What does it mean to own something? John Duckworth; Title Company Owner | Vance Crowe Podcast

John Duckworth [00:00:00] This is Jamal Seward, chief People Officer with St. Louis Bank in St. Louis, Missouri. And you are listening to the Vance Crow podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:00:07] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Each week I sit down with an expert to figure out what do they know about the world and how can we take their expertise to expand our understanding of how things work and really how we should interact with the world. This week I sat down with a man named John Duckworth, who has traveled around the world and is a very, very interesting guy, but he runs a company that I think most people on first blush would think is kind of boring. He runs a title company, but when you start to dig into what is a title company, it is the people that determine who owns what. And when you think about it, the foundation of modern society is built on the concept of private property. Who owns things and how do we know when you've given up your rights to certain aspects of that ownership. John and I sat down and had a fantastic conversation, and I am really excited for you to listen to this. It took us a few weeks to get this meeting on the books we were introduced a long time ago by probably one of the most well networked and interesting people in all of St. Louis, a man named Jared Holst. But it took John and I a few weeks to be able to get something on the calendar because John is running a very sophisticated company. So I was glad he could stop by. We're gonna head to that interview in just a second, but I wanna bring up two things. First, the book club, we are in full effect last month. We read All Quiet on the Western Front and that was a fantastic experience.

Vance Crowe [00:01:40] And actually that experience introduced me to a man named Lyle Benjamin, who goes by Lyle Benjamin four on Twitter. Lyle is the former president of the Montana Grain Growers Association, and a very interesting guy. We were able to meet and get to know one another because of the book club. And that's why I wanna encourage you, if you haven't joined us yet, that you jump in on this month's book. I'll talk a little bit about that book in just a second. But really the core of what I am trying to create here, and actually it's no longer my creation alone, there are a lot of people contributing to this. What we are trying to create is a community, a place where people that have maybe similar values or similar drives, but come from all over the United States and really all over the world to share their ideas, to have an experience, read a book, and then come to the book club. And we do it online to be able to discuss, how did you think about this? What did you take away from it? And one of the things that manifests in an adult book club is that people have a lot more experiences. They have a lot more worldly knowledge about what's going on and and how they perceive that they would en engage with the ideas of these books. So whereas in high school, most of the people didn't really have that many experiences and really they're mimicking what the teacher wants them to. An adult book club is a totally different thing. And by being in this book club and hearing people's different perspectives, you become curious about how they came to the conclusions that they did.

Vance Crowe [00:03:15] And I know for One, Lyle was such an interesting guy, and his take on the book was so interesting that I started interacting with him offline. And I have discovered so many fascinating facts about a guy who not only has been a grain farmer for several generations in his family, was the president of this organization with the Montana Grain Growers, but also was a police officer that knows how to engage in SWAT tactics to be able to run down drug houses. These are the kind of things and the types of people that you meet when you join a book club. So if you're not gonna join ours, maybe get out and try and find some other community, but I really highly recommend you join ours. We're having a blast, and we meet on the last Sunday of the month, which this month in the month of February means February 23rd at seven 30 at night. We're gonna get together and we're gonna talk about this book. In the meantime, as you're reading the book, you can always go on Twitter and see what are other people saying about the book? How are they engaging with it? This month is the first month, and maybe the only time this year we'll do this. We are doing a non-fiction book called The True Believer, written by Eric Hoffer. And the book I've talked about on several podcasts is about how do mass movements begin? Who joins them, why do they join them? And how do those movements end up burning brighter and brighter, hotter and hotter? So I highly recommend you read the book and use the hashtag A TCF Book Club as the Crow Flies Book Club to be able to jump onto Twitter and have conversations with other people about this book.

Vance Crowe [00:04:52] Because it is a non-fiction book. It's a little bit harder to discuss on Twitter, but I'm sure we'll have some conversations. I love this book and it's only about, I think a hundred, 150 pages. It's a pretty quick read. So if you've been a little bit nervous about some of the other more difficult books we've read, this is a good one to jump in on and make sure you get it done by February 23rd. I know it's a short month, but it's not a long book, and it's something that you guys will probably find very, very interesting. So the other thing that I wanted to mention before we go to the book club is that I have a travel schedule that is coming up that is going to be quite insane. It is an exciting time for me. There have been several organizations that have been really, really interested in some of the things that I've been talking about. And I think because there are ideas that are not being well circulated into society, and they're the ones that are pushing people to think more deeply about who they are in relation to the rest of the world. And a few weeks ago, I was invited to give a talk at a place called The Land Expo. And at that talk I was able to talk about why the organization was putting forward different kinds of ideas. And I talk about these concepts like the Overton Window and the Intransigent Minority, really, how is it that new ideas get pushed into society? And also, I talked about the outrage culture, the types of people that say there are some ideas that are in society that we are going to react to so strongly that we push them out of society's willingness to even talk about them.

Vance Crowe [00:06:33] So this was a talk that I gave and it was recorded and now it's up on YouTube. So if you're interested in the types of talks that I give, this one is archetypal. This is a quintessential example of some of the stuff that I talk about. And I had a chance to give this talk at the Land Expo because Dr. Kevin Fulta had been asked to stop giving talks by his university. He had had a few people who are outraged by who he is and what he's done. And they started hounding the university saying he shouldn't be allowed to speak, you guys shouldn't be proud of him. And eventually the university came to the conclusion for whatever reason, that having Kevin go out and give a lot of speeches was drawing more negative attention to them than they wanted. So they asked him to stop doing that for a while. Now, I think that that is a bad thing. I think that we want more speech rather than less, but it, it happened that Kevin needed to fulfill what they asked him to do. And so he invited me to step into his place and it was a big honor and a big opportunity. The Land Expo is probably the most forward-leaning conference that I have ever been to, and it was a great chance for me to speak for about 45 minutes about concepts that are really important to me. So if you're interested, go check that out. You can just type in Vance Crowe Land Expo and check out that talk. I'm, I'm open to your feedback and your ideas. This was the first time I'd ever actually given this talk. And so some of those ideas I'm working out on stage.

Vance Crowe [00:08:05] I'm trying to learn myself what is it that I actually believe in other news. If you're interested in seeing me speak live, there are some opportunities that are coming up. Oftentimes I'm invited by private organizations that are looking to get their company or their industry group to push their members to think about things differently. But every once in a while I'm invited to give a talk to the broader public people that are invited. And if you live in Canada, I will be in some really interesting places all across the heartland starting on March 16th because I have been invited to do the Tech Tour Live, which is an event put on by Real Agriculture and Sean Haney. So we are going to be heading to the cities of Brandon, Regina Lethbridge and Red Deer during the month of March 16th. And if you're interested in seeing me live along with some other great keynote speakers and a live taping of the Real Agriculture Podcast, you can go to tech tour live.com for more information and tickets. I will also be up in Alberta at the Alberta Beef Conference, and I'll be out in California to address the California Farm Bureau and many, many other places in between there. So I hope to see you guys out there know that I absolutely love talking with podcast listeners when I go out to give a speech because you guys are the ones that know me so well. We've spending hours and hours and hours together. And I always love to have somebody come up, tell me that they're a listener and tell me why they listen.

Vance Crowe [00:09:37] I've learned a lot from the listeners that have taken the time to come see me. So I am going to stop talking and jump into the podcast. Remember that the all the, the book club for this month, which is the True Believer by Eric Hoffer, is going to be discussed on Sunday, February 23rd at 7:30 PM And if you wanna meet a really interesting guy, go check out Lyle Benjamin four on Twitter. Without further ado, I'm gonna hand it over to the interview with John Duckworth. John Duckworth, welcome to the podcast.

John Duckworth [00:10:11] Thanks, man. It's great to be here.

Vance Crowe [00:10:13] I've been looking forward to this podcast because I think what you do actually comes down to the core of civilization, which is you run a title company, which helps people, as far as I can tell, figure out who owns what. Is that right?

John Duckworth [00:10:30] That's breaking it down. Yeah, that's, that's what we do. We help determine who has ownership rights and property and all the other different types of rights others may have in that property.

Vance Crowe [00:10:40] Now, the first time I ever came in contact with a title company, it was when I was buying a house for the first time. And I found it to be really frustrating. And I was pretty angry when I found out, like we're paying for somebody to tell us who owns it and how that works. Why is this an important thing?

John Duckworth [00:10:58] So we have to break down property rights into what the different types of property there are. I think most people, at least in Missouri, understand that we have real property, personal property 'cause we pay different property taxes on those things. When you're buying a piece of personal property like a car or a boat or even a a shirt, those are things that they're single items that are very easy to determine. Who owns that with cars and boats? We have a certificate of title that the state issues, it's a very simple document and they say, you have this car, this car cannot change. It's not going to change its shape. It's not going to, you can't loan a part of that car to another person for a specific period of time. And it's very finite type of property that at a certain point in time will cease to have any value. Real property, real estate is property that we know has long-term value. The longer you hold real estate, the more valuable it gets, generally speaking. And so what goes into real property rights is, is a lot of different individual rights, whether it's the right to live on the land, whether it's the right to mine that land, whether it's the right to cross it with a road, the right to you, you use it as collateral for a loan. So all these different types of rights we, in, in law school, they, they talk about it as a bundle of sticks. Each right is, is one stick and a bundle of sticks going into property rights. So going back to your question about buying a house and why do you have to go through a title company?

John Duckworth [00:12:34] Why can't, why can't the county tell me who owns the property? Why can't the state just say, all right, you own this property. Well, property lines change from time to time and it's a very complicated procedure that involves realtors, it involves lawyers, it surveyors, and all these different parties. Somebody has to analyze it at the end of the day and say, this is who owns it.

Vance Crowe [00:12:57] I remember when we were buying this house and we were going through the plat and we figure out that whoever built the fence before we got there was wrong by about a foot and a half. And it was crazy because I was like, Hey, I met the guy that's next door. We get along. What's the big deal? Like this is not gonna be a big deal. And everyone that I spoke with was like, put it in writing, talk with him, make sure he agrees that that's what's going on. Why, why, why all this like formality and seriousness about this stuff.

John Duckworth [00:13:30] So we have a long enshrined, right, property, right called adverse possession. Adverse possession also might be known as squatters' rights, which effectively is saying, if you use a property exclusively and openly and notoriously for a set period of time, you can lay claim to that, to the title of that property,

Vance Crowe [00:13:50] Really.

John Duckworth [00:13:51] So when you have a fence that's over the property line and your neighbor's been cutting that grass, he's been planting flowers in it, playing, playing catch with the kids, he's using it. And if it's on the other side of the fence, chances are you're not using it. So he's using it exclusively. So over a period in Missouri, over a period of 10 years, if he has exclusive rights that he can then file a suit in the, in with the circuit court and say, I own that property. 'cause I've, I've used it openly, exclusively, notoriously for the last 10 years.

Vance Crowe [00:14:21] Does that actually happen?

John Duckworth [00:14:22] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [00:14:23] So wh in that case a fence, no big deal. I mean, I guess maybe it could be a big deal, but where does this actually get meted out? Where do you see this happening, this type of conflict over somebody squatting on, on property?

John Duckworth [00:14:37] Well, most commonly it's gonna be with roads. Somebody's used been using a, a road for a hundred years and it turns out there was never any dedicated or established right to use that road. Whether it's a deed, whether it's an easement, that's gonna be the most common situation where it happens in the city of St. Louis. However, there are entire blocks where every house is built three or four inches onto it's neighbors property and it works that way going up and down the block. So if, if the house at, you know, 1, 2, 3 main street is three inches onto the house at 1 2, 5 Main Street, 1, 2, 5 will be three inches onto the house. And that's important. This adverse possession is really important because if I bought 1, 2, 5 main Street and this house on 1, 2, 3 is on my property without adverse possession, I could demand that they remove their structure from my property, which would require tearing down a house or tearing down a wall. But by having this adverse possession, right, once it's there for that long, you say it's there, it's been there, they have the rights to that property.

Vance Crowe [00:15:45] And so are you, are you in effect like a detective? Like what, what is the role of the title company? Because from my perspective, just a guy that had barely bought any property before that point, it was like, we show up, you guys go open up the internet and you say, yep, that house is owned by that person, they can sell it to you. And then that's it. So how,

John Duckworth [00:16:06] So I, I think one of the easiest ways to talk about title and what we do is really to go back to a, to an old, just an old cliche of a western, think of an old Western movie and there's the poker game going on and the guy's sweating. He's got his, his pocket watches in the pot and you can see he's struggling and then all of a sudden you see that rolled up piece of parchment that says deed on it and he's thrown his deed in the pot. So if you go back to the days of the Wild West, that sort of thing happened where I pledged my property as collateral to you to give me a loan. And if there were good land records in those days, that was fine. You, you could go check out the public records before you bought that property to say, wait a minute, did did so and so pledge this property as collateral? So I'm not gonna give you a hundred dollars for this plot of dirt. If somebody's gonna show up tomorrow and say, Hey, I have, you know, collateral, this is my collateral, I'm gonna foreclose and take the property. So that in effect, we're protecting those buyers when they're buying that property from the seller confirming that that seller owns the property and that has not pledged it as collateral. That there are no liens on that property, meaning no debts secured by that property. 'cause the worst thing for you would be to buy that property and have somebody show up and say, Hey, I hold a note against this property, you owe me a hundred dollars or I'm gonna foreclose. And you lose out on what you've got.

Vance Crowe [00:17:26] I heard a guy talking about that one time. And so it seems like a real thing, but I I've only heard it in the abstract, is that a common thing that happens? It's

John Duckworth [00:17:34] Not common title insurance, contrary to pretty much every other form of insurance is backward looking. We, we, we are more in the business of risk elimination rather than risk acceptance. So if you take car insurance, auto insurance, that is risk acceptance. There is this, the certain probability that you, when you get into the car, are going to get into an accident and cause a claim. And based on all the data we have today, they can run your social security number, look at your credit, look at your driving record, all these factors that go into it to determine what that probability is and establish a premium. And there's nothing the car insurance company can really do to prevent that from happening. It's just a risk they take with title insurance. We are actually covering things that have already happened but could be hidden. So when you write a contract to buy a piece of property that, and it goes to the title company, we begin doing research to identify those risks. We identify what those risks are, such as the fence being over the property line, such as a mortgage to a, b, c mortgage or maybe there's an unpaid mortgage from 1983 that we need to deal with.

Vance Crowe [00:18:44] And they do go back that long.

John Duckworth [00:18:45] We a title search, a standard title search for residential property will go back 45 years to see who owned it over the last 45 years in liens. But we actually go back in St. Louis, generally we're gonna search back to about 1900 to identify other types of encumbrances, which we're gonna get a little more complicated. I don't, I don't

Vance Crowe [00:19:07] Yeah, do it man. I'm, I'm down. This is interesting.

John Duckworth [00:19:10] Alright, so once we've identified all, I'm gonna stay on the risk elimination thing. So we've identified all these risks and then before you get to closing, we go about taking care of them, eliminating those risks. So tho that old mortgage from 1983, we're gonna track down what's called a release, a satisfaction of that mortgage to clear it off title. So it's no longer an issue. We're gonna make sure every debt is paid on that title and if there's issues with fence, we're going to address that before you get to closing. So we're solving the problem before it ever arises. That's our main goal. And then there's a tiny amount of risk where maybe we screw up, maybe we miss something, or maybe it's just perfectly hidden, we could never find it. So case in point of something that happened within the last couple years, and going back to how we searched title a long way back on every piece of properties I've talked about, there's other rights. There's, there's the ownership rights, there are lien rights, the right of a, of a bank to collect its collateral for a debt. But there's other encumbrances and, and things that restrict the use of the land. So there may be an easement for the sewer to run under your property. There may be a right of way for a highway to go along the side of your property, an easement for a utility line to go overhead. And once these easement rights are, or other types of rights are established, they are perpetual. They last forever unless they're revoked by the person who is entitled to use those rights.

Vance Crowe [00:20:39] Okay.

John Duckworth [00:20:40] Okay. So for that reason, we have to, we can't just stop in 1960 and say, all right, we're done. 'cause something that was enshrined in in 1950 might come into place. In addition, there are restrictions. You buy a house in a subdivision, there are rules that govern how you can live in the, in the neighborhood, what type of siding you put on. Can you have pets, the nature of your fence, all these different rules that affect the use of your land. So we have to identify all these and make sure that everybody's aware of what these are. So here in St. Louis, we closed a, a house in Webster Grove Old House as they are in Webster Grove. And we did our proper title search all the way back. We have in our chain title back to about 19, 1900. And went through closing, everything was fine. And, and our purchaser, as is common for for new purchasers, starts talking to neighbors and, and going over his grand plans to, to how he's going to put in a pool and build a big garage and a deck. The things that all new homeowners do. We always have grand plans. And so as he's talking about putting in his pool, the neighbor said, well, you know, my sewer's running right underneath here. The buyer said, nah, no, I, I had a survey title company. It's, it's not there. Neighbor said, I, I promise you that's where my sewer is. And he, he alerted the title company. We went Uhoh, we contacted MSD. And sure enough, they confirmed that their line was there and the neighbor was able to produce a document in information on where that originated, originated in 1904.

John Duckworth [00:22:20] 1908, this document that created the sewer easement. It didn't appear in the way the title records are indexed. We did our job, we searched it, but it was misin indexed back in 1904.

Vance Crowe [00:22:33] Wow.

John Duckworth [00:22:34] So we didn't find it. And as a result, he was a, he submitted a claim to his title, to the title insurance company. We are a title agent selling it on behalf of a much large billion dollar insurance company. So submit the title claim and not, and it's in process. And ultimately he will be compensated

Vance Crowe [00:22:53] Because, because the value of his property is not what he thought it was. Because he thought, Hey, I'm gonna be able to put a pool here. Now what does it cost to exactly not be able to put a pool here

John Duckworth [00:23:02] That's called, it's called diminution of value. So the title company comes in and says, all right, you paid a hundred thousand dollars for this property without the easement. So we know what the value is without the easement. Now we know there's an easement. You can't put a pool, it's worth 80, let's say. And so he gets a check for $20,000.

Vance Crowe [00:23:20] So it seems like your role has an interesting arbiter concept to it, but you're really just saying, I what exists is what I can prove exists. Is that right?

John Duckworth [00:23:33] Nah, we, that's, that's effectively what we're doing. But then there's the policy of title insurance to protect the things that we could not find.

Vance Crowe [00:23:41] Okay.

John Duckworth [00:23:42] And if we make a and occasionally we make a mistake.

Vance Crowe [00:23:44] And so is it, is it you actually that's going through and doing this kind of mystery work? Or do you have people that do that and you're running the company? Tell me a little bit about your, your business. Sure.

John Duckworth [00:23:53] So true title founded in 2012. We have about 48 employees today, 10 offices. And the title company is really twofold. We have two departments. We have what's called the title production department, the Search and Examination Department. And we have an escrow closing department. So I'll talk about search and exam first 'cause that's what we're talking about. That's more like a research department. So we have employees that we call Title Searchers or abstracters. And their job is once they get a property, we know some, so-and-so's buying a property, wants title insurance. They begin the research process. They start with going to the tax records, pulling up the tax records. We find the last deed for 1, 2, 3 Main Street. Now we know what the legal description of this property is and we can begin doing that research. Then we, we either go to a, a, a, what's called a title plant, a computerized electronic index of of public records. Or we might go down to the county courthouse, go to the land records where there are actually books that record every document that's recorded in the land records. And we do the research to find every document in the last 45 years that affects that property. And then beyond that, we do what's the, the restriction and encumbrance search going back as far as we can to find those easements and other things. So that abstracter then compiles this set of documents and it goes to a title examiner. The title examiner is now reviewing all of these documents to identify any potential problems.

John Duckworth [00:25:28] And there are a lot of problems. 'cause a lot real estate law can be very complicated. It's best handled by title companies and real estate attorneys. But it's often handled by layman trying to transfer property on their own. It's handled by other types of attorneys who are probably very good in their specialty.

Vance Crowe [00:25:45] Oh, so not everybody gets a title search?

John Duckworth [00:25:48] No.

Vance Crowe [00:25:49] Oh, I guess I was in the, that's interesting because the people that were giving me advice, basically, like there is no other way to do it. It is through this title.

John Duckworth [00:25:56] So when you're buying a property, if you have a bank, banks need title insurance.

Vance Crowe [00:26:00] Okay,

John Duckworth [00:26:01] Yeah. They are gonna, they are gonna make it happen. But what happens, it's not necessarily title insurance, but maybe, maybe you're single. When you buy your house and you get married, now you wanna add your wife or your spouse on title. So you might just prepare a deed yourself, record it in the land records and put your wife in title. You may have messed that up 'cause you don't know the different rules that go into the rules and laws that go into making a proper deed.

Vance Crowe [00:26:27] So the, the, the people that are doing this work, are they bookworms? Are they like librarians? Are they like, what type of person does really well at this job?

John Duckworth [00:26:38] They are introverted. We do joke. We have the introvert department and the extrovert department, our escrow closers. These are the people who are sitting down with you at the, at the closing table to get things signed up. Work with real estate agents, work with loan officers. They're real outgoing love people. The people doing the research are, are best suited their day. They're the best part of their day is when they get to the office, they put their headphones on, they look at their computer screen, and then they don't talk to anybody the rest of the day.

Vance Crowe [00:27:03] Wow.

John Duckworth [00:27:04] And that's what they enjoy doing. In the old days, I used to say I collected liberal arts degrees 'cause we'd get philosophy degrees, English majors, history majors, all those types of degrees that have have that people that love to study and learn things, but maybe don't have a a a natural profession once they get out outside of teaching,

Vance Crowe [00:27:24] You're a young guy. You have 40 some employees in this, what seems to me to be a rare field. How in the world did you get into this?

John Duckworth [00:27:34] So I'm one of the few people that actually considered it and went to, went into the business, knew what this it was, knew this. Yeah. So my background is international business. I got a degree in marketing and Spanish. I traveled all over when I was in college and I said, I'm gonna, I'm gonna live this jet set lifestyle and

Vance Crowe [00:27:52] I know the, you know, the club. Yeah. My,

John Duckworth [00:27:54] My first job, I did get a job. I, I worked in the Czech Republic Oh wow. Back in, back in the year 2001. And I was, it was a small venture capital group, which sounded a lot more exciting when I took the job than when I got there and realized we were six people basically working to invest one man's money. And he was very picky and opinionated about everything. But what I learned is about myself is that I wasn't the best suited for a corporate lifestyle where I had to answer to others and where my boss might undercut me in front of his boss. So, and, and international business as a, as a 23-year-old generally meant that I was just working weird hours to make phone calls to the other side of the world. And

Vance Crowe [00:28:42] Living in the Czech Republic in the Cze as a young person, that's gotta be a pretty wild, pretty wild time.

John Duckworth [00:28:47] So yeah, as, as a young person, it was a great, the lifestyle was fun. I learned what it meant to, to to get three hours of sleep and, and go into work the next day for the first time. So it was a life changing experience, but I also learned that that was probably not the, the lifestyle that I ultimately wanted

Vance Crowe [00:29:07] In terms of and professional. What prompted you to get outta there? Were you making good money?

John Duckworth [00:29:13] I was not making good money. It was, it was, it was a traineeship, they called it. So I was, I was making just over the cost of living. Ooh. And the Czech Republic in those days was not yet on the, they're not on the Euro now, but they, they're in the EU now. So back in those days, going over to Germany was super expensive. I made $400 a month, which was better than the national average, but $5,000 a year is not gonna cut it when you cross the border into Germany and, and wanna go to Western Europe. So it wasn't a sustainable lifestyle at that living there. So I, I just decided, said, this isn't the right thing for me. I, I went home, did some soul searching. How

Vance Crowe [00:29:59] Long were you there?

John Duckworth [00:29:59] Just over a year.

Vance Crowe [00:30:00] Okay. And so you come back home, you, you're from the St. Louis area.

John Duckworth [00:30:04] St. Louis area.

Vance Crowe [00:30:05] And then what does the che the Czech Republic guy go, go on to do next?

John Duckworth [00:30:11] So I, I, after soul searching, said, what am I gonna do? 'cause this international business thing's probably not right. I,

Vance Crowe [00:30:18] When you're a kid, I know. I, so I had this concept of like international business and you're actually ahead of where I was because I got all the way done with school thinking I'm gonna do PR communications, I want to do international. And you realize when you're just outta school, no one wants you to go inter you don't have any skills to go international. And by the time you get enough skills, oftentimes people are married and they've kind of got, got set up and, but I had that same kind of pull. I, I went the deckhand route. I saw that venture's your capital route.

John Duckworth [00:30:51] Yeah. So

Vance Crowe [00:30:52] Your soul searching in St. Louis.

John Duckworth [00:30:54] So my dad, I grew up around real estate. My dad was a small developer in Jefferson County doing, he, he would buy old farms and develop large lots subdivisions. So he'd throw in a road, put in the electric and maybe four, five acre lots and people would go buy the lot and build their own home. And it, and my dad had a pretty good living from that. So I thought, eh, real estate might be the way to go to give me a lifestyle that will allow me to travel. Gave me that flexibility as I, as I build an empire of, of property. So in those days, the plan was I'm gonna get a job in real estate, but eventually just start building an empire of, of real estate that I own and, and create passive income. And sales was not particularly my thing. I didn't wanna become go the broker route, whether it's commercial or residential. I knew that. So I looked at either a title company knowing that they have their, their fingers on the pulse of all everything that's happening. 'cause you consider it every real estate closing, 99% of every real estate closing is are are going through a title company. So you see what's going on, you see the deals, you see the value or looking at property management, which would get me into the connections I need on the commercial side. So I started exploring those paths and got a job at a title company first.

Vance Crowe [00:32:10] And were you one of the headphone researcher guys?

John Duckworth [00:32:13] I, in the, I started off typing the, actually preparing the final title policies. Okay.

Vance Crowe [00:32:18] So

John Duckworth [00:32:18] That's at the, that's a good education. At the end of the process, I'm reviewing every, as the title policy person is really auditing the entire closing file to make sure everything's done properly. Typing it up and sending out the policy along with the recorded deeds and mortgages. And very quickly it clicked. I just got it. I understood title and then I started doing the research and the examination and I understood title. I just, it just, I got it.

Vance Crowe [00:32:48] When you say I understood title, does that mean you understood what it is to, to own something? What, what do you mean?

John Duckworth [00:32:55] I understood yes, what it means to own something. What it means in terms of the real estate law and the logic that follows on who has the rights to property. So whether it is understanding the different types of ownership interests, for instance, there are, when somebody's married, you have two types of rights. You have what's called a marital interest in the property and you have a vested interest in the property. A vested interest means your name is on the title. So when I sign a deed and, and it lists you and your wife, you guys both have a vested interest in the property. If I sign a deed just to you Vance Crowe and nobody else is listed, your wife, by virtue of the laws of the state of Missouri, has a marital interest in the property. Meaning she has rights, they're not, they're hidden, but she has rights to the property. And I understood inherently, intuitively how that, how that worked better than others and, and how to solve that issue.

Vance Crowe [00:33:56] I think that that's the, the thing that you're describing here. I will not be able to ask you the right question. So you're gonna have to figure out how to answer the thing that I'm trying to get to. But it has become more obvious to me as I've worked in the agriculture community, which, you know, they can sell their mining rights, they can sell all, all sorts of things. In fact, I was talking to a land trust group that said, you can now sell the, the right to do to develop it. So you can only keep it as farmland. I really didn't understand that there's all these different types of ownership. Is this a new phenomena? Is this like something that's been going on in the last 50 years? Or is this as ancient as real estate in general?

John Duckworth [00:34:39] Well, property rights and the derivatives of property rights are always being developed as we get more creative. But the, i the concept of there being multiple layers of property rights has been around for, for well over a century at least. I mean, I, I really don't know how far it go goes back, but start from the, the, the, the basic philosophy of, of what it means to own a piece of property. If you have pure ownership, there are definite, there are layers, different types of ownership. The purest form of ownership is called fee. Fee. Simple absolute is a, it's a, it's a old eng English common law term and fee simple. Absolute means that if I define on the surface of the land a description, describe the, the boundaries of a piece of property, that with that, within that property, I own everything from the center of the earth. This is theoretical from the center of the earth, extending outward into the atmosphere until you reach space that I control those rights. Now those rights have to be enshrined by the government and protected by a government. But that is theoretically the, the base that we begin from. And from that we can start selling off different aspects of those rights. So I, in, in the late 18 hundreds, when we, when the Rockefeller started the, when the oil booms began, they came in and said, we don't, we don't need your surface rights. We don't wanna farm the property, we want what's underneath the dirt. So they sold off the mineral rights.

John Duckworth [00:36:11] So it may not be oil down south of St. Louis, we have our lots of mining rights for lead, for instance iron or mineral. We call that mineral rights, subsurface rights. But you can break up the subsurface rights to say it's just the right to, to extract the oil, just the right to extract the iron, whatever the case may be. But we can be very specific on what that right is. Those rights can be perpetual and last forever or they can be terminated. It's all subject to a written agreement that's recorded and enshrined in the land records.

Vance Crowe [00:36:45] And then what's next after fee? Simple. So you have fee simple and then you have the mineral rights. What else, what other ways could somebody own?

John Duckworth [00:36:52] There's a, a leasehold, it's a common form of ownership, certainly in the, in the United Kingdom, but in parts of this country, Maryland is one where somebody says, I own this property but I'm gonna lease it to you. Everybody's familiar with a lease, right? You lease an apartment, it's the same concept, but I will do it for a longer period of time. In, in England it, it's oftentimes a 499 year land lease that the, that the crown, the, the royal family that owns most of the real estate gives. And then you have the, the full rights to use that real estate and do everything you need to over that 499 year period or the 99 year period or 20 year period. But we can differentiate that. So in commercial property, we see this a lot. Some Walmart wants to come in and put, build a store. They don't want to pay the full price of the real estate 'cause they know the market's changed. And 30 years from now, they may not want to store where that property is. And they also understand when they put up a building that the, there's a life cycle of that building building, right?

Vance Crowe [00:37:52] Particularly a Walmart building. A Walmart.

John Duckworth [00:37:53] So they say, our buildings are good for 20 years, we'll sign a 20 year lease, put up our building. And at the end of that 20 years you get the building and the land back as the property owner and we relinquish the, our rights to the property and Walmart's okay with it. 'cause they've depreciated the cost of that building the land, the, the land value. They've got outta that property over 20 years and they can renew and rebuild or they move on down the road as they usually do.

Vance Crowe [00:38:19] I, it's funny to think about those leases or anything going for 20 years or a hundred years because you put something in 20 years you can imagine, but it's pretty hard to imagine how the world will look 20 years from now. But you get a hundred years out on a lease and at least when you're signing it, it feels like forever, I'm sure.

John Duckworth [00:38:39] Sure. And, and it oftentimes is. But you see that, you know, older, old money type families that have owned this property, they wanna make, make sure it stays in their family and that they maintain some control over it for that period of time. So it is a multiple generation trans generational transaction that they consider.

Vance Crowe [00:39:00] So you have a couple of kids, I

John Duckworth [00:39:02] Have two kids,

Vance Crowe [00:39:02] You have two kids and how old are they?

John Duckworth [00:39:04] 10 and 12.

Vance Crowe [00:39:05] So 10 and 12-year-old kids have a definite perception of what they own. What is theirs versus what's their brothers or what's, you know, the neighborhood kids when you watch them and you're seeing them interpret what they, what they own. What are you kind of, what strikes you as somebody that knows so much about property?

John Duckworth [00:39:27] That's an interesting question. One, I've, I mean I've certainly never considered it,

Vance Crowe [00:39:35] Well I, one of, one of my thoughts, the reason I have this is my nephews are very young, right? Like, and, and so I see them playing and I see them recognize I want this and, and, and some of the things that they want are theirs and they don't, they feel like I have the ability to share this or not share this. It seems, it doesn't seem cultural. It seems almost like it's embedded into our DNA 'cause nobody taught, maybe somebody taught 'em that, but it's,

John Duckworth [00:40:03] You know, I don't know. That's a, that a great philosophical question. Is it embedded in our DNA the concept of private property rights is not universal in the world. You know, with my kids, they, they, they certainly confuse ownership on, Hey, this is my house. No, it's not your house, it's your mom and dad's house. But they're very certain of the things that they own when they get a gift card or they use their money to go buy whatever thing that they buy. And I, they definitely differentiate between that, but they don't quite grasp that concept of that what's my mom and dad's is not also theirs.

Vance Crowe [00:40:37] When I was growing up, when I'm the middle of seven kids, so my parents had this thing, you know, for Christmas you would get gifts and we had a rule that for 24 hours you didn't have to share. Now, to me, that made all the sense in the world, right? But I didn't realize that essentially that gift was yours for about 24 hours and then it became community property.

John Duckworth [00:41:00] That's funny. That's an interesting concept. But it gave you, it gave you that whole, the feeling of this is mine, this is,

Vance Crowe [00:41:05] Yeah. And then you were still responsible for it. So if that toy is left out or whatever, but you could no longer assert your, like you seeing some other kid play with it and then decide, I want it now. Didn't matter,

John Duckworth [00:41:17] Didn't matter after

Vance Crowe [00:41:18] 24 hours it was communal property.

John Duckworth [00:41:20] So my question then I'll kick back to you on that. Did, did it change the way that toys were cared for and kept once it became community property versus something that was your own?

Vance Crowe [00:41:31] Yeah, I mean, so in my family, if you were neglectful of your toys, my parents just threw 'em out. They, they had no, so it became very much like, well this is one way to get rid of a toy I don't care about. But if you really did care about that toy, you definitely preserved it, put it away, made sure it was, you know, away from everybody else.

John Duckworth [00:41:52] And I think that that gets at the idea of the true value of what private property rights are versus communal property rights. When something is private, when something you own it and it is yours, you take better care of it. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:42:03] A hundred percent.

John Duckworth [00:42:04] If it belongs to, to everybody, what incentive do you have to improve that property to to, to maintain it, to take care of it? Now we, we do certainly have some with parks, but we rec we have governments that we give our taxes to with the expectation they're going to maintain that. And, you know, I'm gonna get philosophical again on this idea of private property versus communal property. We have a country that has enshrined private property rights. And that in many ways is at the, the root of all capitalism. The idea that if I put my hard effort, my, my labor, my efforts, my my thoughts into improving a piece of property, whether it's a, a piece of dirt or it's some sticks and I'm, I'm making a house or building a car, that I am entitled to the rights of that pro, what that property is going to produce after that. And in other parts of the world that don't have those rights, you don't see that same level of development. Because if I am spend all this time cleaning up this piece of property and building a house, the government may take it from me. So I do not get the benefit of my labor going into it. There's an economist from Peru called Nando DeSoto who wrote a book 20 years ago or so called The Mystery of Capital. And coming from Peru, he, he, his basic premise is why is it that we get these western educated people when we are redoing a government? You know, Peru has rewritten its constitution several times and all these third world countries that are constantly re redoing their, their constitutions and they're always trying to copy in, in a western style government, whether it's parliamentary style from, from the UK or it's an American style republic.

John Duckworth [00:43:50] But why, why when they put that government in, why doesn't it get the same results that is coming outta the u the US or the uk, Germany, where, wherever the case may be. And one of the things he talked about was just this enshrinement of private property rights in our culture. We just inherently get that that toy is, is mine. Yeah, it

Vance Crowe [00:44:11] Is

John Duckworth [00:44:11] Mine and not yours. And it comes down to does the co does the, it's part of our culture, but does the government also back up, back up that private property? Right. When governments really enshrine and protect private property rights, it allows the individuals to then work to improve their property, to use that property to develop and produce more and more goods and things and services. And beyond that, the number one source of financing of small business in the world is the equity in somebody in your own home. You go to a bank and say, I'm gonna start my factory. I'm gonna start knitting sweaters and selling them, and I need money to, to buy my sewing machines and everything else. If I have title to my property, if I have the private property rights that are enshrined, I can then mortgage that property to suck out that hidden equity, get money from the bank, invest in a business, create jobs, spur the economy forward, and all that comes back down to that. Is it my property or is it everybody's property? If it's everybody's property, I can't suck out the capital that's hidden inside that.

Vance Crowe [00:45:21] I'm totally with you. I, I had a a, a guy that kinda looked in on me at Monsano, and he was from Latin America and he'd worked his way up and he said, well, when I got done with college, I went to graduate school, which was in effect a sort of educational experiment that the US had built two schools in Columbia. One was economics and one was law. And they were like, if you wanna reshape a company or a country, you have to first have a fundamental understanding of prices, supply and demand, what is ownership? And then, and then law, you have to have like, how are we going to met out? The differences there, and this sent me on a rabbit hole of, of looking into this in a, in a really deep way, which is probably why I'm so excited to talk with you, is that I came to the realization that almost all of the western religions, so Christianity, Judaism and, and even Islam, the very, very beginning tenets of those religions are ownership. I mean the very first story of the bible of, of when they're describing Adam and Eve naming things and giving dominion over them and who, what is yours, it's so fundamental because without an understanding of what you own and what I own, then, then the only way you can met it out is force.

John Duckworth [00:46:38] Yep,

Vance Crowe [00:46:38] That's

John Duckworth [00:46:39] True.

Vance Crowe [00:46:39] That's why I think that this concept of title and ownership is so interesting and particular with you widening the lens out to being basically, I mean that is maybe not the, it it's probably the primary square. One of what a government is, is deciding what is private, what is able to be private property, and then how do you defend those rights of people.

John Duckworth [00:47:00] That's certainly the, the was one of the, you know, the founding principles of this country. I mean, I, I don't know if it's a myth or I, I don't know if I've studied it in death, but you know, it is said that the original preamble, the declaration was to life, liberty to protect life, liberty and property. Yeah. And it was later amended by the powers to be life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Vance Crowe [00:47:23] But I think that, and I know this is a really controversial opinion now, but when I've heard people describe why was it that landowners had the right to vote, and I'm certain that it was done to, to tilt the scales to make it so the people that were in power stayed in power. However, the philosophy when you go back and read about it is, to your point, it was saying these are people that are continuing to build on what they have and therefore they're the ones that have the best interest in making sure that the government is set up such that they can continue to build.

John Duckworth [00:47:55] Right? And it goes with that. And with that private property, we are constantly improving. I can sell it off, give it to somebody else who is going to benefit by the fruits of their labor.

Vance Crowe [00:48:04] I speak with farmers all over the US and Canada, sometimes over in Europe. And one of the things that I'm coming to the realization of is a fundamental difference between people that are farmers, people working in the land, and not all farmers own the land, but, but a significant portion of them are, and people living in the city is that people living in the city, many of them have no concept of actually owning land. They, they genuinely don't understand what it means. And so not only can they not picture what is an acre, let alone 2000 acres, the concept of having a physical place that you own as something that has value, it just, it's not a part of their day-to-day culture.

John Duckworth [00:48:48] There, there's a movement, I've been reading even from, from some fairly, you know, freedom loving, capitalistic eco economists suggesting that perhaps home ownership is not the great thing. It should be that we've been sold throughout these years because home ownership subsidize going to your point that more and more people are moving into apartments. And maybe that's not the worst thing in the world that we do segregate this concepts that own things. But maybe real estate is not the thing you need to own. 'cause there are lots of different forms of ownership and ways to invest your own capital.

Vance Crowe [00:49:24] Wow.

John Duckworth [00:49:25] It it's a

Vance Crowe [00:49:26] Do you think that's as a result of how badly the bubble ended up getting and exploding? And

John Duckworth [00:49:32] It's part of it, part of it is we, we have development laws that have really restricted new development, new home ownership that have pushed the prices of new homes out of the range of new, of millennials, new home buyers. The statistic that was used, and the story I read about this was I, I think in let's say 1990 at the height of the baby boomer, when they were at, at their peak sort of home ownership, that people that were 35 and under owned roughly a third of the real estate in the United States, a third of the value of the real estate in the United States.

Vance Crowe [00:50:11] See that statistic again, that's shocking. People

John Duckworth [00:50:13] That were 35 and younger, maybe it's 40 and younger, but in that, in that younger demographic owned about a third of the real estate,

Vance Crowe [00:50:20] Oh my god, that can't possibly be the number now

John Duckworth [00:50:22] And today it is something like four to 5%.

Vance Crowe [00:50:24] Yeah. Wow.

John Duckworth [00:50:26] And that's, that's you, you have, we've had a grow, you know, in 1990 planning and zoning was just getting started in, in at least our part of the world. It was more established in other places. But now with concerns about environmentalism, things that are all certainly can be very valid claims, we have restricted development so much so that it's just increased. We've limited the supply of real estate. Consequently the prices of real estate have gone up. And so if it's, if you live on the west coast in San Francisco, Seattle trying to, and your first time home buyer, your salaries, you know, first average people outta college are not making six figures

Vance Crowe [00:51:04] Enough to buy a million

John Duckworth [00:51:05] And they can't buy a half million,

Vance Crowe [00:51:06] One point million. Right.

John Duckworth [00:51:07] You know, condo. I,

Vance Crowe [00:51:10] I think that one of the great mistakes in the Western education, and it was true of me until I got to college. I mean I had economics classes in high school, but I didn't really have an understanding of economics until I got to college. And when you, when you first, I don't know if you had this feeling, but when I first saw supply and demand cross and then have that be price and then you start learning like, okay, what happens if you bump up supply? What happens if you lower demand without that? It seems as though things like prices and value come from, you know, some higher order, some, you know, the people in charge and it's only when you have that sense of like, oh wow, that you wanna be really careful with this graph, you don't wanna break it. But I think did you have that same kind of profound experience?

John Duckworth [00:52:04] Yes, absolutely. Economics always seemed like this just completely abstract science full of numbers and, and you know, guys that sat in closets and all they did was crunch numbers all day. And there was the profound epiphany for me with eco economics is not that it was the study of money and flow, but it was really the study of human interaction.

Vance Crowe [00:52:23] Yeah, that's right.

John Duckworth [00:52:24] It's most basic form it is human behaviors intersecting and how, how they behave when those things accept and 'cause the supply and demand is, is really just the, the action of a human's perception of, of what that is.

Vance Crowe [00:52:37] Oh, that's an interesting take on that. I hadn't really thought about, I mean

John Duckworth [00:52:41] Demand is I absolutely subjective, right?

Vance Crowe [00:52:43] Yeah, that's right. And what people want. And then you get into some, i, I don't know if you've followed Peter Thiel at all. So Peter Thiel is the one of the guys that started PayPal. So he and Elon Musk, and then he became a venture capitalist and he talks about a philosopher, economist named Renee Gerard, who is fascinating because they end up talking about why does demand end up compounding on itself. And it's because human beings are not, actually, we don't know what we want. And we're really oriented in this kind of tribal concept of it's better for me to want what you want because like, if you want it, you probably have some reason for it and so therefore I can get it and then we can exchange it. So the whole concept is that demand you, there is no such thing as the thing we ought to demand. It is only in our minds. And it really, most demand comes from me being like, oh, John likes it over there. I I must want that too.

John Duckworth [00:53:44] Yeah. I mean that's, that's fascinating. But I, I agree with it. That's a, a great concept.

Vance Crowe [00:53:48] He's also the same guy that really talks about scapegoating and, and these other concepts which, you know, you had brought up environmental causes and, and environmental challenges. I think that this concept of, I don't really know where I'm going with this exactly other than to say that climate change and animal rights and the, just these ideas that are compounding how we think about things is all really an effort to change the supply and demand curve.

John Duckworth [00:54:20] It, it certainly has the effect.

Vance Crowe [00:54:22] Oh, that's okay. Yeah. Maybe, maybe it's not designed. It

John Duckworth [00:54:24] Certainly has the effect. I don't know if it's, if it's always designed to do that, but I mean, I think that's a little nefarious to think that

Vance Crowe [00:54:30] Somebody

John Duckworth [00:54:30] Yeah. Is really trying to modify. I think, I think a lot of those people come from a, a good place and a good heart when they set up this anti-development not gonna develop outside of this area. Portland years ago set up a, a ring around the city and said, no development outside of this ring. So consequently when they did that, property values behind that ring collapsed 'cause you couldn't do anything with it. Right. They killed the demand curve because there's plenty of supply, but there was no demand 'cause you couldn't do anything with it.

Vance Crowe [00:54:59] So what do you think about concepts like minimum wage?

John Duckworth [00:55:04] I I think a minimum wage is a unrealistic floor that has a, it's a job killing effect. You know, we have certain laws that exist that, that maybe don't make pure economic sense and minimum wage is one of those things, but maybe from a social standpoint they do make sense. So long as you understand that, you know, if you're setting a minimum wage or, or raising the, to a livable wage of $15 an hour, that it's above what that job is worth, what people are willing to do it, that it's gonna have the effect of changing the way a business goes about doing things. And McDonald's is going to automate more and more tasks if it has to face

Vance Crowe [00:55:44] 15 bucks hour. You've just set a price for, for how, how much do, how how efficient does that robot have to be? Right. And if you make it at $15 an hour, then that robot only has to be $14 and 99 cents worth an hour.

John Duckworth [00:55:56] Exactly. And I ultimately, I come down to the belief of voluntary interaction. If you and I agree to do something, then who is anybody else to say that that is wrong? If we both did it without any sort of, there's no force involved, there's no duress involved in that, that agreement. If we agree to do something, and I agree to work for you for a dollar an hour, 'cause maybe I just enjoy flipping burgers, maybe I'm retired and maybe all I want to, I don't need money. All I want to do is come in every day and flip a burger or whatever you wanna do, why can't I do that? And if we have minimum wage, then you eliminate some of those jobs that people used to do.

Vance Crowe [00:56:34] Well, that's exactly what happens in something like the construction industry. And I, I, when I went, I was 16 years old to go get a job doing construction and I wasn't worth, I don't know what minimum wage at that time was, but I wasn't worth $5 an hour. Right? Right. They had to spend more time teaching me how to do things than I was offering a value to the company. But if you push that up too high, then you, you don't have the ability for somebody to say, I'm gonna take a chance on you. I'm gonna, I'm gonna invest in you and you're gonna invest in yourself with sweat equity. You, you essentially wipe out the, the ability for somebody to put to, to, to create future value by learning now. Yeah.

John Duckworth [00:57:17] And you know, obviously there's that effect of, you know, we, we have this movement in the country that, whether it's pro-immigration, anti-immigration, but it's all rooted in this, that concept of minimum wage. Right? These immigrants come in and they're wi willing to work for far less. Right. And they're willing, they're voluntarily willing to do that. And that undercuts in certain people's minds, it's undercutting their, their own earnings potential because they've increased the supply of labor. But at the same time, this country's built on the backs of immigrants who come in who, who shoehorn their way into this country with jobs like that. And they have kids that become doctors and, and, and farmers and whatever, whatever they're going to do. But that's, that's always propelled our growth by doing that. And I think you're, if you cut out minimum wage and we start killing jobs, then we're gonna cut out what has been the lifeblood of our, of our progress.

Vance Crowe [00:58:09] I worked for a paving company in college and that was one of the great learning experiences for me on a whole bunch of levels. But what you're calling to mind is, IWI worked with this totally Latino crew. They were from Mexico and Guatemala and, and they all talked about the willingness for either themselves or the person that they were bringing in to work for way less. They just didn't wanna have a bunch of their friends and family members unemployed. They're like, if if he's unemployed, he's gonna go drink. He's gonna go do X, y, z. We know that if he shows up to work, he's staying outta trouble. He is building, he's doing stuff. And I remember being almost shocked by this because I was in college, it was bef, you know, pre economics, understanding supply and demand and being like, yeah, but why would you accept working for less? And they're like, we have a whole bunch of reasons why we want people to work. It is not just, it is not as simple as what kind of cash am I getting back out of this deal? Yeah,

John Duckworth [00:59:05] That's that's a that's great point.

Vance Crowe [00:59:08] And so your voluntary interaction, the concept for government, I've, I feel this exact same poll. I am probably more wary of the government than the average person, but you live in a weird space here because you recognize that all of these property rights and all of these things, they come down to what does the government record? How is the government going to handle this? So where do you fall on how strong or weak you should have a government? Because the stronger they are, the more they can interfere with voluntary interaction.

John Duckworth [00:59:40] That's true. Well, we need a system of rules that we can all agree upon and live by the rule, basic rule of law that that does govern that interaction, that private property rights. 'cause without that basic rule of law to protect private property rights and to protect my personal being, so we, we, we are living in just pure anarchy where the strongest guy wins. Whoever has the most guns or the biggest guy can take what he wants. So we do. So my purpose idea of government is to protect my, protect me from harm and my body, my and our, our our, our individual rights from harm and to protect our property from being theft or being damaged, destroyed. And those, those are the two basic concepts and anything. And, and we set up a system of laws to protect those things and then we follow those laws.

Vance Crowe [01:00:30] Right. And then the more that you add into that, outside of that core, they may be for good reasons, but you have to understand that you're, every time you add something in, you're creating friction between two people to be able to have voluntary interactions. Correct.

John Duckworth [01:00:44] If it doesn't, if it doesn't harm somebody or harm anybody else, then there should be no reason you can't do it.

Vance Crowe [01:00:50] Was this a philosophy instilled in you by your father? I mean, you, you talked about he was into property, he kind of knew these, was this something you grew up knowing?

John Duckworth [01:01:00] My father did a pretty good job of hiding his own philosophy. He didn't preach or, or share what his beliefs were. Of course, growing up with, you know, around your mother and father, you still observe, we learned by imitation. So it was certainly a, a aspect of the way he grew up. It was a bootstrap, do it yourself. Don't expect anybody else to help you out along the way. He grew up relatively poor in the, in the sticks in in Jefferson County and everything that he earned, he, he, he did on his own without help from others. And so that was the same value that, that he instilled in me. And then when, when he was got into his forties and had a little more freedom to interact politically, he, he was active in, in libert basic libertarian concepts. And that, that certainly helped mold my own beliefs. And then the more I studied in college and reading philosophy of John Locke and or Ayin Rand or

Vance Crowe [01:01:58] How old were you when you encountered Ayin Rand?

John Duckworth [01:02:00] I think I was a senior in high school.

Vance Crowe [01:02:02] Oh man. Gosh, I wish I would've done that. I mean, I had the basic idea, but I didn't read that book till I was 30.

John Duckworth [01:02:08] Wow. It's one of those interesting books that the philosophy is there, college professors hate it, so they're never going to push it. It's not, it's not a philosophy that, that they even accept as a valid philosophy, which is fascinating that they don't,

Vance Crowe [01:02:23] What you don't realize if you haven't read that book, is how pervasive it is in our culture. And it wasn't written that long ago. Right, right. We can go and find videos of Ayn Rand talking and, but, but it is everywhere. It's like all of a sudden and it, and it's not just like one of those, oh, I went on and bought a red car, so now I see red cars everywhere. It like the philosophy Ragnar Danko and, and the, the the archetypal characters, they're everywhere.

John Duckworth [01:02:49] They absolutely are. And people read it. It's, it's, they're on reader's choice awards. It's, you know, fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged are two of the top five books chosen by readers.

Vance Crowe [01:03:01] I think it's because it has, it reflects a part of, of the, the economy that you're not naturally predisposed to. Right. It it exists and it, and, and granted a lot of her characters are straw men and they're like, you know, wildly unsympathetic, a cartoonish Yeah. To any other, but it reflects light onto things that we ordinarily don't let ourselves say. Like, you know, we don't talk about lazy people in society. That's taboo in our culture to be like, there are lazy people that book lays it out. There are lazy people, there are takers, there are people that want to slow down progress. Like, and you don't hear that talked about. And at least I didn't in my college speech.

John Duckworth [01:03:44] No, I mean one of my favorite passages in either of those books is the, the Point Francisco Dan Kaia says he overhears somebody say money is the root of all evil. And he turns and says yes, but have you ever asked what is the root of all money breaking it down? And that's not something that we talk about. And he goes on to talk about money is really just an ex is is a form of exchange that was created to represent man's labor, a woman's labor, a person in, in the days before there was a true currency, any form of money, right? It was all barter and trade. I'll, I'll plow the field for you if, if you will sew my, you know, make my clothes money allowed for that good to be more transferable between just two people. Now I could extend that to a, a greater civilization. And he talked about that. And there we, we were trained in the idea of money is the root of all evil. But that is such a concept that is really the opposite. It's the root of all that is the root of money is the root of all that made society great in civilization grow to the heights where we are today. I'm

Vance Crowe [01:04:47] A hundred percent with you. And we, like money is an entirely philosophical concept. Right? It it is, it doesn't matter how real it feels and how much it buys. It actually is a philosophical concept. But once you've tapped into that and you kind of look around, you now all of a sudden can say, well, there's a reason that person gets paid more for that work. And it's because there's less people that can do that, or there's more demand. But until you actually sit down and think about it, I, I remember the, the, the biggest economics lesson I ever received was a children's book called The Big Book of Money. I've went to, I've, I've, I've looked around trying to find this as many times as I can, I can't find it, but it was this giant book of a dog. I just remember him like explaining how does currency work. I was maybe 18 years old when I read it, but it wasn't until somebody was like, this doesn't even represent gold. It represents what is somebody else willing to do work-wise in exchange for that. Yeah. And and what were you willing to do to get that and how does it all work together?

John Duckworth [01:05:49] That's great. And that's an education that we don't really put on our, on our children and, and don't teach them.

Vance Crowe [01:05:54] I think it's, it feels almost like we have like a guilty con conscience or something about there, there's some sort of shame associated with money. You know, to your point of people saying it's the root of all evil.

John Duckworth [01:06:07] I mean it's part of, it's part you brought up western, you know, western religion saying go back to the Bible and Jesus throwing out the money lenders and, and, and that was, it was a very negative thing. And I think that we've created systems and governments that have helped the people who have money keep their money artificially. So we've created systems that that have made it more unfair. And I'm not, I can't highlight any of those systems off the top of my head, but minimum wage for instance,

Vance Crowe [01:06:36] I mean just the very act of of being able to hire an accountant, right? Like once you have enough wealth up built up that you can hire an accountant, now all of a sudden you play in a different game and, and doesn't even have to be that sophisticated, but it's understanding how do these taxes work? What am I allowed to write off what is a write off? And then once that gets going, and that's not necessarily a trick that we set up, but once you get involved in that, then all of a sudden you realize there are weird tax credits, there are things available to people that unless you know where it is in the book Yeah. You can't get to it. And, and so there is where it's a hard line to draw because you don't want to penalize people and say, well, because you having an accountant gives you an advantage, therefore you can't have one or everyone should have to have one. 'cause that's not right. But you get deeper into the thing and you start saying that there are things that are slanted in the world.

John Duckworth [01:07:28] Absolutely. Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [01:07:29] What are your thoughts on how much money is being printed in the last few years?

John Duckworth [01:07:35] I think we're in a dangerous, dangerous place. And, but it, the, the interesting thing is that it's a global phenomenon. And the idea of currency is just an idea I don't think has been explored. I mean, at least in the economics that I've read, the mainstream e economists do believe in printing money to a degree, but they all know what that happens to monetary policy. It's gonna, it's gonna collapse at some point in time. But we haven't ever printed money all over the world

Vance Crowe [01:08:06] In this, in this way. And at a speed like we're printing now.

John Duckworth [01:08:09] It's, it's, it's, it's crazy and it, it seems as a system that is eventually going to collapse, but as long as we believe in that system, it won't collapse. And that's, that seems to be where we're headed. And I, I don't, I can't quite grasp where we're, where that, where that is.

Vance Crowe [01:08:27] I have recently been deep diving into things like the Bronze Age collapse and, and I'm not doing doomsday or thing, I just didn't even know that there was a, a whole series of, of societies that just fell a around the bronze Age. And there were these sea people that came and burned all their property. But the thought that comes up is they went a really long time before they collapsed. And the problems that ended up showing up that probably led to their collapse, it didn't happen overnight. So in one way, I wonder if this inflation thing is something like, well we just put that off for a hundred years and it it's not gonna hurt us now, it'll hurt us a hundred years from now, but then the line, the sins of the father will be visited upon the son. That's what that brings. That's what that rings to mind.

John Duckworth [01:09:16] That's certainly gonna happen. But we keep kicking that can and propping it up as much as we're printing money, we should have inflation at three or four times the rate it is today. Why don't we, I, and nobody's really been able to explain that to me. The

Vance Crowe [01:09:28] Best that I can come up with is the, in many of the staple areas that we have, the technology has kept pace with the inflation. So for example, the amount of money that you spend on food is actually going down, but that's because food production has become so much more efficient that it's, that it's beaten those out. You know, you can look at other parts of the world where I I think that the, that inflation gets soaked up in certain parts of our economy. The other day somebody pointed out healthcare, but I think the student loan debt, I think the price of college is where a ton of inflation is getting soaked up. It appears to me. And then you might have a really interesting take on this land prices when even when you had the collapse of the market, the land didn't get, didn't get any cheaper. So do you think inflation is getting soaked up in land prices?

John Duckworth [01:10:22] No, I don't. I do. I mean, land didn't get cheaper, but it didn't get sold.

Vance Crowe [01:10:27] Oh,

John Duckworth [01:10:28] It didn't move.

Vance Crowe [01:10:29] Fair point. Fair with touche.

John Duckworth [01:10:31] So I, as an example, I bought a bunch of land in ni in 2007 right before the collapse. And we just, we couldn't do anything with it, but we just sat on it.

Vance Crowe [01:10:41] Okay. Because

John Duckworth [01:10:42] We knew the prices would come back eventually.

Vance Crowe [01:10:45] And so I mentioned student loans where, what do you think about the student loan? Is it really a crisis? Like, so people kind of, everybody agrees that it's a problem. Where do you think the problem began and what would you do to, how big of a deal is it?

John Duckworth [01:10:59] I i I agree that it's a problem. I think, I think it needs to be included in the bankruptcy laws. You should be able to

Vance Crowe [01:11:08] Declare

John Duckworth [01:11:08] Bankruptcy.

Vance Crowe [01:11:09] Amen.

John Duckworth [01:11:09] See, somebody said, you know, that you used to be the only two inevitable things in life were death and taxes. Well, you can avoid taxes now, but you can't avoid student loan debt. So they, that was the change. It's death and student loan debt. And we've, we, I it's been well talked, you know, talked about and that we as a society have said every, every child needs to go to college, which is absolutely not true. I'm sure you went to college with some, some folks who you're like, you shouldn't be in college. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:11:38] And when

John Duckworth [01:11:39] Your highest and best use in life is not gonna be an as an accountant. Right. It may be being a top level, you know, auto mechanic, which you have to be highly educated in that specific field. Right. To, to be a good mechanic Today,

Vance Crowe [01:11:51] Where I saw that really show up was when I got on the ship as a, as a deckhand and I, and I began to realize you could make an entire career of being a sailor of, of working in this way of working on ships and having, but almost everybody that worked on the ship went to college and was there because they were paying off student loan debt and it was the job that they could get.

John Duckworth [01:12:12] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:12:13] And it, it, I, to me, the, the danger that I see with the student loan debt is populism run amuck. Right? You cannot have a society where you told a bunch of people that were ambitious and excited and they think they have dreams that they're going to accomplish and then the debt that they take on doesn't work out. They become very open to joining mass movements and those mass movements get burning and you can't slow 'em down. So to me, the student loan debt, even if you're like, you as an individual should be responsible for your own debt, you know, you took it on, you should pay for it. The problem is that you get enough of those people together that have all made irresponsible decisions and there's no way for them to clear it off the books. They're gonna push back somehow. Yeah.

John Duckworth [01:13:00] And, and let's, let's, let's be honest, they're making those ir irresponsible decisions when they're 17 years old. Right?

Vance Crowe [01:13:06] Right.

John Duckworth [01:13:06] They don't understand it. And, and we talked about financial education, not understanding it. You know, what, where is that conversation? Where is the responsibility of the universities to say, how can, how can a university in good faith sell somebody a, a degree that the earnings potential of that degree will not pay off the cost of that degree? How can they in good faith sell that to somebody without opening their eyes and say, you want a, you want a degree, you wanna become a teacher. That's a great and noble profession, but if you're going to school at Washington University and you're gonna pay $50,000 a year for that, you're never gonna pay off your debt.

Vance Crowe [01:13:42] Right.

John Duckworth [01:13:43] So if you can't afford to pay this, you shouldn't take a loan for it.

Vance Crowe [01:13:47] And then you have a real challenge, right? Like I have several good friends that went to the Brown School, which is the social work school at Wash U. Yeah. It's supposed to be one of the great social working, you know, programs in the country. It doesn't matter how good the education is. If when you walk outta there, you're gonna maybe make 45, $50,000 a year and you're gonna top out at $65,000 a year, 70,000 and you just took on $150,000 worth of loans. You're never getting outta that.

John Duckworth [01:14:19] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:14:20] And I don't, I mean the, the, the interesting, I heard Princeton economists the other day talking about if you wonder why we build these giant dormitories and we put in, you know, these elite, it's because if we don't, they'll go to Yale, they won't go to Princeton. And then, so you can be mad at us, but we're just fulfilling a market need. But it's not good.

John Duckworth [01:14:42] But we made the, I mean that's a, that's a huge issue in and of itself too that I wanna talk about if we can.

Vance Crowe [01:14:48] Yeah, man.

John Duckworth [01:14:49] Yeah. But the, you know, we made the availability of, of student loans, of government student loans was available to anybody. Right. And who figured out market-wise how to capture that was the university said, alright, we will help you get these loans 'cause we want the money. And

Vance Crowe [01:15:03] Once you made it, they, the system

John Duckworth [01:15:04] Became cyclical and then they, they start, oh, come to our university. Look at our rec center, look at this, the, the, the amenities we have in our dorms. And now you've created this entire generation who's already grew up with getting everything thinking the world was their oyster, that they were the best, that they could do anything they wanted. And now they've gone to college and they had all these amenities and they've gotta come up. They've got student loan debt. They've gotta learn how to live in, in relative poverty. Where in college they didn't, you know, I I I wonder today, like how how many of these kids know what it's like to skimp and scrounge and eat, live on ramen noodles for, you know, for

Vance Crowe [01:15:40] Was that your college experience?

John Duckworth [01:15:42] To an extent, yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:15:43] Mine was to

John Duckworth [01:15:44] An extent. I, mine

Vance Crowe [01:15:44] Was real. I mean, I spent way too much on booze, but

John Duckworth [01:15:47] Absolutely.

Vance Crowe [01:15:47] But I was,

John Duckworth [01:15:48] We had priorities.

Vance Crowe [01:15:49] It's, yeah, I was fortunate if there weren't Jimmy John's, if that restaurant had not come into existence, that was the only way I got vitamin C was through the tomatoes. I'd add scurvy for sure. I was so poor.

John Duckworth [01:16:00] That's right. But I mean, like, you know, communal showers, do those exist in dorms anymore?

Vance Crowe [01:16:05] I don't know. Do they?

John Duckworth [01:16:06] I don't know.

Vance Crowe [01:16:07] That's interesting. It's been so long. The, the, when they declared that you could no longer go bankrupt, what other market do? Is there any other market we do that in? No,

John Duckworth [01:16:17] Because

Vance Crowe [01:16:18] A bubble would, there is no possible way for a bubble not to show up when that happens. When it's like, you are a sure thing. I can garnish your wages. If you'll take this out, then I'll give you whatever you want.

John Duckworth [01:16:29] Yep.

Vance Crowe [01:16:30] That, that's, I'm, I'm, so I think we're both on the same page on that one. I what was your, did you work while you were in college?

John Duckworth [01:16:38] I did.

Vance Crowe [01:16:38] What'd you do?

John Duckworth [01:16:42] I usually, you know, waited tables, bus tables. I, I've worked at Applebee's. I did a couple of odd things. 'cause I, I like smaller business. I, I did telemarketing for three weeks. How'd

Vance Crowe [01:16:52] That go? What three weeks? Terrible at it. I was

John Duckworth [01:16:55] Horrible at it. I hated it. It was the worst job in the world. But I'm glad I I had that experience. I, I sold aerial photography, door to door.

Vance Crowe [01:17:06] How

John Duckworth [01:17:08] My dad's one, one of his childhood friends, this is what he did. He, he used to like, rent little small airplanes and he'd hang out the side and fly up and down streets and take pictures of people's houses.

Vance Crowe [01:17:18] And this is before Google Maps,

John Duckworth [01:17:19] It was before Google Maps or any of that stuff. And he would print 'em off. He and I would have nine by twelves. I'd throw 'em in a frame, knock on somebody's door like, Hey, would you like to buy a picture of your house? And also just a tremendous experience. I I think my commission was 60%. So I started 125 bucks and I could take it all the way down to 40 or $35. And

Vance Crowe [01:17:42] How well did you do in that job? I

John Duckworth [01:17:43] Mean, I did it for six months. I made a decent amount of spending money.

Vance Crowe [01:17:48] It's good. Like, there is no substitute for being in a position where you have to learn how to sell. There's no, there's, I, I had to do it when I was in Boy Scouts. That was a good first step. But then later I didn't do sales direct. So when I lived out in California, I was working at this public radio station and my buddies and I were renovating an old ship, but I made almost no money at the radio station. And the ship was not gonna pay for years and years and years. So I used to walk up and down on the docks asking people, do you have work that is an experience? People, I believe it should go through. Because they would have you mend their nets or their, you know, fix things or scrape It was the worst jobs. 'cause they were like, Hey, here's this 23-year-old kid, he's gonna do whatever we ask him to do for whatever we're willing to pay him. Let's do it. But that's when you learn like a lot about yourself and about how hard you're willing to work and about how you better work smarter. Because you're never gonna get out of this hole if you're just fixing people's nets all day.

John Duckworth [01:18:48] But Yeah. And you realize that if, if I don't do it, nobody else is gonna do it for me. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:18:52] That's right. Right. Yeah. That's right.

John Duckworth [01:18:54] You, you, you are out on your own doing that. That's a great experience.

Vance Crowe [01:18:57] I think that that's one of those things that it's got, I, you know, I don't have any children, but it's gotta be very, very difficult for a father to let their kid go without a net. But it's only when you don't have that net that you really figure out what am I capable of doing. Yeah.

John Duckworth [01:19:15] Yeah. I I I think that for me, I always knew that that net was there, but I never, never wanted to have to, to, to call it in.

Vance Crowe [01:19:24] Yeah. And you know what I should be, I should be honest. Like there was no way somebody was gonna let me starve to death. Right. I wasn't living in Kenya. I wasn't even in, in the ghettos of the us. Like if I really had to, but that would've been a terrible, terrible phone call to make.

John Duckworth [01:19:41] Yeah. But that, that brings up an interesting story, an anecdote. My college roommate Derek, who's a just a brilliant guy, has some, he's, I think he has some bipolar issues. So he's dealt with a lot of issues through his life, ups and downs. And couple years after college, after he had attempted suicide and he was trying to figure out what he wanted to do, you know, he decided he was going to, to give up all his earthly possessions, go become homeless and write about it. And he had a very specific mindset. So whoa, my other college roommate, the three, the two of us kind of helped. We, we took his stuff and we would finance him, we would send him money here and there. But he, he hopped on a bus, went to New Haven, Connecticut, which is where Yale is. Spent some several eight weeks in Yale being homeless. Went to New York City from New York City, went to Birmingham from Birmingham to Minneapolis. And then he lost his willpower at it, but over this experience. So he would go to, he would go to events at Yale. So it was all, he had this very well thought out, but his, his experiences were amazing. I saw him in, in Manhattan three or four months in to his time being homeless. And I go to meet him, I'm going, I take him out to a bar, buy him some beer things that he hasn't really had the ability to have. He has put on 15 pounds since he went homeless. He's, he's not, his clothes aren't very nice, but he's like, John, there is more food available to me than I, than I, than I could ever ask for.

John Duckworth [01:21:17] He's like, I can eat all day long.

Vance Crowe [01:21:20] Wow.

John Duckworth [01:21:21] I can just bounce from food kitchen to food kitchen talking about how charitable we are, but also going to this idea of when you're homeless, everything's available there, there's a lot of opportunity available to you and most homeless in this country is he also learned where it wasn't a a permanent thing, it was a, as a trans transitional. Right.

Vance Crowe [01:21:38] Right.

John Duckworth [01:21:38] And that's who we would run into. But he, he talked about the availability of close availability of, of going to do day labor was an opportunity that most people had. That there's no starving that this country doesn't let anybody starve to death if you don't want to.

Vance Crowe [01:21:53] I think that the, the real challenge is getting from that point to where you're not struggling all the time. Like when I was living out in Northern California, I, I cannot, I cannot believe I did this, but I knew that my breaks had a, had like a leak in the fluid. And I was like, if I can go another two weeks without getting this fixed, then I'll have a paycheck and I won't, you know, that's what I did. I'm driving through Mendocino, California, the roads are like giant s's and Q's and all kinds of, and I'm driving hoping that the brake fluid doesn't run out in my car.

John Duckworth [01:22:31] Yeah. And

Vance Crowe [01:22:32] When you're poor, your ability to transcend those things, like I think time, what you don't have in money, you have to make up for in time. And that, that's the biggest challenge. So it, it, I can appreciate the, you can survive being homeless, but getting outta that trough, I, I mean I I'm sure I would do it if I had to, but I sure don't want to.

John Duckworth [01:22:54] That's absolutely that, that's a great point. That is a great point. How do you get outta that? And that's, I mean, you described so many different scenarios that that describes health insurance for people who can't afford health insurance until their next they get a job. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:23:07] And you think about the time that you're spending putting into, I'm gonna fix my own brakes or I'm gonna replace my own car battery or whatever. What you don't realize is what the time that when you're young, at least I didn't, the time that you're putting to doing that somebody else is putting, meeting with their accountant to figure out where the tax credits are and how to, how to, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with people doing this. It's it, my only case is when you're down at the bottom, time is against you. 'cause you, you, you can't buy your way out of the problems. That's

John Duckworth [01:23:39] True. That's entirely true. And, and that's more expensive. Borrowing money is more expensive. You know, buying a house, the poor you are, the harder you're gonna get a higher interest rate. It is, it is far more expensive to exist in many ways when you're poor than it is when you're more wealthy. So

Vance Crowe [01:23:56] We've talked about student loans in inflation being at the bottom in homelessness. What do you see that's good in the world right now? What, what's important to you that you, you're looking around and saying, Hey, this is important for us to remember.

John Duckworth [01:24:13] Let's see. That's, I'm nervous about the world.

Vance Crowe [01:24:21] Are you?

John Duckworth [01:24:21] Yeah. I mean I, I I see that too much of it is, there's, it's, it's so self, the world has, has become so self-centered and what's in it for me versus what's in it for us. And we talk about me, us versus them way too often rather than, than

Vance Crowe [01:24:35] We do you feel like that's different than the past? Do you feel like we're more self-centered than in the past?

John Duckworth [01:24:39] Oh, absolutely. I absolutely do. And that's, that's when I talk about the anti-development, we, you know, we, we talk about NIMBYs in the business, not my backyard type behavior, which is that self-centered. I I want a new car wash, but I don't put it in my backyard, put it over elsewhere. You know, we, we want to use oil, we wanna use energy, but we don't want an oil pipeline running through our country. And it's this inability to see the big picture on how we all need these things to get along.

Vance Crowe [01:25:08] Yeah. I, so I, I kind of made reference to it before, but the, the podcast has a book club. And in the book club this month in March or February, we're reading a book called The True Believer, which is a book on how do mass movements get going. It was written by this guy that was a longshoreman, one of those guys that like picked up cargo and carried it on and off ships. And the the thing that scares me about today is what I'm reading in that book where what you have are a lot of people that had dreams. They, they were really excited about it, they didn't manifest. And so they look around for other people to say, what do you guys think we should do instead? And if you don't have a self-worth, it's very easy for you to say, well, I'm gonna discard my self, my individuation, and I'm going to join this larger group and whatever cause they have taken on, I will take that on too. But you become, you become like a single fan. Like you, you are just repeating what somebody else is saying. And I'm not sure if it's a function of the times that we're in or the internet age or whatever. But that is my greatest fear. My greatest fear right now are mass movements. Because once they get going, we've seen many, many examples of them going badly. And so once that starts to burn, there's no way out of it.

John Duckworth [01:26:26] That's right. I I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm afraid of history repeating itself. 'cause I I, I'm a big fan of Ernest Hemingway and I, and I, so I like to read his stuff and his stuff, you know, largely is World War I related Yeah. And

Vance Crowe [01:26:38] What's

John Duckworth [01:26:38] Going on in the 19 in from the teens to the thirties. And I see a lot of parallels in what was going on in the world, in, in, in Europe particularly at that time. And what's going on here.

Vance Crowe [01:26:51] Tell me more. So we, we just, the last book, club book was all quiet on the western front, which I had never read before. Yeah. That was horrifying. I don't want that to happen again.

John Duckworth [01:27:02] The for whom the bell tolls is about the Spanish Civil War and the Spanish Civil War was really, it came down to a fight between socialists and fascists. And, and fascists are really, it's just what we, I mean, it's, it's the, the far right it's, they're, they're both relatively populism movements and populism. Right. Socialism, it's still a populist ideal. Fascism is also populist. And that's what we see in this country where the far right and the far left have happened. And you see this not here, not just here, but it's in France and it's in, it's in the uk it's in every, you know, it's all over. And so you had this same rise of socialists that, that were anti-religious and religion's bad and the elite are hurting the rest of us versus the, the nationalists. You're saying all you socialists are trying to steal all of my things.

Vance Crowe [01:27:59] Oh wow.

John Duckworth [01:28:00] And take my rights away.

Vance Crowe [01:28:02] Okay.

John Duckworth [01:28:02] And it's, it's rooted in, in a basic religious base. And that led to the Spanish Civil War. So you fast forward to today and you've got the Bernie, the Bernie Sanders movement, which is rooted in this idea of socialism. And that the system has been skewed against them from the beginning to a movement of the people who have historically been in power that are losing their rights, their rights are being eroded against. And they see that this other side is just after them and calling them names and they're fighting back. And we have that exact same battle, but it's all rooted in populism. And Spain. Spain, the, the fascist won and in Spain, and he ruled for from the thirties to the seven to the seventies. But you had that same rise with, with the Nazis in Germany in the rise of the socialist in Russia.

Vance Crowe [01:28:51] So here's the thing that scares me if we just want to turn this into the terror episode, John Duckworth, title, title company Owner and terror is many of the authoritarian dictators that really rose to power came up as, as a function of disease being spread. Because when disease spreads, we interpret that as a foreign invader. It's like, not good. We wanna get rid of that. And like Hitler, for example, one of the things people don't realize is when he started to get regional power, so before he had taken over before the night of the, where they burned all the buildings he had started coming in and demanding that factories clean everything up. So they, they use cyclone A to get rid of different rats and, and things that were spreading disease. He planted flowers, they got rid of all these weedy areas and suddenly people started getting healthier. Right. And, and then when they started putting Jews in the concentration camps, one of the functions of that star of David was to say, these people don't have sanitary conditions. They are diseased. So even people that weren't, didn't, didn't want to be a part of the star of David or treating those people differently, suddenly they started seeing those people as diseased. And you could bring that problem into me. And, and so dictators rise up in those situations 'cause they say, don't worry, give up a few of your freedoms and I will clean up this problem. And I'm not saying this is going on with coronavirus, but I watch the panic that spreads over over a disease that people have no concept of at all, but that they don't want the disease.

Vance Crowe [01:30:26] That's the thing that scares me. Yeah.

John Duckworth [01:30:28] I mean it's a disease or a fear of something that's unknown that you, you don't have any your, that you feel powerless to stop. Right. So it doesn't necessarily even have to be a DA medical disease. Yeah. But a, a disease of, of thought, of disease, of a plague, of racism, a plague of, you know, that concept. We have to stop this and they, it's off. You know, even those things are often talked about like that. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:30:49] That's, I mean that's exactly how we, the us Well I don't know exactly, but it is in large part the way that the US thought of communism spreading that it's like a disease. Exactly. And we gotta go stamp it out and like, we can go take all these actions to justify getting rid of it. Maybe a better question or one that's more allows you to, allows us to climb outta the pit of despair that we're in. What, what property rights do people have in the US that they may take for granted that they don't understand is, is not, is not necessarily natural.

John Duckworth [01:31:27] Well, I mean a lot of what we have talked about are, are the things that we take for granted. One of which is how easy it is to buy and sell property.

Vance Crowe [01:31:35] Oh.

John Duckworth [01:31:35] And this, this interesting title insurance is something that exists really only in the United States. It has been exported a little in Canada, has, has adopted it really to a certain degree. And American businesses, when they buy property outside the country, they may want title insurance. But it's a concept that really only exists in, in the United States. And what happens is it makes it very cheap to buy and sell a piece of property in Europe when you wanna buy and sell a piece of property, you hire an attorney to do much of the same research we are doing, but you get no protection from it.

Vance Crowe [01:32:08] Do you just hope they do a good job?

John Duckworth [01:32:10] You just, you hope that they do a good job and you're trusting in your attorney and you can sue their, your attorney if, if they do a poor job. But you're paying an at attorney's cost a lot more than a somebody at a title company who may not have gone to college. We have several of our best employees to have no college education.

Vance Crowe [01:32:25] Good for you.

John Duckworth [01:32:26] So the, you know, that we make it very cheap and easy to do that. The other thing we make it as you know, a tangent to that is we make it very cheap and easy to borrow money against your property for the same reasons banks have a very good system of, we have a very good system of foreclosure laws. I know that sounds backwards, I'm going back negative, but without good foreclosure laws, banks aren't gonna make loans. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:32:50] That's true. That,

John Duckworth [01:32:50] That gives the bank the protection that they need in order to make that loan. 'cause they know if you stop paying, they have the security of that collateral to get some of their money back. So we have this very good system to move property to facilitate the exchange of, of money and, and things that does not exist in the rest of the world. And, and it happened organically over time because maybe we started from this huge plot of ground that we can get back into some negative things who owned that ground? But that was, it was a bootstrap generation said, I can buy this and this system, I can then turn around and sell it to you and you can take a loan out and build a factory with that, that money.

Vance Crowe [01:33:30] So we talked about the role that government plays in kind of tracking this thing, right? You go to the county courthouse because one of their jobs is if something happens with property, you register it here we can, we can now make sure that somebody is the final arbiter of those things. In many ways, Bitcoin was put forward, or at least the blockchain under the Bitcoin system was said, Hey, this is an alternative. It could be an alternative for say like Venezuela, where they don't have that kind of system. But I think the, the really strong ardent people are saying this will also protect us in the us What is your take on using the blockchain to record titles?

John Duckworth [01:34:12] I think it's a great system, but I think it's a great system for places like Venezuela or Georgia, which did institute it across their ent, this country of Georgia Institute that as a way to record land titles because it creates, now it's independent, it's not the government that governments can get corrupt and change that stuff and change the rules. Blockchain is recording it independently and we can manage it. So from that standpoint, it is a great system for creating an independent land recording or public record system. And the United States, and this is one of the things that protects my business in the long term, the issue that we have is our legacy of the public land record of, of 250 years of public land records in St. Louis, much less how, how old it is on the east coast. And each system is slightly different by county. There are over 3000 counties in this country. And most, you know, they're, they're all generally the same, but they're not exactly the same. And

Vance Crowe [01:35:14] If you tried to force 'em to standardization, it would, it would break things.

John Duckworth [01:35:17] And and that's, yeah, that's the thing. So the, the, the idea of just completely changing that, while it seems philosophically you can get to it practically, it, it can't ever happen. It's, it's like eliminating the IR RSS overnight. There's too many vested interests that go into that, that, that would ever prevent that from happening.

Vance Crowe [01:35:35] That's, that's a very balanced and reasonable take. I think that we will see as, as more countries get swallowed up by populism and these things, I think you will see more and more people try and list their property in some, some sort of blockchain because it makes sense to have. So for people that don't know, the way that that this works in re in really simplistic terms is every 10 minutes there is a block of information that is distributed to all of these computers that are all over the world that are quote unquote mining. But one of the benefits of having that block is you can input information into it. You can store it like a file system and you can store some pretty sophisticated stuff on it. And then it is immutable. It is, it is. Unless something wild happens to blockchain. But, and we'll just put that off on the side and say they record it and then it is there permanently. You can't take it down. Nobody can. Yeah. And so it would allow you to have protections that if you're in Venezuela and somebody goes and burns the capitol building down, all those records are gone.

John Duckworth [01:36:37] Yep. That, I mean, that's absolutely the case. Obviously it still takes a government to stand behind you. If somebody wants to come in and claim it, either you're gonna fight over it or you're gonna go to court without a proper court system to defend those rights. It's, you're still gonna have problems. But at least we've, we've created a good recording system.

Vance Crowe [01:36:58] I agree, man. John, this has been great. If people wanted to, to talk with you about, Hey, I've, I've got a title issue or I'm thinking about where do you, where do your services, where, where's your area?

John Duckworth [01:37:11] So the best way to find us is on, on, you know, just go to our website www@truetitle.com. We have offices, we're headquartered in Clayton with 10 offices throughout the St. Louis area, as far west as of Fallon, as far south as Farmington. And we are always available to help answer questions. You run into issues getting a deal closed. That's where we, where we thrive. So, so look us up on the internet, reach out to us, we're happy to, to help.

Vance Crowe [01:37:38] Great. Well, Jared Holst got us together at the Christmas party and it took us until now to make this happen, but I am so glad it finally happened.

John Duckworth [01:37:46] Yeah, I've enjoyed being here. Thanks for having me.

Vance Crowe [01:37:47] Thanks man.

John Duckworth [01:37:48] All right.