Real Estate, Fake Estate: The Reality of Value
What is real estate? Usually, when we think of what real estate is, we think in terms of suburban neighborhoods, with their diminishing housing values. But, when one truly thinks about it, real estate is much more. Literally speaking, the words combined mean real property, real things, like critical resources that take up space. And so, logically speaking, if there exists such a thing as real estate, then there also exists “fake” estate.
What are the differences between real estate and fake estate? If real estate is things, like commodities and resources, then fake estate must be something unreal, but still valuable. How can something that is “fake” hold value? Things without intrinsic value maintain value within a culture through collective belief. Fiat money systems represent a key example of fake estate, wherein paper monetary instruments amount to fake estates, especially in command-and-control scenarios with their requisite distortion of price discovery and realistic valuations.
Whereas resources like land, water, food and precious metals are real, paper instruments, like the US Dollar, Muni-bonds, Treasury Bills, derivatives, stocks, etc. are not. This dichotomy can be explained by way of simple terms: real estate and fake estate.
It is in the latter that everyday men, women and children have been conditioned to believe, whilst the well-moneyed classes buy-up the world’s resources as fiat currencies across the country devalue when compared with staples like food, water and shelter.
To break this conditioning, and exchange our long-hours of labor for real commodities, such as gold and silver and land, very well may help to lay the path on which families can build and preserve for the future.