Land: The $180 Trillion Asset That Runs the World | Mike Bird, The Economist

Land isn’t just dirt under buildings—it’s the world’s oldest, strangest asset, worth an estimated $180T, quietly steering credit cycles, politics, and who gets to build the future. Economist editor and Money Talks host Mike Bird joins us to decode the “land trap”: why superstar cities underbuild, how mortgages turned banks into land-collateral machines, and what Japan’s 1980s super-bubble can (and can’t) teach us about China’s managed deflation today. We trace ownership from Babylonian stone ledgers to modern cadastres, ask whether America ever ran a de facto “land standard,” and explore pragmatic exits: build where demand is, deepen capital markets so homes aren’t the only savings vehicle, and tax land value uplift to fund infrastructure. --- 📣SPOTIFY PREMIUM RSS FEED | USE CODE: SPOTIFY24 https://bankless.cc/spotify-premium --- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🪙FRAXNET | MINT, REDEEM, EARN https://bankless.cc/fraxnet 🦄UNISWAP | SWAP ON UNICHAIN https://bankless.cc/unichain 🛞MANTLE | MODULAR L2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle 💤EIGHT SLEEP | IMPROVE YOUR SLEEP https://bankless.cc/eight-sleep 💠BIT DIGITAL ($BTBT) | ETH TREASURY https://bankless.cc/bit-digital We’re being compensated by Bit Digital (NASDAQ BTBT) for this segment promoting their company and BTBT. The compensation is paid in cash as a one time payment. You can find additional information about Bit Digital and BTBT on their Investor page at https://bit-digital.com/investors --- TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Why Housing Is Unaffordable 4:20 Demand, Supply & Social Spillovers Of Housing Costs 10:31 Land As Collateral, Money & Banking 16:29 Henry George, Georgism & Early Land Reform Politics 22:22 Monopoly, Georgism’s Decline & Why Reform Faded 29:45 Policy Dilemmas: Homeownership, Infrastructure & Land-Value Capture 32:38 Land’s Scale, Uniqueness & Three Attributes 43:27 Origins Of Property Records & Cadastral Systems 49:45 Dead Capital: Hernando De Soto & Formal Property Rights 54:35 Land-Backed Money Experiments & Early U.S. Land Banks 1:00:32 Japan’s 1980s Land Boom & Aftermath 1:18:19 China’s Land Model, Three Red Lines & Unfinished Adjustment 1:26:43 Summary: Land Traps & Policy Levers 1:35:09 Lightning Round, Takeaways & Outro --- RESOURCES Mike Bird https://x.com/Birdyword Mike Bird’s “The Land Trap” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/753001/the-land-trap-by-mike-bird/ --- Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures