Breaking Points email
I hope this is interesting enough to find its way to Krystal and Saagar. I wrote it back in 2021, but still find it on point with where I am today. At that time I was listening to Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying quite a bit, hence the references to something that stuck with me from Bret. Even though originally addressed to Saagar, I really appreciate the nuance and perspectives from the entirety of your crew. Every once in a while I get enough confidence to reach out well beyond my own community. I am actively trying a number of the following ideas, and would love a chance to talk in depth about this with anyone who is interested. Thanks in advance for any time and attention. Please excuse writing quality, as I fight internally on being too verbose vs concise. I never feel like I put in enough details, but can't expect someone to read a 30 page, poorly written book either.
I have similar views as Bret, and an idea big enough to create radical change within the existing legacy system. I have been working on it since 2016 while I used Youtube to create my own education path in life. I will try to spare you a long story, but I have a good start in understanding some difficult, but fixable problems around education, housing, financial security, and mental health. This idea has snowballed beyond what I can accomplish on my own. Even though you can learn anything easily for free these days, ideas grow best through discussion and outside nuanced perspective. If I’m being honest, I would rather be an anonymous part of what ultimately gets created. I am not interested in being excessively wealthy. I just want to make enough to have the options to do anything I want. Explore the world, volunteer in national parks, work a number of interesting jobs, do nothing, etc. In the US everyone works too hard and still ends up going backwards financially.
Solve all these problems using BlockChain and smart contracts to remove financial middlemen in the process of buying and renting houses (more of a rent to own program in mind, but without all the financial prepredationdation). Create the infrastructure that provides education and apprentice opportunities in personal finance, property stewardship, craftsmen & trade skills (general handiness to business ownership), real estate investing, and countless other community support offshoots. Bret makes a good point about managing things at the most local level. Why use property management or banks who don’t actually care about the people or the property, just their bottom line.
Leverage these new apprentice local residents to cover basic stewardship needs of the aging population who have increasingly separated from family. Keep them out of group homes for as long as possible, while still giving them social benefits that come with some of those homes. Keeps home up to FHA standards, and has built in opportunities for starting property investment/ transfer. Instead of reverse mortgage & HELOC, let neighbors trade labor for equity of all cash. Share property appreciation as a comparable solution to HELOC using interest charges. We all gain or lose together, but the point is community care. Loop it all back around to local grassroots investing instead of bank CEOs talking all the created money profits.
I could nerd out for 30 more pages of problems and their solutions. Even without coding experience, I have a pretty impressive archive of complex guides, trackers, and tools. It is easily ready and available for a group of smart people to change our communities. Great opportunity for an alternative social media platform. Emphasis on not for sale, and meant to be open source. If someone is smart enough to learn it all on their own, they don’t need to pay me a middle man cut, I built all the information more for myself in the scaling process anyway. Publishing it all is just another way for me to organize and back it all up, as well as having potential for outside ideas to help keep snowballing
TLDR: Make an apprentice and adventure program to guide the youth into a civic property stewardship mindset. Create a support system for the aging population, focusing on keeping them in their house safely, both physically and mentally. Leverage all the equity that naturally occurs in homeownership, and create a pathway that cuts out the parties that don't actually care about the communities involved in this process.
Houstories (for the homes we steward): https://www.vandvwoodcrafts.com/renovation-projects-1
Good Neighbor Projects (for my community): https://www.vandvwoodcrafts.com/handyman-projects-1
Personal chronicle and ever evolving resume: https://www.vandvwoodcrafts.com/adventure-dan-hq
Thank you,
Daniel Hankins
www.vandvwoodcrafts.com