Today we have a thought of the walk on land ownership. No shows next week (replays coming all focused around developing your life strategic plan) Episode 363: TOTW on Land Ownership Forget your guns, the bigger threat is that they want to take you land. Yeah. You heard me. There has been a systematic erosion of your rights to use your land to better your future for a very, very long time. Don’t believe me? What happens if you do not pay your property tyth to the state? Do you get to keep your land? This morning, a visiting LFTNer told me about several properties he got for $50. Because people did not pay their taxes on it, the county was unable to auction them off, so several years later, they sell them for $50. But what about the person who lost these lands? If they foreclosed due to nonpayment of a loan, it is one thing. But if it is due to nonpayment of property taxes? Quite another. They didn’t pay the masters -- game over. Or what about people who grew up on their family farm? And Dad dies? And they have to sell part of it to pay the inheritance tax? And then that land becomes a housing development? And then their taxes go up until they have to sell to a developer? And don’t get me started on zoning. Zoning is the sneakiest and worst way that our land is taken from us. You THOUGHT you could do what you wanted to create value for yourself -- say by building a village of tiny homes and renting them out? Nope -- not zoned for that. Or perhaps by installing a few cabins so people can come stay and interact with your livestock and learn how a homestead operates? Not if you are zoned agricultural. Or let’s say your city home burns down and you want to rebuild? Sorry. You are R2 and required to put a duplex there. Wait. What? Some people defend this because they claim it saves farmlands, keeps property values from being diminished by the choices of your neighbors, or is better for the environment. But is any of that true? Or are they are not seeing the forest for the trees? We have so many misguided people who use their feelings of guilt about being wealthy enough to have time to worry about those less fortunate to save things through voting in bullying rather than giving those they can a hand up. One of the greatest freedoms that our country gave to the most impoverished has been an opportunity to become landed. Why does becoming landed get you ahead? Because it gives you something that you can use, time and again, to generate stability and wealth that “they” cant take from you. It broke free from the systems of feudal control that would keep you from being able to move beyond serving your masters and to become the master. With your own land, you no longer require THEM to feed you if you do it right. But we’ve made it feudal again. We are letting our control of our lands go. And if you think about it this small chance to prosper is a really big deal. There was a time when you could not own your acre, grow your ducks and sell your eggs. It was someone else's acre, their ducks and their eggs and you mings got 1 egg from the deal -- or you might be told you can’t eat them but you must care for them. And in setting this up, you would let yourself be controlled just to survive. This is why the forces that wish to control populations do their best to gain control of the lands, be it your city home, quiet quarter acre in the country, prosperous farm, or simply a mailbox and a shack.  They know that a people who can take care of themselves, who have hope to build a better future for their children, who have assets to leverage are harder to control. Better is to lock us down supporting land we will never own, barely making ends meet from month to month, so that we must do what they want or face the loss of what little we have.  Better to foster insecurity, debt, fear, and then turn it into hate not for those that set up the scam, but against another population with the same problems so that we will trade the potential for prosperity for