
| thought it's because OP is only talking about farmland, but in
| the USA Today article the Simplot family apparently owns more
| than 400k acres for potato farming in Idaho, but doesn't even
| appear in the OP. I'm not sure what to make of the discrepancy.
|
| Also for the sake of comparison, 240k acres is a good amount, but
| (as another commenter mentioned), it's also not. There are some
| cattle ranches larger than that. And for an example of non
| farm/ranch use, Bezos apparently owns over 400,000 acres in West
| Texas to be used for the Blue Origin launch facilities.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The ranches that large tend to be out West where land is less
| productive for cows, you may need 10 or more acres per cow
| because of the brutal winters and arid climate. Whereas in say,
| East Texas you probably only need 1 or 2 acres per cow.
| cogman10 wrote:
| You might be asking yourself "Why do billionaires own farm
| land?"
|
| The answer is REAL simple. Taxes. Farmers get HUGE tax benefits
| that end up being particularly beneficial to the wealthy.
| Losses on farms translates into gigantic tax savings for
| billionaires.
|
| How do I know this? My small family farm of 40 acres had major
| benefits to my fairly wealthy parents. There were many years
| they didn't pay taxes as a result of the farm.
| kickout wrote:
| So blame the lawmakers? Why vilify farmers for taking
| advantage of a tax code they didn't write? Every other
| industry does this, so why wouldn't people in agriculture?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Where's the vilification?
| hcnews wrote:
| Don't a lot of these lists allow people to pay certain amount
| to be taken off the list and remain anonymous?
| coliveira wrote:
| The biggest land owners in the US own forest land, where there
| is no agriculture (and for good reason). The land is owned as
| investment and for the possible resource exploitation, like oil
| extraction or logging, for example.
| AdamN wrote:
| Logging is agriculture. This is why the US Forest Service is
| under the Department of Agriculture.
| coliveira wrote:
| Logging is considered an extractive industry.
| h2odragon wrote:
| The cattle ranches may be counting differently; they own a few
| hundred acres outright but then have grazing rights on federal
| land that might make the "ranch area" quite large, but without
| full ownership of most of it.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| I think this is discussing private ownership versus corporate.
|
| EDIT: I'm less sure about this now, might just refer to
| government versus non government?
| jtsylve wrote:
| Does this also mean that they're the largest private recipients
| of farm subsidies?
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Farm Subsidies are largely a myth and a misconstruction of
| "externalities" as subsidies. If you knew how to get the
| alleged subsidies the media likes to trot out to disparage
| farmers into the hands of actual farmers while charging a small
| % as a consulting fee you'd be unimaginably wealthy.
| mortehu wrote:
| USDA estimated farmers received $46.5 billion in direct
| payments in 2020. Where did this money actually go?
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17833 The past
| decade it has been only about 10 billion a year with fixed
| direct payments largely eliminated in 2014. 2020 will
| obviously be an exception due to Covid-19. Most of the
| recent payments are Market Protection Programs to prevent
| exports from being wrecked by retaliatory tariffs under
| Trump. https://www.farmers.gov/manage/mfp
|
| That's very much a means-tested program to prevent farmers
| from being driven into bankruptcy by tariffs on things
| they've already produced. It's not a magic money fountain.
| kickout wrote:
| I'm only upvoting b/c you clearly have navigated USDA ERS
| website before... (or google skills are lvl 100)
|
| That type of info should be a whole lot easier to access
| and digest than it currently is.
| bluGill wrote:
| Hard to say. Farm subsidies have limits to discourage this.
| There are a ton of loop holes, and not all crops qualify for
| subsidies. There is also debate about what even is a subsidy.
| scandox wrote:
| RICHARD SCOTT, DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH & QUEENSBERRY owns 280,000 acres
| of the UK. A country 40 times smaller in area than the US.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Is it correct that in the UK there is no land tax? That his
| cost to own that land is effectively 0?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What's farmland going for these days (dollars per acre)? I know
| there are large variations depending on the details
| (productivity, amount of water, etc), but what's the rough
| amount?
| kickout wrote:
| https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/land-use-land-v...
|
| Added: Check out the productivity by switching this to 'Yield
| per acre' https://observablehq.com/@kickout/usda-nass-map-
| extra-statis...
| ska wrote:
| USDA 2020 land value summary
|
| https://downloads.usda.library.cornell.edu/usda-esmis/files/...
| ryanmercer wrote:
| That depends entirely on the area, the soil, the water rights
| etc.
|
| Here in Indiana an acre of farmland will average somewhere in
| the $7000 per acre range for 'average' soil.
|
| See this report from Purdue
| https://ag.purdue.edu/commercialag/home/wp-content/uploads/2...
| claudiulodro wrote:
| It depends on where you're looking. Like housing, prices vary
| widely all over the country. Quality farm land anywhere on the
| west coast seems to be out of my budget as far as I can tell
| (and I've done a lot of research), but in places like Vermont,
| the midwest, and the south it seems quite affordable.
| francisofascii wrote:
| This highlights why low land taxes and wealth inequality can lead
| to problems. Regarding just land (not other forms of wealth), a
| rising tide does not lift all boats.
| tryptophan wrote:
| Agreed. Lack of a land tax is one of the largest policy issues
| the western world has this day. I find it strange how little
| discussion there is about it though.
| MAGZine wrote:
| Bill has been known for getting in on buying vast amounts of
| resources that underpin society. He's the single largest
| shareholder Canadian National Railway, who owns most of the rail
| infrastructure in Canada.
| joejohnson wrote:
| This must be an error because Bill Gates said he was going to
| give all of his wealth away.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| I'd be happy to just have 10 acres for my wife and I :(
| ndiscussion wrote:
| Yeah, ultimately this is the really sad consequence of non-
| local land ownership. Homeownership has been put out of reach
| for pretty much any American.
|
| Hell, I read here yesterday that 44% of Americans apparently
| make less than $18k/year.
|
| I'd kill for 10 acres. Even 1 acre near any kind of town is
| currently out of my reach as a lower-paid software engineer.
| dudul wrote:
| > Even 1 acre near any kind of town is currently out of my
| reach as a lower-paid software engineer.
|
| I'm sorry but I don't believe that, unless you have some
| specific personal circumstances such as very high debt or
| something.
|
| If you're ready to go near _any kind of town_ , it is
| absolutely possible to find 1 acre on a lower-paid SE salary.
| bluGill wrote:
| He needs a job in a town where he can find a job. There are
| many towns where a lower paid SE can afford an acre of
| land. And the one company that hires any software people at
| all has 1 opening every 2 decades. They often don't know
| how to get word to software people who might be interested
| so you are unlikely to find out about that opening. Some
| place in the country it exists though.
| dudul wrote:
| > He needs a job in a town where he can find a job.
|
| I'll assume you meant that he needs a _house_ in a town
| where he can find a job.
|
| First, this was not mentioned as a prerequisite in his
| post, but fair.
|
| Second, software engineer is _the_ job that can be done
| from anywhere, if your priority is to find 1+ acre of
| land then maybe you can put up with working remotely.
|
| And finally, there are still plenty of towns, with jobs
| where buying 1 acre of land is completely possible.
| ndiscussion wrote:
| Yeah, my goal is ultimately to work remotely to fund
| something like this. I don't even care about being 30
| minutes from the nearest store... I am good at
| stockpiling and cooking my own stuff.
| [deleted]
| bluGill wrote:
| Depends on the town. I found a job in the middle of nowhere
| where I can afford 1 acre of land, and walk to the bus stop.
| I'm not a lower paid software engineer, but the lower paid
| ones should be able to afford the payments if they are
| careful.
|
| There are not many such places in the world though. If my
| city was any smaller it wouldn't have bus service at all.
| Good luck finding one.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| > I found a job in the middle of nowhere where I can afford
| 1 acre of land, and walk to the bus stop.
|
| It isn't the middle of nowhere if there is a bus stop. If
| there is a bus stop, it's a city. Most of the United States
| (by inhabited area, not population) doesn't even have
| public transportation.
| bluGill wrote:
| Yes it is a city. There are a lot of similar small cities
| scattered across the US. It isn't the bay area where
| there are a lot of job choices.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| If you aren't picky about location, you can have that for
| relatively little money. Less than $100K and sometimes with a
| salvageable house.
| ryanmercer wrote:
| Sure, and where you can get 10 acres and a livable house for
| 100k or less, you can't find work .
|
| My wife and I just spent 178k on just over a half acre +
| house in November. We don't get residential mail delivery,
| closest grocery is about 15 miles away, closest gas station
| abut 6 miles away. Our town is a little over 300 people, with
| no police, the fire department is volunteer, and if we had to
| call 911 for a medical emergency an ambulance is probably
| 15-20 minutes away. All of those sacrifices just to be able
| to afford a half acre.
|
| The appraiser refused to agree to the listing price, so we
| had to scramble and get cash gifts from family after we'd
| already made an offer. Two offers before us fell through and
| we were in a 24-hour bid war with another potential buyer.
|
| I make 36k a year and my wife is a public school teacher, we
| consider ourselves to be doing very good compared to many we
| know and this is the best we can do.
|
| Here is a little less than 20 acres within a half hour of me,
| just land, no buildings. It is 6.91x my gross annual income.
| Just about no one makes land loans so I'd need to have
| 249,000 USD as cold hard cash just for the land, then need
| another 50-125k to build a house. Then I'd have to drill a
| well, then install septic, then get it changed from light-
| industrial to residential. All in I'd need 350-450k dollars
| to make it work. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-
| detail/7700-N-Cou...
|
| Similarly close is this one
| https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-
| detail/959-E-Coun... for 400k USD with 10 acres and,
| admittedly, an absurdly large house.
|
| No one is going to give a guy making 36k a 400k loan, and
| there's no realistic way I, at 35, can realistically save
| 350-450k cash to buy land and build a house before I'm too
| old to do a lot of the initial work the land would need for
| my purposes.
|
| I'd love to know why I'm being downvoted too. Is it because I
| don't earn as much as you so my opinion isn't valid? Is it
| because I wish I lived in a world where I could afford
| 0.004132231% of the land that Bill Gates owns?
| [deleted]
| AngryData wrote:
| That is expensive as fuck compared to land around me. I
| live near a town of 1200, you can easily get cleared land
| for $1500 or less per acre. Prime land here will be worth
| more, but mostly because it has a higher value as a
| prospect for non-farming expansion and housing.
| SmokyBourbon wrote:
| "The Gateses' largest single block of dirt was acquired in 2017"
|
| Buying land is the opposite of giving away your money like you
| pledged to do.
| Khelavaster wrote:
| They own the highest value of farmland of any private individuals
| --which is leagues different than the most acreage.
| afrcnc wrote:
| oh no, 5G trees.... we're doomed
| pininja wrote:
| Does anyone know if the data they used for this report is
| available online? It would be cool to see a breakdown greater
| than by state (the image shown in the article).
| sh1mmer wrote:
| If they care about global warming there is tremendous potential
| for carbon sequestration in agriculture they could push. Obvious
| examples would be: no-till practices that keep soil carbon
| sequestered, forest farming methods that mix woodlands into
| agricultural land improving soil and vegetation carbon retention,
| capturing agricultural waste carbon in biochar, and reducing wide
| area cattle grazing methods which adversely effect soil carbon in
| prairie lands by preventing deep grass root structures.
| ipnon wrote:
| This is how you transfer intergenerational wealth.
| corpMaverick wrote:
| Can you elaborate a little bit ?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| He's giving away basically all of his money, and leaving
| comparatively little to his kids, $10 million I think. It's a
| ton of money, but a small enough amount that they could spend
| through it in a generation if they aren't careful. Apparently
| he finds the idea of passing on vast fortunes to be
| distasteful.
| xxpor wrote:
| A lot of "family farms" in the US these days are essentially
| a tax dodge.
|
| https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/112844547165831987.
| ..
|
| Basically, there's a lot of tax breaks available if you
| designate your land a "farm", even if you don't grow
| anything. About 22% of farms in the US produce 0 output.
| kickout wrote:
| Hmm...I have this data, I'm going to double check. Need to
| ensure the linked twitter thread is referring to sales, and
| not profit. Easy to hid profits in farming (nothing dodgy
| about it either). No better, no worse than every other
| industry in America. They take advantage of the laws as
| they are written.
| xxpor wrote:
| Yeah, I don't fault any individual for using tax breaks
| legitimately available to them. It's a failure of
| leadership for not closing loopholes.
| mmmBacon wrote:
| This is true and visible in the Bay Area. There are a
| number of large properties where the owners have a
| vineyard. The vineyard is really so some of their land can
| qualify for agricultural proprietary tax rate.
| Reedx wrote:
| How do you know that's the reason and not that they
| legitimately wanted to have a vineyard? They don't tend
| to it and harvest from it? All the ones I've seen looked
| to be in use, but don't know for sure.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| Many _are_ in use, often with operations leased out. This
| produces some modicum of revenue to cover the farm
| designation. The real upside is the ownership and
| associated capital appreciation w /o as large an annual
| carry given reduced property taxes.
|
| On the east coast you often see alpacas; their fur get
| harvested periodically.
|
| Unfortunately these tricks are common in many states,
| especially in high tax states with wealthy residents
| trying to dodge taxes.
| closeparen wrote:
| Gates is famous for rejecting intergenerational wealth
| transfer.
|
| Well, $10m is definitely wealth to you or me, but not to Bill
| Gates.
|
| https://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-will-gates-ch...
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| He's been giving his money away for many years now and
| strangely is still one of the richest men in the world. I
| suspect that his desire to not give his kids money will work
| out much the same way - he gives them "only" $10m (of course,
| enough to live comfortably on for their entire lives) - but
| also, control of some billion dollar philanthropic fund.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Reframe "donations" as "PR expenses" and his continual
| wealth increase will make sense.
| motoboi wrote:
| Yeah, but no. The problem is that the man invested in
| Microsoft, which has been proving itself to be a hell of
| an investment.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Sorry but spending / donating money is not a difficult
| thing to do. If you have billions of dollars, claim to be
| donating much of it, but somehow your wealth continues to
| increase, perhaps you're not trying hard enough?
| realityking wrote:
| Giving away a million is easy, giving away a billion - or
| several - not so much. At least if you want the money to
| have an impact.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| The richest man in the world can't afford a few smart
| people to pick good donation recipients?
| Karunamon wrote:
| There's no "claim" - those donations and the records of
| the foundations are a matter of public record.
|
| Also, completely liquidating and giving away his assets
| would result in a large payout once.. and then nothing
| ever again. You need money to make money, so holding onto
| some to appreciate in value (investments, interest, etc)
| results in more money being donated over a longer amount
| of time.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Yet somehow he has X houses, X private jets, X acres of
| farmland, etc. etc.
|
| It's completely absurd that we should think he's an
| ethical hero. A pauper that donates $5 has made more
| sacrifices.
| closeparen wrote:
| Impact on others isn't a function of how painful the
| sacrifice is to you, it's a function of how much value
| you provide to them.
| hojjat12000 wrote:
| That doesn't make sense at all! What is this PR for? Are
| people buying more Windows Licenses because he is paying
| to charity? Are people sending money to him? Is he making
| billions of dollars getting commission for books he
| recommend? What do you mean?
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| The PR is to counteract the realization that a handful of
| ultra wealthy individuals own more than the other 90% of
| humanity combined.
| Permit wrote:
| > He's been giving his money away for many years now and
| strangely is still one of the richest men in the world.
|
| My understanding is that most of his wealth is held in MSFT
| stock which has increased in value by over 4x since 2016.
|
| So if he had given away 75% of his wealth in 2016, he'd
| still have the same net worth today.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Not to mention that he probably owns a lot of stakes in
| tech startups, which have, on paper at least, appreciated
| quite dramatically in recent years.
|
| I think Gates is probably to the point where it's
| functionally impossible for him to give away all of his
| money. The value of his personal brand and network is
| such that startups will probably give away decent chunks
| of their business just to be a part of that network.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Functionally impossible? He could vacate all his
| positions and donate it in a month.
|
| The billionaire apologia is really getting out of hand.
| mywittyname wrote:
| He's still worth a shitload of money just by being him.
| His name, brand, network, intelligence, and the cache of
| knowing him are worth a lot of money. That's wealth that
| is inherent to him, thus can't really be given away, and
| could be tapped at anytime.
|
| He could walk away from everything tomorrow, and be a
| millionaire the next day by just asking for money. He
| could probably be a billionaire again in a decade if he
| tried.
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Imagine if he did that and put his new millions toward
| the growing income inequality and other problems in this
| country, instead of buying more farmland.
| minhazm wrote:
| Bill Gates holdings are actually pretty diversified. Most
| of his wealth is not in microsoft.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascade_Investment
| kevmo wrote:
| That's just a PR job.
| frogpelt wrote:
| Ted Turner owns around 2 million acres and about 50,000 head of
| buffalo.
|
| So, Bill's got some catching up to do.
| war1025 wrote:
| I did some quick math, and the 240k acres it says they own comes
| out to about 378 square miles, which if condensed down to a
| square would be 20 miles by 20 miles.
|
| On the one hand, that's a lot of land. On the other, it's not
| really anything.
| P_B90210 wrote:
| There are 900M acres in US worth $2.5T... It's a huuuge market.
| [deleted]
| ceilingcorner wrote:
| Meanwhile the average person owns no land, is behind on their
| rent, and will probably (if ever) get a mortgage they can never
| feasibly pay off.
|
| Yes, it's a lot of land and it's not remotely justifiable.
| Inequality isn't something to just handwave away.
| chasely wrote:
| I was expecting a much larger number. At $10k/acre for good
| arable land, that's only 2.4e5 * 1e4 = $2.4B, which is still a
| fair amount of money.
| runako wrote:
| I enjoy seeing land use comparisons. I think there was one a
| while ago that showed how much land the US would require to
| house everyone at Tokyo-level density (not much). Another
| showed how much land we would need to dedicate to solar panels
| to power the country (also not much).
|
| Also worth noting here that the 240k acres they own wouldn't
| get them into the top 10 private landowners in the US.
|
| Edit: One of the solar maps: https://www.freeingenergy.com/how-
| much-solar-would-it-take-t...
|
| Not the residential density map, but fun:
| https://www.6sqft.com/believe-it-or-not-the-worlds-entire-po...
|
| The residential density maps: https://gothamist.com/arts-
| entertainment/map-if-the-world-li...
| na85 wrote:
| >Another showed how much land we would need to dedicate to
| solar panels to power the country (also not much).
|
| Indeed. I seem to recall seeing that you could power the
| entire western hemisphere with just a Texas-sized solar farm.
| s1dev wrote:
| Of course you wouldn't actually put them in Texas, but
| since this seems to be missed a lot: It hails reasonably
| frequently in the Midwest (incl. Texas)
| freeone3000 wrote:
| Right, you'd put them in the desert. New Mexico and
| Arizona.
| pedrocr wrote:
| Back of the envelope tells me you can power the whole
| world's current energy needs, not just electricity, with an
| area that's 3/4 of Texas:
|
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1B3Vtm-
| bk8NIntYc8mZRw...
|
| Getting 10x our total energy would only require half the
| Sahara. We have plenty of deserted place for this if that's
| what we wanted to do. Transporting and storing that energy
| is more the issue, which is why hydro/wind/solar mixes
| aided by batteries/nuclear are probably what we'll be
| focusing on for the next few decades.
| azinman2 wrote:
| You're missing the fact that that area you're trying to
| put panels on is not perfectly flat, and existing
| animals/plants/rivers live there.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Please, feel free to use the deserts in Africa. I can
| assure you, there are hardly any animals and rivers
| there. Plenty of man power to do maintenance work too and
| the sun shines bright like a diamond.
| fastball wrote:
| Or we could do nuclear instead for a vastly smaller
| footprint.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| For some values of "could". If your country hasn't built
| a working public nuclear power plant in several decades,
| at what point should we switch from "could" to
| "couldn't"? The UK built several in the 1960s, now we
| have one in progress built by France, which is 10x more
| expensive, overbudget, delayed, and I wouldn't be certain
| of it ever being finished until I see it.
|
| Last time I looked, the USA was in a similar position.
| Hasn't started building one in at least 40 years[1] and
| the one I saw on that list finishing in 1990 (Seabrook) I
| thought might be more recent, says it was permitted in
| 1976, took 14 years to get Unit 1 working and Unit 2 was
| cancelled due to delays, and cost overruns. That's the
| kind of thing I'm talking about.
|
| The current 92 of them provided 20% of the USA's
| electricity generation. So you'd need another 368 to do
| the other 80%. How long will they take to build, 15 years
| each? 55 years to go all nuclear, assuming you build ten
| at a time. How do you get from "we haven't built a
| nuclear power plant in 40 years" to "we could build 10 at
| a time continuously for the next half-century" in a
| convincing way?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United
| _St...
| na85 wrote:
| Of course we could, but it's a thought exercise.
| fastball wrote:
| Yes, and my comment is an extension of the thought
| exercise...
| Allower wrote:
| When did Texas become small?
| willis936 wrote:
| And if power demand increases another order of magnitude? I
| don't think anyone seriously argues that 100% of power
| should come from solar; it's just a demonstration of
| relative quantities.
| ben_w wrote:
| We're only four of those away from having to choose
| between a Dyson swarm or ending growth.
| willis936 wrote:
| I think after two we would probably be able to make our
| own fusion reactors of whatever size desired. This would
| avoid having to waste precious terrestrial area or deal
| with space power transmission.
| ben_w wrote:
| The origin of the power isn't the only thing that forces
| you to make this choice.
|
| If fusion (or anything else) adds four orders of
| magnitude (~200 PW) of new power at ground level, the new
| global average blackbody equilibrium temperature would
| increase from about +15 C to about +70 C.
| AngryData wrote:
| The problem with such a figure is people assume that means
| we would become energy sustainable, but there are tons of
| non-electrical energy usages that also need to be replaced
| with electrical processes. And unfortunately those
| processes that aren't electrical already are that way
| usually because it is way less efficient, and thus requires
| significantly more electricity generation to make up for
| the loss in efficiency. Fertilizer production for example
| uses lots of natural gas, replacing that natural gas with
| an electro-chemical process is possible and we know how to
| do it, but it also means the energy requirements rise
| nearly 10x as much, thus requiring significantly more
| panels to make up for it. And that is the same for the
| majority of chemical reagent production and material
| processing methods.
|
| So while im all for solar and hope we build tons of it, I
| don't see it becoming the primary energy generation source
| of the world any time soon. The solar farms that we would
| need will be the biggest man made wonders in the world,
| which I don't see as all that feasible in our economic and
| political environment.
| triceratops wrote:
| Could we continue using fossil fuels for processes like
| that and use excess solar and wind for carbon capture to
| offset emissions from those processes?
| huehehue wrote:
| > _just_ a Texas-sized solar farm
|
| Have you seen Texas? Boy howdy. That's 23,155 Noor Power
| Stations[0]. Scaling costs linearly, that's $58
| trillion[1].
|
| [0] 268597 (tx) / 11.6 (noor) square miles
|
| [1] $2.5b * 23,155
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| If the entire planet resided in TX, each person would get
| 1100 sq feet to themselves. That's a very large 1BR, good
| sized 2BR apt.
| na85 wrote:
| In the context of powering an entire continent, it's
| still small.
| ben_w wrote:
| Aye, but op has misremembered. A Texas-sizes PV farm with
| 20% efficient cells, and assuming 25% duty cycle for
| night and winter, would produce ~35 terawatts.
|
| http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=texas%20area%20%2A%2
| 010...
|
| Worldwide power consumption is about 18 TW, electricity
| is about 3 TW.
|
| And current PV looks like it's good for 20+ years so
| you're getting that power at about $3 trillion per year.
| The only reference I can find to current energy costs is
| this from Wikipedia:
|
| """In 2010, expenditures on energy totaled over US$6
| trillion, or about 10% of the world gross domestic
| product (GDP)""" -
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
|
| On that basis, you'd be getting roughly twice as many
| exajoules for roughly half as many USD.
| hoten wrote:
| Also, you wouldn't have to power as many Texans. More for
| everyone else.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| So we could halve our energy expenses ... but we aren't
| doing it? Why not?
| ben_w wrote:
| We _are_ doing it. PV is growing as fast as people can
| build factories and install panels.
|
| (Also: Quarter of the expenses if you keep power use the
| same: It's half cost _for double the energy_ )
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Ah, interesting. So are these PV workers in crazy high
| demand then? I feel like I haven't heard about the kind
| of wild growth in the PV industry that one would expect
| from such a significant endeavor?
| ben_w wrote:
| Growth has been close to exponential since 1992, with an
| average doubling period of 2.2 years.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
|
| (Someone should update the "Grid parity for solar PV
| around the world", that map was last edited in 2015)
| newyankee wrote:
| Most PVs nowadays are guaranteed for 25 years and
| expected to last well north of 30 years. Some Chinese cos
| give 30 year warranties. BYD on its site also mention 50
| year lifespans.
| WJW wrote:
| That's big, but so is the western hemisphere. 58 trillion
| USD to power the entire western hemisphere seems...
| Pretty reasonable? Assuming it depreciates over 30 years
| that's about 2 trillion per year, or "only" about double
| what the USA spends yearly on its military.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Spending 58 trillion on solar panels would probably
| induce some pretty good economies of scale, too. What
| kind of volume discounts do you get on a 15 digit
| purchase order?
| dumbfounder wrote:
| @mywittyname Nay, you MAKE the factories.
| wolco5 wrote:
| And increase the base price of materials to outset gains
| but hopefully create a scale for materials that reduces
| price over time.
| [deleted]
| mywittyname wrote:
| I assume at that point you just buy the factories.
| stickfigure wrote:
| At that scale you have to buy the factories that make the
| factories.
| pedro_hab wrote:
| In 2010, expenditures on energy totaled over US$6
| trillion, or about 10% of the world gross domestic
| product (GDP).
|
| 58T is the opposite of pretty reasonable.
|
| Even if you could assume it wouldn't need any
| maintenance, which you can't, it's too much money for
| anything.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I assume you wouldn't have to rebuild it every year.
| fastball wrote:
| Not sure why you're being downvoted, you are exactly
| correct.
|
| 60T is 10x more than global energy expenditure in 2010,
| and that's just for the Western Hemisphere, which I'm
| fairly certain expends significantly less energy then the
| Eastern.
|
| Edit: just checked, and I was correct. In 2010, Western
| Hemi energy demand was ~130 PBtu, while Easter Hemi
| demand was ~330 PBtu[1], or 2.5x more.
|
| So at this same price point, it would be 210T to power
| the whole world with solar, or 50% more than global GDP
| in 2019 (but only using 2010 energy consumption numbers,
| so it's actually much more). And of course you'd need to
| keep adding more solar as demand went up.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumptio
| n#/medi...
| WJW wrote:
| You wouldn't have to keep spending that amount every year
| though. A solar panel lasts for several decades and
| maintenance (especially at scale) is way less than a
| percent per year. I included 30 year depreciation in my
| calculations for a reason.
| fastball wrote:
| But is that maintenance _lower_ than the existing
| maintenance burden?
|
| Even then, this is still a wildly conservative estimate
| in terms of price. For example, you're also not taking
| into account any of the things that can't currently be
| easily electrified, such as passenger jets.
| carbonguy wrote:
| > But is that maintenance lower than the existing
| maintenance burden?
|
| While I haven't looked up the data yet, it seems
| plausible to assume that maintenance on photovoltaic
| electric generation is not only lower but significantly
| lower than thermal generation.
|
| For example, having no moving parts in the generation
| process must be a large maintenance savings, though of
| course there must be unique costs associated with
| photovoltaics - cleaning, perhaps?
|
| > Even then, this is still a wildly conservative estimate
| in terms of price.
|
| I just did some quick calculations to check this
| statement and found it basically true - I estimate the
| cost of 100% PV solar generation at around $180tn 2019
| USD for 30 years of capacity.
|
| For reference, I used these figures:
|
| 173,340 TWh energy consumption in 2019 [1] * $35/MWh for
| utility-scale PV solar[2] * 1,000,000 MWh/TWh = $6.1t
| yearly energy cost for 100% PV energy production, or
| $182t over a 30-year lifetime.
|
| This, of course, does not take into account the increase
| of energy consumption over that period which would raise
| costs, nor the economies of scale of this level of PV
| deployment which would surely lower costs, but as a BotE
| calculation it sounds about right and corresponds with
| your earlier estimate of $210tn for the same investment.
| Note also that the $35/MWh figure includes all operating
| expenses and amortized capital costs i.e. it takes all
| costs into account already.
|
| However, as you imply with your first question regarding
| maintenance burden, the correct comparison is not "how
| much would it cost" but rather "how much would it cost
| relative to projected costs of energy" - and again per
| [2], utility PV solar is already cheaper than new utility
| thermal power generation. There is of course plenty of
| nuance when it comes to energy consumption - you point
| out, for example, that aviation will be a difficult
| sector to "electrify," a true enough statement in and of
| itself. However, it's pointed out in [3] that jet fuel
| represents 12% of transportation energy consumption and
| that transportation overall represents 25% of global
| energy consumption, implying that aviation only
| represents about 3% of global energy consumption.
|
| Based on this, I speculate that aviation fuels can be
| produced in a 100% solar PV energy regime without
| increasing - and likely lowering - energy production
| costs above the current regime.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-
| consumption [2]
| https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019 [3]
| https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/transport-
| uses-25...
| WJW wrote:
| It'd need to be lower than the existing maintenance plus
| fuel burden of course, since sunshine is free but oil and
| coal are not. In any case, if you can't change the power
| source (as you say, passengers jets are pretty tricky to
| electrify) then you don't have to build solar panels for
| those so the upfront cost would go down.
|
| Thinking about it more it would seem likely that as
| overall oil consumption falls, the relative cost of oil
| derivatives like jet fuel would go up because the
| advantages of scale decrease from what they are now. It's
| a pretty fascinating subject since solar prices seem to
| follow a Moore's law type price evolution at the moment
| while oil will get cheaper as well while demand
| decreases. Presumably there is a balance point somewhere?
| notJim wrote:
| From wikipedia:
|
| The plant will be able to store solar energy in the form
| of heated molten salt, allowing for production of
| electricity into the night. Phase 1 comes with a full-
| load molten salt storage capacity of 3 hours. Noor II,
| commissioned in 2018, and Noor III, commissioned in
| January 2019, store energy for up to eight hours.
|
| Very cool.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouarzazate_Solar_Power_Stat
| ion
| rajansaini wrote:
| I'm not at all familiar with this domain, but wouldn't
| this kind of farm be incredibly vulnerable to a foreign
| threat?
| pedro_hab wrote:
| I wouldn't call it small, I'd call impractical at best.
|
| If thats small, how can you describe the size of nuclear
| power plants required to do the same job?
|
| And power plants would be way smaller and aren't
| impractical.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Agreed. And covering that amount of land mass would have
| profound environmental impacts.
| aeternum wrote:
| Solar efficiency has improved significantly since that
| stat as panels went from 13-14% to 18-20%. Which brings
| land area down to more like 10k square miles.
| [deleted]
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| I saw a density map for the Tokyo area compared to
| California. Tokyo is equivalent to taking the entire
| population of CA and packing them into the city of Los
| Angeles.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| One today also suggested how we could give every home in
| America a sea view!
| ArnoVW wrote:
| A tempting proposition indeed (well for the next 20 years,
| less so after that).
|
| I suppose the problems arise when infrastructure has to be
| built for those linear communities (Dutch word of the
| day:'lintdorp', or ribbon-village). Because suddenly the
| average population density is awful and we have to drive a
| lot, build more schools and hospitals, etc. Not to mention
| the poor sods that have a 500 km commute to work the land
| so that the rest of us can eat >:-)
| spiralx wrote:
| Somebody should tell these people:
|
| https://www.designboom.com/architecture/saudi-arabia-the-
| lin...
|
| I'm not convinced it's not vapourstructure given how
| ridiculous it seems.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _A city with services driven by AI_
|
| That's some tell-tale bullshit right here.
|
| That said, the video is very interesting. As well as
| branding - The Line. Would work very well as a setting in
| a sci-fi movie or a videogame.
| caturopath wrote:
| Would be interesting to see the map, I couldn't find it
| with a quick search.
|
| There is ~4ft of shoreline in the US per household, which
| gives me some notion of what the packing would look like.
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Sorry, not an actual map. Just a back-of-the-envelope
| calculation. I'll try to find it.
| gberger wrote:
| You can stack households on top of each other.
| leetcrew wrote:
| if we cover all the shoreline with 10 story apartment
| buildings, it could be 40 ft per household! the larger
| problem would be having an acceptable amount of green
| space on the other side I think.
| bluGill wrote:
| We can build up though. I might be worth 4 feet of
| shoreline, but my 40 foot sea view apartment is in a 50
| floor apartment building, which leaves a lot of the
| shoreline unpopulated.
|
| That assumes everyone wants shore view. With young kids I
| prefer my house to be far away from places weak/non
| swimmers can drawn. I know many other reasons why someone
| would choose to not live somewhere far from the sea if
| they get a choice.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > With young kids I prefer my house to be far away from
| places weak/non swimmers can drown.
|
| That rules out whole countries. And misses all the fun of
| having water nearby. The chances of that happening are so
| vanishingly small that it probably is a bad guide as to
| where you want your kids to grow up.
| caturopath wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't trying to say "so it doesn't work".
| Obviously multi-story houses and houses not right on the
| shore have sea views.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _my 40 foot sea view apartment is in a 50 floor
| apartment building_
|
| So the buildings would double as a tsunami wall?
| Interesting, though kind of self-defeating.
| biggc wrote:
| Does that include Alaska?
| sammorrowdrums wrote:
| Why is that cheating? /s
| ucm_edge wrote:
| I also saw numbers saying a 50 mile by 50 mile piece of land
| could handle all of America's trash for 100 years if used as
| a landfill.
|
| Always struck me as interesting in that you could easily
| section off a chunk of desert, properly sort and encapsulate
| the trash. At the same time fund research into ways to do
| recycling that is more cost efficient and more environmental
| friendly with regard to chemicals used, etc. Then once you
| have better tech for a certain class of garbage, go process
| it in bulk.
|
| Of course humans being humans, we'd probably not bother to
| fund the research, not do upkeep on the encapsulation
| material and mess up the ground water, etc. Still interesting
| to think about just having one or two national trash dumps.
| freeopinion wrote:
| > section off a chunk of desert
|
| Amusing. Why not a section of marsh? Or river delta?
|
| #LizardLivesMatter
| t-writescode wrote:
| The logistics of ferrying all trash to that singular
| location would be ... (edit: a major undertaking).
| skybrian wrote:
| I guess the garbage trains from New York City would have
| to go further.
| greyhair wrote:
| Rail guns! Pods full of compacted trash launch out to a
| 'catch' zone using rail guns.
| coldtea wrote:
| Plus the real estate prices right next to that plot would
| plummet :-)
| edoceo wrote:
| So, cheap expansion?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| But, it could be made relatively efficient by using
| trains to haul trash long-distance.
| johnnyletrois wrote:
| ECDC Environmental is massive:
| https://youtu.be/6omwOGWGQXs
|
| Edit: in Utah
| kbenson wrote:
| There would be a whole ecosystem of scavengers, the human
| type, looking for valuable trash. It's amazing what cheap
| think of yesteryear is worth quite a bit today because of
| materials changes, or longevity, or nostalgia, etc.
| jacquesm wrote:
| At some point in time that would become the most valuable
| property: it would contain all of the resources that
| society needs.
| beamatronic wrote:
| You can be sure that once all the fossil fuels are gone,
| and society has collapsed beyond the point of return, the
| remaining humans will be mining our dumps for useful
| items. Wars will be fought over these scraps.
| leviathant wrote:
| I like to think that a long time from now, people will
| marvel that we overlooked the (as of yet undiscovered)
| utility of used scoopable cat litter, and _just threw it
| out with the trash_
| majormajor wrote:
| We already did this in the past for dog poop:
| https://www.vettimes.co.uk/app/uploads/wp-post-to-pdf-
| enhanc...
| aardvarkr wrote:
| We're already mining landfills actually. Pretty
| interesting concept if you ask me. The concentration of
| valuable elements is far higher than what you'd find in
| the wild.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_mining
| maxerickson wrote:
| A timber company here owns 500,000+ acres spanning parts of 2
| states.
|
| Doesn't hold much of a candle to Weyerhaeuser which owns more
| than 12 million acres.
| greyhair wrote:
| Do they actually own it or do they hold leases?
|
| I know it is a subtle thing, but I am just curious. If you
| know which it is I would like to hear. Thanks.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Directly owned.
| yboris wrote:
| There's a fun book _Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman
| Condition_ which includes a small section about possible
| upper limit for density of human population on earth. I think
| it was over 1 trillion. Fun book!
| csomar wrote:
| Regarding solar, you don't really need much land. Most
| residential homes can install it on their roof and this also
| applies to flat industrial building which do not consume a
| lot of energy. This also makes your solar production
| decentralized.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| >> decentralized
|
| Much easier to actually use
| adolph wrote:
| As I understand it, the challenge is syncing when changing
| from standalone to integrated modes. The challenge is such
| that most home PV can't operate standalone.
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/articles/synchronizing-small-
| scal...
| kickout wrote:
| 240K acres is merely a spec. Especially in the Midwest region
| of the US.
|
| There are ~340 _million_ acres of farmland alone in the US
| gok wrote:
| It's a fair point. There are 12 million square miles of arable
| land on Earth, so the Gates only own about 0.00315% of that,
| whereas they own around 0.036% of the planet's wealth.
| jevgeni wrote:
| That's about 0.00003% of all U.S. farmland.
|
| EDIT: I failed basic arithmetic, apparently. It's 0.03%
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think it's about 0.03% of all US farmland, 3 orders of
| magnitude more.
|
| 267K acres out of 897M acres.
| jevgeni wrote:
| Thanks!
| kickout wrote:
| No, there are only 330M acres of US farmland according to
| the USDA:
|
| _source in blog post_ sorry
|
| https://thinkingagriculture.io/incentivizing-regenerative-
| ag...
| sokoloff wrote:
| Page 4 in this USDA Ag Stats report says it's 897M acres:
| https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/rep
| ort...
|
| "Total land in farms, at 897,400,000 acres, decreased
| 2,100,000 acres from 2018."
|
| I've seen the 330M acres figure elsewhere as the "prime"
| farmland area rather than total farmland and the blog
| post you cite has figures that include fallow, idle, and
| pasture farmland categories above the crop usage figure
| of 330M acres.
|
| In any case, cropland is 2.5 orders of magnitude higher
| than GP's calculation rather than a full 3.
| amelius wrote:
| You can make a lot more money by owning a lot of small patches
| of land than by owning one large piece of land.
|
| Unless you are actually using the land for farming, of course.
| somerandomness wrote:
| Approximately area of Manhattan
| netrus wrote:
| Nah, whole area of NYC would be in the right ballpark, but is
| still less.
| efwfwef wrote:
| it's ~971 square km, which would mean a 30km by 30km square of
| land. It's very large, but yeah indeed not that massive either
| at the scale of the country.
| sh1mmer wrote:
| 378sqmi is roughly 0.01% of the US (3,796,742sqmi) which still
| seems like a pretty large amount of land.
| coldtea wrote:
| Well, in Texas I've seen some ranches that are several miles in
| one dimension (one was called "The eight mile ranch").
|
| So there's that.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Hmmm, it looks like there are 330 million acres [516,000 square
| miles] of "prime" farmland in the United States.
|
| That puts the Gates at around 0.07% of the US farmland.
| kickout wrote:
| Correct, about 330M acres of farmland. Lol, I wouldn't call
| all 330M prime. Maybe 180-200M are 'prime'. The North Dakota,
| South Dakota, Kansas acres aren't going to win many 'prime'
| contests. They can produce a profit, yes. But no always a big
| one
| jeffbee wrote:
| You sure about those examples? I just pulled up the USDA
| soil survey of some place I've never been, Edmunds County
| S.D., and it looks to me like over one third of the county
| is capability class 2 or better, which is considered "prime
| farmland" or better.
| mattgrice wrote:
| Capability doesn't take into account climate or access to
| water.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't believe that is correct. This classification
| system considers both. To be in class I or II you need
| either no or "slight climatic limitations". I found
| another document that says N.D. has 47% of its area as
| either classes I or II, making it the third-most-arable
| state after Iowa and Illinois.
| gooftop wrote:
| > I did some quick math, and the 240k acres it says they own
| comes out to about 378 square miles, which if condensed down to
| a square would be 20 miles by 20 miles.
|
| To put that in perspective though.. per Wikipedia, all of
| Manhattan is 22.7 square miles!
|
| *mindblown*
| zuminator wrote:
| Indeed, the entire city of NY is only about 303 sq. miles
| (land area only), on which resides 8.5 million people.
|
| Another stat I read said the median US plot size is 10861 sq.
| feet., so Gates owns very nearly 1 million times the square
| footage of the average property.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Thats a little over a 1/4th of the size of Rhode Island.
| jetrink wrote:
| In terms of land ownership, they are outdone by billionaire
| Stan Kroenke who owns several large ranches in Texas, including
| Waggoner Ranch, which is over 500,000 acres in size and
| surrounded by a single fence.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggoner_Ranch
| Animats wrote:
| That "ranch" has 1,100 oil wells.
|
| Something similar happened to the King Ranch. More oil, less
| beef.
| jetrink wrote:
| Indeed. I first learned about the megaranches from Edna
| Ferber's 1952 novel Giant and the transformation is a major
| theme of the book. (Incidentally, I created an account on
| some forum while I was reading the book and out of laziness
| borrowed the name of one of the characters, Jett Rink. I
| have used that name on the internet ever since.)
| thehappypm wrote:
| I don't think ranches count as farmland -- I mean, ranches
| aren't farms in any meaningful sense.
| fireattack wrote:
| It's not, but he said "[i]n terms of land ownership".
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| That's ~8 San Franciscos!
| adav wrote:
| Sounds about the size of Greater London.
| onion2k wrote:
| If he built a city on it then it would be the 15th biggest city
| in the US by land area. That makes it sound like quite a lot. (
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
| )
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Maybe that's a lot for farm land. Considering you can fit over
| 450 football fields in a sq mile.
| samatman wrote:
| By way of contrast, the largest single ranch in the US is the
| WT Waggoner Estate Ranch, with 535,000 acres, contiguous. It's
| owned by a couple, the wife of whom is a Walton.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| The article is really interesting. And a decent investigative
| piece. I recommend a full read.
|
| It also confirms what I have always said..most of our food and
| farmland is controlled by sovereign wealth funds, insurance
| companies, pension funds, unions and institutional investment.
| In the coming decade, all small farms and family farms will
| disappear. They will only exist as hobby farms or subsidy
| collecting token farms.
| driverdan wrote:
| > It also confirms what I have always said..most of our food
| and farmland is controlled by sovereign wealth funds,
| insurance companies, pension funds, unions and institutional
| investment.
|
| Does it though? Based on a post above yours he owns less than
| 0.1% of US farmland. That means ownership is not
| concentrated. It seems to be much like the logistics /
| trucking industry. There is no concentration of power.
| bluGill wrote:
| In Iowa there are laws against corporate farms (I think
| this means publicly traded, but I'm not sure exactly what).
| They have loopholes so that seed companies can grow seed
| (but nothing else), and other companies can test their farm
| equipment.
|
| John Deere employee, but not speaking for my employer.
| srveale wrote:
| Sure, it's not really monopolistic, but there's definitely
| a trend towards concentration. Think about the number of
| unique farmland owners as a percentage of population,
| compared to 50, 100, or 200 years ago.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Looking at it the other way around, I'd much rather be a
| farmer in 2020 than 1920 or 1820. You'd earn much more.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| That's pretty much already true and there's a third-tier:
| boutique. The only "sustainable" operations out there are
| based on this model; c.f. Polyface Farms et al
| lainga wrote:
| Do you think the proposed American bill to purchase and
| distribute land to descendants of African-American farmers
| will change that?
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| That's a really bad idea. Farming is a profession and an
| essential one. People need to be educated, trained and
| experienced. We can't waste valuable farmland and
| distribute it.
|
| However, if it does pass..then it could just be the dollar
| value of farmland that is redistributed or with the caveat
| that they form a co-op to professionally farm the acreage
| to be productive.
|
| All farmland needs protection. Transitioning of farmland
| into commercial land or residential land should be fully
| discouraged.
|
| Also..small holdings(less than 1000 acres) should be
| automated. Farming is for the rich. You need to lose a lot
| of money first before you can start making returns.
|
| Encouraging those with no farm experience with farmland is
| pushing them into debt and penury.
| ralusek wrote:
| That would just delay the same process that has allowed
| these larger landowners to own most of the land in the
| first place.
| ilyaeck wrote:
| No. Most of that land will then be sold to the highest
| bidder.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| No kidding. Not making any comment on validity or ethics
| of reparations, but just putting myself in the shoes of
| someone who would be the beneficiary of this policy,
| would I like to uproot the life that I have led, and many
| generations of my ancestors have led as non-farm-owners,
| to go try to figure out how to farm? Or would I like a
| big fat check from Mr Gates?
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Good. If you speak to anyone in the agriculture industry they
| will tell you the small and family farms tend to have the
| _worst_ safety, environmental and animal cruelty records.
| Reedx wrote:
| The next time they tell you that, ask if you can visit and
| film their factory farms.
| bequanna wrote:
| That is an awfully viscous claim to make.
|
| I grew up around family farms. Many members of my family
| still produce crops and own livestock. So, to someone with
| first hand knowledge your comment rings false. The large
| feedlots, processing plants, etc. are the most inhumane
| (and dehumanizing), places I know of in the industry.
|
| I would appreciate if you would at least _attempt_ to
| provide proof/justification before making such a blanket,
| mean-spirited statement.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Many small farms ..in fact almost all of them in every
| state..have to follow rules and regulations for
| certifications. Farming is VERY auditable and we have
| created systems/processes/checks/controls.
|
| But it's expensive. The failure of small farms is mostly
| seen in the balance sheet.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| This is somewhat true but not absolute truth tho'. But if I
| don't want to get into the weeds to nit pick on details, I
| would say that you are right.
|
| Having said that, it is because of economics. Small farm
| environmental sustainability is not feasible due to $$. The
| solution for this small acreage automation(what I am
| working on) systems and protocols.
|
| Small acreage automation is important because globally,
| food comes from small acreages and it is becoming
| increasingly difficult for many small and poorer nations to
| feed their people. Not all countries have rich people
| owning very large acreages in cultivation.
|
| American farms also produce little food and more
| fodder/fiber/fuel. We import most of our nutritious food
| like produce.
|
| For food security, there needs to be more small acreage
| automation and more small farmers. We educate everyone
| these days and they need to be employed. They are not going
| to manually pick weeds if they run a sustainable farm. The
| only reason California has $45+ billion in ag revenue is
| because of the poorly paid undocumented immigrant labour
| force. And massive entitlements that big farmers(most of
| them as corporates own between 20k-100k acres of land) earn
| mostly through our complicated water agreements that the
| tax payers bear most of the cost indirectly.
| codethief wrote:
| > The solution for this small acreage automation(what I
| am working on) systems and protocols.
|
| Could you elaborate on this? What exactly is it that you
| want to automate?
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Automation to reduce operating costs.
|
| I am unable to elaborate at this point, but I think this
| will give you an idea about the kind of costs and returns
| we face in our industry: https://coststudyfiles.ucdavis.e
| du/uploads/cs_public/7a/c9/7...
|
| Any thoughts or insights would be appreciated and helpful
| to me.
| [deleted]
| wavefunction wrote:
| Wouldn't they have a vested interest in that narrative? I'd
| trust some transparent research by an objective third
| party, I suppose.
| AngryData wrote:
| And corporate farms are known for severely depleting the
| topsoil, which is both a carbon sink and a natural source
| of self-replenishing fertilizer. And are also more likely
| to do monoculture farms which are less resource efficient
| and more susceptible to disease and adverse weather.
|
| It isn't nearly so clear cut a situation.
| kls wrote:
| Some of this is by design, food insecurity is one of the
| largest driver of unrest. Those in the power seats and
| politicians have a vested interest in taking an active part
| in the management of agricultural production.
|
| I grew up on a small citrus farm, I saw NAFTA and the migrant
| worker bills ravage the small farmers first hand. The way it
| was done was unfair and amounted to a transfer of wealth to
| these entities but with that being said, I know why they did
| it. They need economies of scale, as well as the ability to
| offset risk, the easiest way to do that is to conglomerate
| the land together so that if there is a loss of production in
| one area output can be raised in another. This is hard to do
| with a co-op of independent farmers.
|
| Starving people are dangerous to stability it really is as
| simple as that, and that is why you see these entities
| involved in farmlands.
| jackfoxy wrote:
| While this is entirely true, real assets don't get any
| realer than productive farmland. The Fed's super money
| creation policy of 2020 is resulting in a new _landrush_
| (pun intended) of well-funded entities into real assets.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Economies of scale is a real thing. There will always be
| large farms for food security. Food is too important and
| essential to be handed down to small farmers. Small farms
| are super-inefficient.
|
| Having said that, we can't do away with small farms and
| family farms. The only way to save it is with automation
| and labour cost saving tech so it provides enough to be
| considered a career like any other.
|
| I see it as forming co-ops and co-op hubs. Jellicles Farm
| is creating Hundred-Acre-Hubs and then co-ops of clusters
| hubs. I want to focus on small acreage automation. Small
| robots/cobots swarming in small acreages managed by
| individual farmers. Labour is 40-60% of cost. And it's
| becoming increasingly unreliable and unavailable and
| expensive for small farmers. Automation is the only way. It
| will satisfy local food security and niche crops.
| Commodities will still be grown in large commercial
| corporate farms as they should be..
| kls wrote:
| Yes I get it, I remember the day I told my grandfather
| that I would never scratch a living out of dirt, that I
| respected him for doing it but that the reality of the
| world has changed and that it was time for him to sell
| before he lost everything. That was a hard day, it was
| his life, and his fathers life. His father and his
| grandfather moved to Florida and homesteaded the land, it
| was a hard pill to swallow, but he knew there was no
| future in it for the future family given the realities
| that it is the way America was aligning farming
| resources. I totally get it that is why I convinced him
| to sell the land, but it sucks when you are on the
| receiving end of policy set to realign a segment of the
| American economy, that being said, there are always going
| to be winners and looser of policy decisions, I am happy
| with the way life turned out, he was proud of me and the
| path I choose before he passed.
|
| I was just noting that there was a human toll that
| happened for all this farm land to be rolled up by the
| conglomerates. Not implying that it was the wrong
| decision on the larger geo-political scale.
|
| I would like to see the return of small farms if someone
| can make it viable, I would not trade the life I lived as
| a child for anything, but as I said above, I will never
| again scratch a living out of dirt, unless it is
| absolutely necessary for my and my families survival.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Automation of small acreages is the answer.
|
| We are covered for grains, commodities and essentials.
| But we can maintain off grid homesteads and grow niche
| and high value crops on small acreages.
|
| Look at all the vineyards we have now, marijuana grows,
| lavender fields and an embarrassment of riches when it
| comes to gourmet consumption.
|
| Farming is magical. We convert sunlight and water through
| alchemy and plant genetics. There is absolutely nothing
| that compares.
| dhruvrrp wrote:
| There is a cutoff where small farmlands are not sustainable
| or economical. Small farms means that the overhead for the
| produce is too high, and they require extensive subsidies to
| stay afloat.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Not if we bring tech and automation to small farms.
|
| Outside of the USA, small farm holdings feed the citizens.
| It is even more important for them to avail new tech and
| labour cost saving automation.
| dhruvrrp wrote:
| That is not completely true. In EU more than 40% small
| farmers consumed more than half their produce.
|
| In India heavily subsidizes farming as well, for good
| reason since a significant portion of the population is
| employed in the agricultural sector.
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| What is 'not completely true'?
| twox2 wrote:
| I mean, isn't that close to the size of manhattan?
| chadash wrote:
| No. In length yes but not close in width. But same order of
| magnitude.
| tqi wrote:
| I think tip to top manhattan is only about 11 miles
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| Fuck these people! Regardless of your politics we should not
| warrant people like this the amount of control they currently
| have over our capital markets or...the food supply. This is NOT
| okay.
| muterad_murilax wrote:
| Who cares? Seriously.
| lolsal wrote:
| If you think climate change is real, you probably should.
|
| A super-wealthy technologist is investing in _farm land_. Why
| do you think that is?
| haunter wrote:
| >A super-wealthy technologist is investing in _farm land_.
| Why do you think that is?
|
| They have so much money they want to grow everything for
| their own consumption on the highest quality? If I were Gates
| rich I'd definitely do that. Don't even have to be that rich
| tbh
|
| So I can give multiple answers, even contradicting ones too
| mywittyname wrote:
| Combating climate change is my immediate thought as well.
| Gates is highly dedicated to reversing climate change. My
| suspicion is that good farmland is also very suitable for
| green energy production.
|
| Plus, he can dictate terms of use for the land, preventing
| leasees from spraying harmful pesticides and using practices
| that destroy the productivity of the land. It's possible he
| could ban beef production from his land, preventing some
| volume of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Smart move from a smart, rich man. Lots of global farmland will
| lose yield do to aquifer depletion, snowcap accumulation changes
| in western watersheds, heat waves, and storm damage. Food
| security is a thing of the past. High quality farmland is not an
| infinite resource and almost totally utilized outside of where
| it's been replaced with residential development in the Northeast
| US.
| kickout wrote:
| Very few farms are irrigated (acreage-wise). Aquifer depletion
| (if it happens) would only affect a small percentage of farms.
| Most farms are rainfed
|
| ETA: About 90% of farms are non-irrigated
| ur-whale wrote:
| Is dear old Bill some kind of survivalist?
| asperous wrote:
| The farm business is brutal. I think the dream of people moving
| to the country, owning some land, and living off of it
| comfortably is long gone and never coming back.
|
| At least with big money owning the farms and absorbing the risk
| people can work in the ag industry for a salary without loosing
| their life savings.
|
| [1] https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-toughest-
| industri...
|
| [2] https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-
| crisis-...
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Work in the Ag business without losing _what_ savings? The
| people who drive those $100k tractors are paid just barely over
| min wage. The migrant workforce in the fields are paid less
| than minimum wage.
| legitster wrote:
| This is a huge mischaracterization. Depending on the season
| and crop, migrant day workers in our area can pull $25-26 an
| hour. And there are fewer workers turning up every year to do
| it, so the cost is going up.
|
| One of the issues in our area is how expensive it is to get
| enough labor for farms, so farmers are switching to easier
| crops to grow.
| bluGill wrote:
| Farm labor is paid better than that. Even the illegals are
| getting more than they could get legally at the local fast
| food joint. It is really hard to get farm labor, and so they
| have to up the pay to attract people. The work is hard and
| the hours are long, but the pay is okay for the amount of
| skill required. (if you are reading this you can probably
| make a lot more money in the city)
| kickout wrote:
| That hasn't been a dream since the....1900s? 1890s maybe?
| Homesteading saw its hey-day in the second half of the 1800s.
|
| Farming is tough. Margins are low due to the nature of
| commodities. Very few 'go at it alone' farmers out there. Most
| went under, sold, died, or partnered up in the 1980s when the
| credit crisis hurt farms.
| vidanay wrote:
| Anyone know what happened to the Drummond family? Up until 3-4
| years ago, they were ~23 on the Land Report list. Since then,
| they haven't been on the list at all (top 100). My suspicion is
| they re-structured and it's either hidden by trusts or it's been
| split among a half dozen family members and none of them are
| individually on the list.
| opinion-is-bad wrote:
| I can't give you any significant details, but I can confirm
| that they have sold some of their land since my family bought a
| bit of it.
| 3001 wrote:
| is this the same Drummond of David Drummond, ex GOOGLE VP?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Drummond_(businessman)
| harveywi wrote:
| Now it is much easier for Bill to be outstanding in his field.
| ISL wrote:
| He has many fields from which to choose, but, alas, he can only
| be outstanding in one.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| Booooo
| aquilaFiera wrote:
| Dad?
| P_B90210 wrote:
| If anyone wants to invest like the Gateseseses check out
| farmtogether.com
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Did anyone else read that and wonder, "Okay, so what is so
| special about the single acre of land in New Mexico?"
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| I was thinking it was something having to do with original
| Microsoft.
|
| That or he owns the Atari burial site with the E.T. Games.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| It used to be the Church of LDS due to cattle ranching, right?
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