A while back I was walking with a friend and we were discussing the buying of land. He suggested a wild idea: what if you paid someone over time for a plot of land, you could pay slightly more than the land was worth, to sweeten the deal for the person who had to wait for payment. You could also pay them a large-ish lump at the front end so they know you’re serious. 

This radical idea was a mortgage. Millions of us have them, they are the backbone of our economy. They are the fundamental financial instrument that defines most of our lives. What might be radical is suggesting a person-to-person mortgage system free of usury, that, of course, exists for devout Muslims, but that’s neither here nor there. 

This is all to say that I am very wary of novel ideas. We all like to think we’re very clever, that we can improve the world because we have ideas that haven’t occured to anybody else just yet, that’s how clever we are. Most of the time, of course, we are not so clever. Most of the time we live in the real world and other terribly clever people have come up with things like thirty year fixed-rate mortgages with federally supported down payment options. 

The world is a place full of clever people out for themselves and eager to prevent abuse. The kingdom of Heaven this is not, but it does make for something about as fair as is reasonable to go down on this earthly plane.


That being said, I wonder if financial instruments could be used to make something unique and beautiful. 

The stock market appears to be as proven a way to make incremental financial gains as exists. It has been this way for over a century. I can’t speak to wether or not it will exist in another hundred years, but if that’s the case, we’ll have other things to worry about, or we won’t. 

Putting money in the stockmarket gives you more money. It might take a long time to recoup your losses, longer if you buy at some historic peak, but generally, that appears to be true. 

Most people take their money out of the stock market to retire or buy a house or some other large thing. People with loads of money leave their money in the stock market, taking out only the dividends they earn. At succifient levels it is self-sustaining to a reasonable quality of life.

If I believe that a certain way of life is beneficial to the human animal, and I had the money, could I build a place, vest it with a living will and a foundation that kept it going, and prevent its liquidation across the generations?

This place comes with a certain income. A third party trust determines how much of that income is necessary to maintain the property, pay taxes, and keep the steady state going, the rest is used for various improvements.

Certain people can live there, the income is such that they needn’t work. But they can never sell it, never rent it, or profit from it in some other way. It can only ever be a place for them or their chosen inheritor to live well.

I instantly get into questions of inheritance and growth and fairness to which I have no good answer. But what’s interesting to me is that I can actually imagine this place. A place that is financially independent and self-sustaining unto itself. Utterly unfeeling and non-fungible and therefore capable of good which the timely requirements of human beings are not. 

I don’t know, is that just a church?