Sometime around 1880, Mark Twain leaned back in a Morris chair or a stupor or both and quipped: “Buy land. They’re not making any more of it.” That quote – two sentences, half a joke – is now regurgitated birdlike by every visiting drunkle with a BA in economics. But Twain wasn’t talking about investment. He was talking about the West.
The American frontier was closing. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner, Twain’s only rival on the lecture circuit, delivered his “Frontier Thesis” – a Planet Money mix of economic anxiety and TEDx bravado – declaring the end of “the first period of American history.” Turner ignored the genocide and focused instead on what the frontier meant to settlers.
“That coarseness and strength...that dominant individualism...that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom—these are traits of the frontier,” he declared.
Turner was rebranding an old idea: that “empty” land made men respectable. That notion dated back to Thomas Jefferson, who rewrote John Locke’s “life, liberty, and property” with a Hallmarkian flourish.
Jefferson saw expansion as the cure for inequality. He’d been to Europe, caught the sour whiff of feudalism, and declared: “Dependence begets subservience.” So he bought the high plains from France for $15 million and urged citizens to go west.
When Congress passed the Homestead Act in 1863, Congresswoman Congressman Galusha Grow, who was not, in fact, a Roald Dahl character, called it “the fulfillment of Jefferson’s dream.” Signed by Lincoln, the law offered homesteaders 160 acres in exchange for five years’ labor. It allowed citizens to turn bravery into respectability. But it ultimately doomed Jefferson’s hope for a rational, agrarian democracy. Instead, it created the Wild West.
Jefferson was an optimist. He didn’t anticipate that frontier coarseness would steamroll the UVA gentility he valued. Had he lived to see Dodge City duels or Texas land wars, he’d have been appalled – or, at 140 years old, terrified by the trains.
Modern America isn’t Jeffersonian; it’s Jacksonian – defined by laissez-faire markets, an overpowered executive branch, and general rapaciousness. Still, upper-middle class culture clings to Jefferson’s romanticism. That’s the only reasonable explanation for why 90% of professionals in the 90th income percentile own homes despite the S&P consistently beating real estate. It’s not stupidity. It’s Turner’s “dominant individualism.” (Also, FDR made mortgage interest tax-deductible.)
Today, 65.7% of Americans own homes, up from 43.6% in 1940. But it’s not all copacetic. Two and a half centuries after Turner, the upper-middle class frontier is closing. Roughly 85% of college grads live near urban centers where high-paying jobs are. Since 1970, the median home price-to-income ratio has doubled from 2.6:1 to 5.6:1. And it’s still climbing. Housing starts are down. Private equity is buying up homes. NIMBYism is gospel: 69% of suburbanites think more housing supply would tank values.
And it could get worse. Since the late ’80s, U.S. residential real estate has risen 400% in value. In Australia, it’s 1000%. Whether rational or not, not owning feels like never owning.
No range wars yet, but signs aren’t great. Neighbor-on-neighbor conflict is rising. Ten percent of real estate pros report suspicious activity during sales. Nearly 40% say they’ve feared for their safety on the job.
We hire real estate lawyers, agents, inspectors—posses for a land grab. Real estate brings out the frontier in us: coarseness, energy, suspicion, and the dread that the open range is gone and the suburbs are turning into Europe.
It’s about security as much as it is about happiness. The West only got wild after it was won.
[1] One of the many issues that led to the downfall of what we might call the “Gatekeeping Media” was fuzzy math. Is it possible that DotDash was pulling in 10B site visits? Yes. Is it plausible? IDK. Depends on how you define the metrics.
[2] I’m reasonably sure I believe this, albeit with a ton of caveats about exposure and age. I often question the morality of people who can’t seem to tell the difference between things.
[3] As an Older Millennial Facebook dropout, it’s easy to forget that the platform was once full of super niche communities that brought people together in really exciting ways. That stage of the platform’s evolution didn’t last too long, but it was kinda glorious.
[4] This newsletter is not built on Substack in large part because that platform has very little design functionality. That might sound like a minor point, but it’s not. Putting limitations on content is a very good sign you’re in the business of commodifying content and pushing platform engagement. That seems to be where Substack is headed.
