The Great Sort: Should I Move to a Conservative Area?

Conversations That Matter

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00:08

Welcome, once again, to the Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris, as always, here to talk about what

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I believe is an important issue, an issue that's affected so many of you out there. If you're from a liberal state, as I've lived in a liberal state for years,

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I'm in New York, actually, right now, as I record this, a lot of your friends probably don't live where you live now, they probably moved to places like Tennessee, Idaho, Texas, North Carolina, states that are more free, states where they don't have to pay quite as many taxes.

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And this is, of course, affected my relationships. But if you're living in one of those states, you've had an influx of people from California and New York and other parts of the

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Pacific Northwest and the Northeast. And so you're probably watching your community change significantly. And I haven't really talked about this much on the podcast, but some people call this the great sort.

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And today I want to explore why is this happening? Should we be part of it?

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Should you try to take a stand where you live or should you move? We're going to just explore the dynamics of it.

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Where is this going? What does the future look like as a result of this politically, socially? So with me to discuss this is my friend

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Josh Abatoy. Josh Abatoy is the managing director of New Founding. He's the executive director of American Reformer, and he's a partner at Ridge Runner, which is a company that is actually trying to help facilitate this great sort and really solve the issue of conservatives stuck in liberal places.

01:43

So, Josh, with that, thank you so much for being on with me and talking about this. Morning, John. Great to be here.

01:49

So let's start here. You are the managing director at New Founding, and I know we were talking off camera about how

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New Founding is attempting to solve some of these issues. Issues like I'm a conservative family and there's millions of people like me.

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We want good movies and no one's producing them. Right. So New Founding gets behind efforts to solve some of these problems.

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You see this as a problem that needs to be solved. This conservative stuck in progressive areas, is that correct?

02:20

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would call this a collective action problem. And what I mean by that is there's problems that, you know, you can't solve unless you get sufficient scale and sufficient buy in from a large group of people to do it.

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You know, so, for example, you know, folks want a much better alternative to Amazon.

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Right. But the scale that you need with the economic efficiency that comes from making tons of sales and being able to negotiate bulk discounts and even standing up a website that kind of has all the product coverage that people need.

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Right. There's a massive scale involved in an effort like that. That's a that's an example of like a very, very tough collective action problem.

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But there's a lot of simpler collective action problems. And, you know, the one that Ridge Runner solves is it's relatively simple, but it's something like this.

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You know, you're you know, you might work remotely and have a decent income, but, you know, you're stuck in a spot where, you know, you don't really trust your neighbors.

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Maybe it's a high crime area. Maybe you don't like the politics of the state or the local government.

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And you want to, you know, put really simply, you want to live in a community where you share enough bedrock values that you can have a healthy society together.

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You can trust your neighbors. I think a really good test for that is, you know, do

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I trust can I let my kids run out the front door and just explore and play in the neighborhood without me having to be a helicopter parent and watch them all the time?

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Right. Do I trust my neighbors enough that my kids can go over and play with their kids? Like, or are they going to get, you know, groomed if they go next door?

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You know, that's a that's a like relatively low threshold, but there's a ton of people that are interested in solving that.

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But but, you know, building a healthy community is a collective action problem. You know, a lot of people, a lot of people are interested in, like, you know, moving.

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They can work remotely. They can live anywhere in the country, but they don't know where to go. You know, a lot of the people who already sort of sorted and moved to places like Tennessee or Idaho.

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You know, some of them are joining, like, you know, existing communities that are known about, you know, I mean, people know, you know,

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Moscow, Idaho. Right. That's a popular spot to go to because people already know there's a there's a community there to plug into.

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But a lot of people are just kind of pulling up a map and dropping a finger and kind of hoping for the best with who their neighbors will be and what their community will look like.

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So so, yeah, I think there's a there's a challenge here, which is basically, how do you gather all of these, you know, hundreds of thousands of people that are interested in sort of changing their neighborhood, you know, relocating?

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How do you gather them and sort of plant a flag in one place and bring them to the same area so that they can, you know, create a healthy neighborhood together?

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So the interest here is to help people. It's to facilitate something that would be beneficial for them and their families.

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There's an objection or at least an issue that I potentially see with this that I want to talk about.

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I don't know if now's the time to do it. Maybe we should explore this a little bit more, but I'll just preview it, that some of these communities that are receiving like the one my brother just moved to in Tennessee and I think you're a native

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Tennessean. Is that correct? I am. OK, so maybe you're the person to ask about this since you're a native Tennessean.

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I'm assuming your family goes back maybe generations and you have ties to the land.

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You have maybe a sense of ownership. And then you see all these Californians and New Yorkers moving in who maybe they vote

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Republican. Maybe they have some similar values, but they're different. And it's changed like where my brother is right now.

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He's like, you know, I don't see Tennesseans. It's all Californians. And granted, you know, they're mostly conservative, but it's, you know, cultural things, shared history, traditions, even down to cuisine, you know, what kinds of foods are going to be in that area.

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It changes. And some of the locals, I'm wondering, since you're a local or you grew up there,

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I mean, is there resentment with this? You know, there's some, but it really depends on who who joins the community.

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You know, the part of Tennessee that I grew up in, it's about an hour outside of Nashville. It's certainly getting gentrified, you know, just for for reference, you know, that the streets

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I grew up in, you know, a mixture of farm sort of modest farms and, you know, trailers and things like that.

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And now there's, you know, the downtown where I grew up was, you know, half empty, you know, but now there's a farm to table restaurant in the downtown where I grew up.

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And there's retired, you know, Google executives building two million dollar homes, you know, back in the in the hollers and everything.

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And yeah, you know, there's there's struggles that come with that. But I would say, you know, there's also there's also a lot of good stuff.

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So a lot of people moving from California are political conservatives, they're people of faith, and they actually come with I mean, the best ones come with a sense of humility, right?

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Like they move on to the street and they want to learn how to farm. And you know what they're going to do?

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They're going to go down the street to their neighbor who's been farming that land for generations. And almost always that neighbor is going to be thrilled to be able to, like, teach people, hey, here's how you, you know, here's how you build fences and here's how you raise cattle in this part of the world.

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And, you know, here's here's what to do. And, you know, here's where to buy cattle. Here's where to sell them. Here's where to get them processed.

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You know that that, you know, of course, there's there's challenges along the way.

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But I mean, I would say generally speaking, the type of people that are moving out to rural

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Appalachia right now are coming with a sense of humility and generally, you know, desiring to not disrupt the community, but desiring to respect the traditions and plug in, assimilate in a respectful way.

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And so that's that's, you know, that's that's what I would like to see happen to to be clear.

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You know, this part of the country is very affordable. It's gorgeous. And it's all it's getting fiber optics,

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Internet, and there's millions of Americans who can now work remotely. So the change is coming, whether people like it or not.

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I think that that's a good point. And so that that being the case, we should be working to make that change as good as we can in a way that honors and is, you know, has some continuity with the way that this part of the country has been for centuries.

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I'm about to say a word some of you parents might not want your kids hearing. I feel like there's no other way to say this, though.

09:56

So, Josh, I got to ask you the question as a Tennessean, do you know the difference between a Yankee and a damn Yankee? Right.

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I'm not sure I do. Well, maybe that's a North Carolina thing. When I was in North Carolina, someone came up to me.

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And because I had moved down from New York now, they didn't know that I my grandfather's from Mississippi. We always we go for family reunions down there.

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So I had a respect for Southern culture. And and so she asked me, she said, are you a

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Yankee or are you a damn Yankee? And I just I was like, what? And so she said, no, everyone knows the differences.

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There's Northerners who come down here and they don't try to disrupt our lives. They don't vote for liberal politicians. They're not trying to rip down our monuments.

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They try to integrate into our society and become one of us. And then there's what you know,

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I don't want to say it again, but the the other kind of Yankee who comes down and wants to change everything.

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And this has been a problem in places like Asheville and Raleigh. And now Raleigh is pretty much mostly people from the north who have moved down.

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But I think what you just said is so true that there it's fine as long as you come down and you try to integrate and you're saying

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I'm leaving where I'm from, but I'm going to become part of this community. That attitude goes a long way.

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And that's really, I think, what I was hoping you would say and hit on, because that's what I want people who do move from these liberal states to at least take into account.

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It's not just the fact that you vote Republican. There's other things too involved in this. And I mean,

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I'm an example of that myself. My parents are my parents were Yankees.

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We moved to a very rural area outside of Nashville when I was when I was a kid and moved there with just a humble spirit and sought to plug in to the community.

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And that's been it's been totally possible. And now it's this is this is my home.

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It's my family's home. It's where our roots are. You know, I mean, I don't live there right now, but, you know, it's that it's it's possible.

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It's it's true. You know, I mean, there will always be little things. You know, over time, you know, you have a deeper connection to the community when you've been there for for three generations or whatever.

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But, you know, already just the community that I'm that I grew up in, I'm now related to, you know, half the town by marriage just because of my extended family and all the different marriages that happened.

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And so, you know, that's the sort of thing that that happens. It does take time. But if people are coming with a humble attitude and seeking to plug into the community, it does happen.

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So you made a good point. You said that the big sort, this is happening whether you want it to or not.

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So if you're in one of these conservative areas, it's this is going to happen. And I think the question is, do you want conservatives or people who at least want to integrate into your community, share its values to live near you?

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Or do you want, as you said, the Google executive who from San Francisco to come in and put up, you know, raise all your property values, two million dollar home.

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And you're trying to facilitate this in a positive way that will benefit both the people who live in these liberal states who are kind of captive and then those who are in these conservative states that could use the financial boost that may come and not just financial, but, you know, the cultural capital and everything that comes with this.

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So why don't you talk to us a little bit about what this looks like in a positive way?

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Because I just mentioned a few negative examples of this. But you mentioned in Appalachia, there's some positive examples of this.

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Where have you seen it? Yeah, I mean, so West Virginia, you know, the state is really leaning into this right now.

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They're really getting leaning into revitalizing small towns all over their state and attracting tech workers.

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You know, obviously you see this in Moscow, Idaho, different area, different kind of context.

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But, you know, they've got all these, you know, blue state refugees essentially flocking to Moscow, Idaho.

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And it's to the point where, you know, they've now planted a flag on Main Street in that city. I mean, the shape of the community there is oriented around people with families and who share traditional values.

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I was there a couple of months ago walking down Main Street in Moscow and, you know, saw, you know, there was a there was a restaurant that was packed with parents and there was like a playground, you know, that the kids were all playing in while the parents were,

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I don't know, having date night or whatever. And it was really odd because it's like, you know, usually when you're in the downtown and you see packed restaurants or pubs, it's like, you know, single young professionals mingling.

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And, you know, you go to a place like Moscow and you see it and it's like, you know, these young 30 somethings who in a city would be like single, living a materialistic, consumerist life, like they have children and their community and even just, you know, downtown

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Main Street has amenities that are built around healthy families. It was it was really stunning.

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That really stuck in my mind. You know, the other thing you see in Moscow is, you know, they've got a college,

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New St. Andrews, which is, you know, fantastic. And they've got like all of these, you know, startups that hire employees from New St.

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Andrews that are kind of run by people in that community that employ all of the grad, many of the graduates.

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And now they have like a, you know, a tech scene and a venture capital scene. And it's all good people who share values and trust each other doing business together.

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That's probably like the best example of like a more intentional community. I would say that this idea of intentional communities, though, is going to be a secular trend.

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What I mean by that is like everybody, you know, back in the 70s when they were building all these huge master plan communities that were like 30 minutes outside of downtown of every city, they designed those to be as broad as possible in their appeal.

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They didn't, you know, young or old, doesn't matter what your values are, whatever, like everybody should this should be a community that's equally appealing, like broad appeal as possible.

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But with remote work, people no longer are anchored to particular areas by their employer.

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And so, you know, there's there's a huge potential for like basically creating communities that have more distinctive appeal.

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People are going to be interested in plugging into communities that have their particular values and build neighborhood amenities around that and everything.

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You know, so, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if you see more, you know, hippie communes or whatever in the

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Pacific Northwest popping up. If you see, you know, rich liberals like having, you know, yoga country club neighborhoods, you know, and then at the same time, yoga, you know, if you see, you know, maybe you see a bunch of neighborhoods that are popping up, you know, that build

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I mean, you could imagine like a new neighborhood that's built around a beautiful, like well -designed church and classical

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Christian school. And that's Main Street, you know, and and and, you know, and you've got, you know, organic farms and ranchers and farmers markets.

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And you can imagine if you had enough people gathered together, you could have like very beautiful amenities, you know, restaurants, everything that's oriented in a particular way to serve those people.

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But you need the scale. And this is I think this is really just starting like so, you know, you've you've already mentioned like the big store.

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This has been happening for years. People have been talking about it for years, but COVID was just pouring gasoline on the fire since since COVID started, five million people moved from cities to rural parts of America.

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And that's already had a huge impact, like all over the country. But the crazy thing is there's 20 million people in cities or suburbs that still want to move to rural

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America. And so that that that group of people is out there of that of that portion, a huge number of them are going to be people with traditional values who want to plug into healthy communities.

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What's the future of this? Because you just said 20 million. And I know that five million was huge.

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That was a demographic shift that I don't even know if that's precedent in the history of the country. I mean, you think of the gold rush or something being maybe comparable.

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But what what does that look like in 10 years if this trend continues in your mind?

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What does the United States look like as far as even the political map? Yeah, I mean, so the movement so far, people who are moving to Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, Florida, they're generally actually more conservative than the native residents of those states.

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So it's not these generally speaking, these states are not at risk of turning blue from the big resort.

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But what is happening is states are getting more homogenous politically. I mean, to put it really crassly, like states are moving towards one party rule on one side of the aisle or another.

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And the reason why that's happening is kind of different than political tensions that we used to have in the 20th century.

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But the things that the political parties are divided over today, they really get to like fundamental things about like how you want to live your life and raise your children.

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And they get to issues where it's like it's hard to share a neighborhood with people who have different ideas than you do about it.

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I mean, you can do it, but it's much more optimal to be in communities that have a consensus on these types of issues.

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For example, you know, you know, minors transitioning gender, right, or something like that, like that's actually something it's jarring, you know, if there's the kids that your kids grew up playing with start transitioning or something like that, like that actually makes you think really long and hard about like what kind of community do

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I want to put my family in long term? And so, yeah, I think this is going to happen.

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States like Tennessee, you know, red states are probably going to get a little bit redder and then, you know, the reverse will be true.

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Blue states will get bluer. And, you know, I think, you know, looking at Appalachia in particular, you know, there's this is a region of the country that suffered from brain drain for like a hundred years.

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You know, the modern economy got really good at finding people who were like smart, ambitious and stripping them out of the local communities, hiring them away, luring them to New York or wherever else.

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I mean, you know, there's like when I when I worked, you know, I worked at a big law firm, you know, I used to be a practicing lawyer and, you know,

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I mean, there were a lot of people. I mean, I guess I was even an example of that, right, like people who grew up in these country areas and they learned to the city by the big salaries and opportunities.

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And there's always going to be some of that. But but the remote work prevalence actually offers an opportunity to reverse some of that.

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I mean, it's kind of funny. You go to some of these Appalachian towns, go to the downtown area and they've got like these old hotels that were built 150 years ago.

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Maybe they've got a beautiful church that today would cost like 10 million dollars to build. Nobody has any money anymore.

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But you look around and you're like, man, there used to be like this used to be like a very there was like local elites.

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They had business going like. And the fact of the matter is a lot of the like look, basically the the the national economy and the global economy stripped local elites out of these small towns like all over Appalachia.

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And, you know, and of course, the demise of the coal industry is also really, you know, hurt, hurt putting prisons all over the place that don't help your economy.

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Right. Right. So I think you're going to see small towns all over Appalachia get gentrified in the next 10 to 20 years.

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I think that's almost a certainty. And, you know, the hope is they don't all turn into Asheville.

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There's a hillbilly driving his truck right now, Josh. You almost went off the side of the road when you said that his community is going to be gentrified.

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He doesn't want a farm to table hippie restaurant down the street from him. So, you know, it's interesting what you're saying about Tennessee.

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I think you said Idaho and Texas becoming redder because North Carolina, I think

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South Carolina and Florida certainly now maybe Florida is reversing that trend now. But for a long time, that wasn't the case.

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It was New Yorkers especially moving to these areas. And I'm wondering, Josh, maybe if this is the difference that before 2020, a lot of the people who moved did so for two reasons, weather and finances.

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And now there's a third element that's now even stronger than the other two. I just want to be in a place that shares my social political values.

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And that's what's happening in Tennessee, Texas and Idaho versus what did happen before 2020 in North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida.

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Do you think that I'm right in that analysis? Yeah, no, that's I think that's

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I think that's spot on. I mean, well, and a couple of different things happened in 2020.

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You know, I mentioned differences over, you know, transgender stuff, which, you know, affects education and various other things.

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But, you know, you had COVID and that was it was very palpable.

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Like, you know, you're in a blue state, right? I mean, probably fairly somewhat locked down during the during the kind of heat of the

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COVID panic when you would go from like a locked down urban area to some part of Middle America where life was basically continuing as normal.

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That was a very powerful thing. Oh, yeah. I remember going. I lived in Houston at the time in a pretty urban area that was pretty locked down.

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And I went home to see my family, my parents over Christmas with my wife and kids and, you know, just going to the

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Piggly Wiggly and just nobody's wearing a mask. And it's like life is continuing as normal. I mean, it was it was really powerful.

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I almost wanted to I almost got a little misty eyed about it, you know, just like that, you know, that the community was carrying on and human society was surviving.

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And that I mean, a lot of people experience that in one way or another during the pandemic. And then the deeper point that goes along with that is, you know, do

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I like the governor of the state that I live in or the mayor or whatever? They have a lot of power.

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And at a flip of a switch, they can make, you know, my life, life for my family sort of like a dystopia.

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And so, you know, I'm going to think a little bit harder about long term where I want to put down roots because everything could be stripped away, you know, without a lot of warning.

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And, you know, so that that happened. And then, you know, and then the summer of 2020 happened.

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And I mean, there it's basically just like, you know, do I want to build a small business in this community?

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Like, are the police going to protect it if there's unrest? You know, like, is it I mean, is it safe?

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You know, I think a lot of the safety and kind of not just safety, but like, does this community share respect for the rule of law and like, you know, property rights and all the rest?

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That's real and it matters. And people are going to make decisions on where they want to put down roots based on that.

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You know, it's interesting what you said about going from Houston to Tennessee and seeing that difference.

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I think there's layers to this, right? It's not just Republican, Democrat. It's not you're on one side or the other.

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We could say there's broadly two sides. But, you know, I saw this when I was going to from Virginia, where I lived during 2020 to New York upstate more.

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It was about two hours north of New York City. And I remember like to give you an example, where I lived in Lynchburg, we had restaurants that were open despite what the governor said.

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You could still go out to eat without a mask at certain places. There was never a time I would walk into a

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Walmart and everyone was masked. Even during the height. Well, you go to Pennsylvania.

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I remember I stopped at a gym there and they're making you put on the mask, but they're not really checking.

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Right. So they have a rule there, which I was like, wow, that's amazing that they have this rule, but they're not checking.

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And then you get to New York and, you know, I went to a gym there and you have to have the mask on at all times over your nose.

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You'll get talked to if you don't. And I went hiking and there's people out there that were like you could barely see them coming on the trail.

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They were so far away and they had masks on. And that illustrates, I think, the the layers of this, because in that area in New York, it's people from the city have now rushed to move upstate.

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They think there's freedom there, which I thought is constraining, but they thought it's much better than New York City. So they've all moved there.

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Meanwhile, that extra layer of totalitarianism has pushed out,

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I want to say in my church, like five families between the ages of twenty five and thirty five young families and within the last two years.

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And it's and they're now in Tennessee because so so this resortment is happening in different layers. And I think back to what happened, you mentioned before you didn't say white flight, but that's how some demographers call what happened with the flight to the suburbs in the 1970s.

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And I've heard that this created what you had mentioned before, communities that were more general or appealing to a broad, broad audience of people and that there were

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Catholic. Irish Catholic, especially communities in urban areas that got destroyed by this, because as they moved out to the suburbs, suddenly they weren't around the church, they they were now next to a neighbor who might not be

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Catholic. And so these these really tight knit communities end up kind of integrating into something else.

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And so anyway, I guess I made two points there, one being there's layers to this, but the other being that this sort is going to the categories in which people sort are going to be general categories that are that appeal to the needs of the moment.

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And so you're not thinking about, man, I don't I wonder if my neighbors are Catholics. Right. When you move because of a mask mandate or something like that, you just want to get out of there.

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You don't want. Right. And so the kinds of neighborhoods that this has the potential to create,

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I think would be more general, united around those kinds of things.

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What I want to switch to talking about, though, here is I think what you're trying to do, which is it's not just a market opportunity.

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It's what the pilgrims did, to be honest with you a little bit more. It's knowing that people are all going to the new world.

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That's going to happen no matter what people are going to go there. They're going to seek financial incentives and so forth.

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But that was a tight knit community. The pilgrims who saw coming to the new world as a place to build, to be somewhat innovative and construct a community.

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Now, the Puritans kind of took this to the point of we have a city on a hill. And of course, that there was almost a utopian kind of underlying to that.

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But and we've seen religious groups do that. I mean, the Mormons would be another group who did something like that.

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But they have more specific bonds, more very specific tastes of what they want in their neighbors, in the social accommodations that exist around them.

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It's not just I don't like the tyranny I lived in. It's I want to live next to someone who's like me, who my children can marry, who's they're going to have good experiences, treat my children and my family well, etc.

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Talk to me about that, because I know you have this this plan with Ridge Runner to facilitate some of this great sort that's already happening, but in a very constructive way.

31:19

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would I would say, you know, people, you know,

31:25

John, who listen to your show are probably like the middle of the fairway kind of people that I would expect would be interested in what

31:32

Ridge Runner is doing. You know, it is it is a little bit broader. It's not, you know,

31:39

Ridge Runner is is we acquired two properties in southern Kentucky, big properties that we've developed into neighborhoods.

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And these are, you know, it's a it's a beautiful area, you know, but the you know, these are not going to be like religious compounds or something like that.

32:00

Right. I mean, the point is, you know, we're really trying to attract people who share like basic understandings and values that are enough for them to, you know, have a good, healthy community life together.

32:15

So, you know, again, I think the test is, you know, do you want to be around neighbors that you trust for your kids to go over to their house and play there?

32:22

Right. Like, do you you know, do you want to live in an area where your kids can go out the front door without constant supervision or go to the public library in town without being hovered over because there's grooming material on the shelves?

32:35

That's the that's the test. You know, I expect that, you know, most of the people that are going to move out here are going to be, you know,

32:45

Protestant Christians, probably a lot of reformed folks, certainly open to more than just folks like that.

32:52

But, you know, I think, you know, again, we what we really want is just some shared understanding on some really basic stuff that allows people to share a political community together.

33:05

So I'm showing people you can probably see it, Josh, some pictures of these properties. I mean, how many acres or I don't know if it is it acres or square miles?

33:14

How much property is there? You're showing right now this neighborhood called the Bend on the Cumberland River. I mean, this is a gorgeous that that's the whole property is about 200 acres.

33:26

We've got on sale phase one of that of that development on the picture you're showing. John, if you can.

33:32

I'll go back. Yes. So if you see there's the river sort of bends and kind of a

33:38

U shape there, you see the green field with the road running through it. That's phase one. I want to say it's something like 80 acres.

33:46

Don't quote me on that altogether. But we've got the listing on the website. We've cut it up into 50 lots.

33:53

You know, your basic lot is about three quarters of an acre on the river. The Cumberland River in this part of the world is just gorgeous.

34:02

It's clean. It's fast moving. It's it's not in a floodplain. So you can build you can build your home, you know, 30, 40 feet above the river and clear the bank looking right down to the water, you know, throw a line in the water while you're having coffee.

34:19

No train derailments. No, there are no train derailments. And this is not in the Ohio River waters.

34:25

So that's your blessings on that. But, you know, you could

34:30

I mean, the cool thing about this is like you can put a boat in the water and you could go down to Nashville or go to the Mississippi River, the ocean from here.

34:36

But at the same time, it's so tucked away in rural at this part of the river. And you can get, you know, three quarters of an acre lot like prime river frontage.

34:47

There's almost nowhere in the country with river frontage this beautiful. And it's like it's like 45

34:52

K. There's almost nowhere in the country price point like that.

34:57

So, yeah, we're super excited about this one. And I think the bigger thing is like, you know, it's an opportunity to do it with people who share values.

35:07

And so, you know, this one is this one's really cool. That's important because this one is the lots are smaller.

35:13

You know, once it gets built out, you riverfront lots, it's going to feel more like a residential neighborhood.

35:20

And so, you know, having having good people buy in is extremely important here. And if you're into fishing,

35:27

I mean, I'm assuming I did not to, you know, detour too much here. But what is there like bass, catfish, bass, catfish?

35:37

This part of the river is actually some of the best trout fishing east of the Mississippi. So, yeah.

35:43

And it's also between two world class lakes that are both about 15 minutes away.

35:48

Cumberland Lake and Dale Hollow Lake. Dale Hollow currently has the national record setting smallmouth bass that came out of it.

35:57

And then Cumberland is also a premier fishing lake, both largemouth and smallmouth bass.

36:03

Yeah, I mean, it's for fishing. It's a total paradise. The hunting is great, too. The white tails are huge, plentiful.

36:10

Oh, man. You can go you can go an hour east, actually, in Kentucky and shoot elk if you want to, because they've been reintroduced.

36:17

No way. Are you serious? If you can get a tag, it's competitive. Yeah, there's black bear in the area.

36:24

There is a black bear season. So, you know, it's the no, I mean, the hunting and fishing opportunities are just fantastic out there.

36:33

So, yeah, that's amazing. This is in Kentucky where I think you had told me it's not as many had moved to Kentucky as had to Tennessee, Idaho, Texas.

36:45

So the property values didn't skyrocket as high. So there's still opportunity there and you're wanting to help facilitate a community that is you said not well,

36:58

I'll let you define it. It's not a cult, obviously, or like, but you want

37:04

Christians. What do you want? Yeah, I certainly want people who are either, you know, primarily

37:11

I want I want Christians or at a minimum people who respect Christian values and are happy to be in a community that's generally

37:18

Christian in character. I want, you know, people who are political conservatives.

37:25

You know, I think a lot of this is going to, you know, it's going to work really well for someone who's in a city can work remotely and wants to move out to one of the most beautiful parts of the country, you know, and still have the fiber optics internet and things like that.

37:44

I mean, this is one of the things that we're doing is we don't we don't buy a property unless it has fiber optics or has a roadmap to get fiber optics pretty quickly.

37:53

I think, you know, a lot of the a lot of the folks that are going to be moving out are going to be working remotely and are going to need high speed internet to be able to conduct their business.

38:03

So so that's, you know, the bend of Cumberland River. We've got one gig internet that we we paid for actually to bring it out.

38:10

It's coming in mid year. And so, you know, it's it's you've got the you're in you're in the beautiful, very remote area that you've got, you know, you've got that at your fingertips.

38:22

Let me ask you this. People are going to want to know, how do you ensure that the neighbors that I have that what happened in, let's say,

38:31

Raleigh isn't going to happen here. Is the way you that talking about this on shows like like this advertising specifically in places, you know, those kinds of people are going to be consuming content or is there another way?

38:48

No, it's it's primarily about the positive, you know, the positive advertising, you know, and the the other thing that you can do in the bend is, you know, we've got we're doing phase one right now and we've got another 100 acres that are being held in development.

39:04

The other thing that you can do that actually we were very, very eager to hear, you know, ideas from your audience, you know, from you, but you can actually also like create positive amenities that just don't attract everyone that positive amenities attract the right people.

39:22

Like if you've got, for example, at the bend on the Cumberland River, if somebody came along and said,

39:29

I want to start a classical Christian school and can you sell me a parcel and I'm going to build a building there and it's going to serve the neighborhood.

39:36

I mean, you know, you could even have like you might even have people in the neighborhood agree like, hey, let's let's have a let's have that be part of the

39:44

HOA, you know, like you pay, you know, a couple hundred bucks the HOA and that's like your tuition payments in the school.

39:50

And if you do stuff like that, that just naturally kind of keeps it's going to attract some people and it's not going to attract others.

39:58

You know, obviously there's, you know, there's rules about how much you can vet unless you do a really, you know, kind of unique structure.

40:07

We're not going to be doing that. We're really relying on just positive advertising and getting the message out that, hey, like trying to reach the right people and inspire them to buy it, you know, and over the long term, that's what it that's what it takes.

40:21

It's just going to take the right people who are inspired and want to put down roots and help build a particular kind of community.

40:28

Nothing's, you know, nothing is forever in this world, of course, but, you know, we do hope and pray that with the right kind of initial founders, you know, moving here and putting down roots, that's going to have a very long term impact on the character.

40:43

Now, there are already people there. There's there's farms I saw in the pictures. I mean, in general, how are the people there?

40:51

How do they feel about this idea? I mean, are they positive towards it or do they know about it?

40:57

Yeah, yeah. No, we've been we've been talking to, you know, a number of the folks out there.

41:03

And, you know, I think, you know, a lot of a lot of the people that I've talked to, they're starting to see in Kentucky, you know, the movement of Californians and others, and they're concerned.

41:15

They know it's coming and they're concerned about what it's going to look like. And, you know, most of the folks

41:22

I've talked to are actually very grateful for the idea that we would be attracting the right kind of people to their community because they know that the people are going to come and they want they want good neighbors to be joining them.

41:35

They don't want, you know, hippie communes. They don't want to become Asheville. So, you know, talking to even just some, you know, local political people or like local real estate brokers or, you know, small businesses,

41:52

I mean, a lot of them are really excited about the potential and, you know, think it it bodes well for the for the region and for the towns in this area.

42:02

Now, that's great. That's one of the big things for me that would attract me to knowing that the locals are not against because then if you have locals who resent you, that's the worst.

42:12

It really is. Yeah. And so, yeah, no, this is a pretty interesting opportunity.

42:19

I would wonder, like, if you get a plot of land, 45K, let's say, how many acres is that?

42:25

Three quarters of an acre. Three quarters of an acre for, you know, 45K. And then you want to put a house on that.

42:33

I mean, do you have contracts with builders who would come in and because some of the places near me that I've seen city people coming up from, you have like the

42:43

I think they're called the Toll Brothers, but they put up these houses, right? They all look the same.

42:49

They all it's kind of bland. So what are you guys doing as far as that goes? Yeah, we've got a lot of custom builders in the area that we can put people in contact with.

42:57

And then we're trying to, you know, we're working with Honest Aid, which is one of the largest log cabin manufacturers in the country.

43:10

We're trying to trying to see if we can structure a deal there. Not done yet, but we would like to explore a relationship where, you know, their national headquarters is like 40 minutes down the street from where we're doing our stuff, build beautiful custom log cabins.

43:27

So, you know, they would be very easy to work with or send people to. But we're actually, you know, we'd like to explore what it would look like to have a relationship with them.

43:38

But yeah, as it stands right now, you know, you buy property and we would try to find a builder that could work with you and kind of help build the kind of thing you want to do.

43:47

But they're not under contract. It would be sort of on the buyer to do. We don't want the neighborhoods to look all the same.

43:55

We want people to build houses that work for them and their families. And, you know,

44:01

I think that it just looks more natural. It looks better. Yeah. Well, you know, architecture is just one facet of what makes a community a community.

44:09

And the fact that you're looking into contracting with someone who's local there who actually builds log cabins, which is actually appropriate for that area, is encouraging because that means there's already an understanding that integration is important here.

44:24

Because I saw this, I worked furniture repair before the podcast, and I traveled all over the place, all over Appalachia, because I was in North Carolina and Virginia.

44:35

And I would see these places that look like sometimes, you know what I'm talking about, a modern art like statue, but it's a house and it's in the middle of farmland or something.

44:45

And it's just it's an eyesore. And you can tell that person is not from here. So having fitting into the local architecture,

44:55

I think, is a big thing. So RidgeRunnerUSA .com is where you can go.

45:01

RidgeRunnerUSA .com if you want to find out more. And the Twitter handle is USA Ridge. Josh, where can people find you?

45:08

You can find me at business on Twitter. B -Y -Z -N -E -S -S. Business.

45:14

And then I write, you know, I write at American Reformer where I'm the executive director, but I do some articles on there.

45:22

Write for the American mind and the Federalist occasionally. But yeah,

45:28

Twitter is where I do most of my stuff. So yeah. Cool. Well, check Josh out.

45:34

Follow him if you're on Twitter and check out RidgeRunnerUSA if this is something that appeals to you. I know for me, it's like when you start talking about the fishing and hunting, my wheels are turning and gardening.

45:45

I mean, it's just I mean, I should have probably asked that earlier, but the soils conducive for growing things as well.

45:52

Yeah, it is. It's a lot of corn, tobacco, soy. Those are sort of the main products.

45:59

If it tells you anything, it's that there's a bunch of Amish and Mennonites moving into this area.

46:05

You know, Pennsylvania is getting crowded. And so a lot of them are moving to the area, which usually when the

46:12

Amish move to a particular area, it's like an indicator that the soil is good, you know. It's hilly.

46:19

So it's not like it's not going to be like Indiana where you have, you know, 500 acres of flatland and a cornfield.

46:27

The fields are much smaller. They're like valleys and river bottoms and things like that. But the soil is incredibly fertile.

46:35

You just don't you won't, you know, you'll have 100 acre field, not a thousand acre field. Right, right.

46:41

It is. But that also makes it more beautiful. And it also keeps out like the big agriculture.

46:48

Most of the people in this area are just family, small family operated farms.

46:54

You know, you don't get the you don't get the major corporate farm. Agribusiness.

47:00

Yeah, yeah. Well, I love it, Josh. That's great. Well, again, people check out RidgeRunnerUSA .com.