I: The end of the world
For those who have been living under a rock[1], AI has been kind of everywhere lately. If one is to believe Situational Awareness (the best AGI resource I've seen) AGI is coming very, very soon. If one is to believe ai-2027.com (the most overhyped AGI resource I've seen), the gap between AGI and ASI is a lot smaller than you might think: closer to months than decades.
Finally, if you have been consuming copious hopium, I have a good argument that ASI is probably going to kill us.
Anyway, suffice it to say that if AI is coming the world is going to look very different. And if the world doesn't end, commodities like food will become extremely abundant[2], while limited supply commodities such as gold or land will become incredibly valuable.
II: The case for land
Imagine ai-2040.com is not a useless slop piece and in fact entirely accurate. Earth's land will soon be overrun with robots building out manufacturing and all kinds of facilities all over the planet. If the cost of AI (software and hardware) continues to drop dramatically, the bottleneck on building will be space[3], not parts or transportation or energy[4].
Therefore, every acre on earth will become more valuable by roughly a fixed amount, plus or minus say 2-10x (whereas 10,000x is fairly normal now), depending on convenience (parts, transportation, and energy still matter, just less). And hence in order to make the best returns on land, you'll want the cheapest price per acre and an awful lot of acres.
III: The real case for land
Now of course if all of that happens, the world will look radically different. Nobody will be working and the stock market will be valued in the quintillions or whatever so probably you were still better off putting your money elsewhere (but hey, it's nice to diversify).
On the other hand, we might end up in some kind of techno-dystopia where individuals are poor and AI is colonizing the earth but the government still has power. Then land is still valuable to the AI and it's probably still an okay idea to invest in land now.
On the third hand, we might end up in a world where the AI bubble has burst and the stock market has tanked and limited commodities like land and gold have far outperformed the stock market.
And on the fourth hand, we might end up in a perpetual war with the AI[5] and you'll need somewhere to hide (i.e. land you own).
In some cases, stocks are worth something. In most cases, gold is worth something. In all cases, land is worth something.
IV: The real real case for land
Everything you've read up till now is BS. Here's the real argument for buying land: it's fun, and if you can get it for cheap it's a low price to pay for fun.
In my case, I was able to find a 40 acre plot for $22k (cheaper than dirt[6]). Moreover I was able to split the price of the land with a friend giving us both full-access to the 40 acres for only $11k each.
To summarize, land is:
- A half-decent investment
- Fun
- Cheap, doubly so if you can split it with someone
V: The plot
After stalking Zillow for about a year I found the perfect plot: 40 acres in Nevada with road access and a river going through it. Who knew there was waterfront property in Nevada???
After a long negotiation process to get it down from $35k to $22k, we pulled the trigger and became landowners. Next step was to visit the land.
[1] This includes those bacteria that have been living under the ice for thousands of years, since ice is a rock. ↩
[2] Did you think I was going to say "scarce"? ↩
[3] And as always: legislation. ↩
[4] Transportation and energy are solved by the very same inexpensive robotic manufacturing of course. ↩
[5] I think this is exceedingly unlikely but others seem to find it plausible. ↩
[6] By 1-2 orders of magnitude vs. filling 40 acres with 1 ft of dirt ($200k-$2m). ↩