Is This the Key to Wealth, Freedom and Happiness?
Money For the Rest of Us
J. David Stein
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2021
⏱️ 31 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How owning fewer, more permanent things can lead to greater freedom and continued economic growth.
Topics covered include:
- How a railroad company issued a bond that matured in 999 years
- Why land and gold are the most permanent investments
- What is the oldest currency in use
- Why fiat and cryptocurrencies are potentially worthless
- Why permanence is freedom and constantly craving more things limits freedom
- Why do quality goods cost more
- How the volume of trash generation and the number of storage units are increasing
- Why reducing the number of things we own is so difficult and how to go about doing it
- How the economy could change as people own things longer
Thanks to Felix Gray Glasses and LinkedIn for sponsoring the episode.
For more information on this episode click here.
Show Notes
Business & Finance: Freak Finance
Back to the future with long-term bonds by Franky Leeuwerck—Franky's Scripophily BlogSpot
ELMIRA AND WILLIAMSPORT RAIL ROAD COMPANY 500$ BOND, 1863—WorthPoint
The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession by Peter L. Bernstein
How much gold has been found in the world?—USGS
The oldest living thing on Earth by Marnie Chesterton—BBC
What is the world's oldest currency?—CMC Markets
Bitcoin, Currencies, and Fragility by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered Bby E. F. Schumacher
Want to Make It Big in Fashion? Think Small, Like Evan Kinori by Guy Trebay—The New York Times
Artists of Theory: Evan Kinori Interview by Isaac McKay-Randozzi—Theories of Atlantis
Basic Information about Landfill Gas—United States Environmental Protection Agency
The Great Markdown Disaster w/ Evan Kinori—Corporate Lunch
Evan Kinori, Clothing Designer by Sean Hotchkiss—Faculty Department
Related Episodes
278: You Have Permission to Spend
262: Better Not Bigger, Circular Not Linear – How the Global Economy Is Changing
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Money for the Rest of Us. |
| 0:03.0 | This is the personal financial on money, how it works, how to invest it, and how to live |
| 0:09.2 | without worrying about it. |
| 0:11.0 | And your host, David Stein, today's episode 352. |
| 0:14.7 | It's titled, Is this the key to wealth, freedom, and happiness? |
| 0:21.4 | In 1863, the Elmira and Williamsport Railroad Company that owned a railroad line that ran |
| 0:29.3 | about 70 miles from Williamsport, Pennsylvania to Elmira, New York issued a bond that paid |
| 0:36.4 | a annual interest rate of 5%. |
| 0:39.8 | The bond could not be called early. |
| 0:42.3 | Its maturity date was 2862. |
| 0:47.9 | Yes, this was a 999 year debt instrument. |
| 0:54.4 | The steel and railroad tracks last from 5 to 100 years would ties that make up railroad |
| 1:00.7 | tracks last 8 to 25 years. |
| 1:04.0 | Yet the Elmira and Williamsport Railroad, and its guarantor, the Pennsylvania Railroad |
| 1:08.9 | Company, expected to be in existence a thousand years later to make good on a bond. |
| 1:17.1 | They didn't make it. |
| 1:18.8 | The Pennsylvania Railroad Company took over the debt obligation and the Elmira and Williamsport |
| 1:24.3 | line in the early 1900s. |
| 1:27.3 | The line continued to operate until 1972. |
| 1:31.8 | It made it 100 years, but then it was destroyed by the flooding from Hurricane Agnes. |
| 1:38.7 | As for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, it merged with the New York Central Railroad |
| 1:43.4 | in 1968. |
... |
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