0:00:00 - 0:00:27 Are so many ideas about or, or surrounding the topic of gathering. And these come from many different sources. Some of them are ideas that one person or another have, have come up with has come up with. And it's sort of just echoed out to others and become part of this background, set of assumptions 0:00:26 - 0:00:49 , many of which are wrong, others have come from history from attempts that other people have made to do it and all of them have failed of the ones we know about. And so that's an interesting thing to think that you're going to do the same thing and get a different result. And of course, all these have 0:00:49 - 0:01:12 been at different times in history, but rather than attempt to cover everything in this topic, which would take at least an entire book, I'm going to zoom in and just talk about a specific idea, which is what would it take to create a new county. So first, let's start with why you would want to do that 0:01:11 - 0:01:39 among the list of benefits would be the fact that with the new county, you could have your own sheriff, your own jurors. So sheriffs are elected and they are the rubber meets the road application of the law. If you have a reasonable sheriff, a constitutional sheriff will say that person. It's like jury 0:01:39 - 0:02:02 nullification. It's a, it's a check and balance on government abuse and if that person's elected, they have an incentive to, and of course they're from the people in a smaller group. And so they, the, there's much more accountability there. Uh, a smaller county in general has a lot more accountability 0:02:01 - 0:02:26 . It's not gonna be run by a bunch of career bureaucrats who are, uh, they're like minded amongst themselves, but probably very differently minded than you. Then when you get to the jurors, you're talking about the, the, uh, county prosecutor and then the judges and then the juries. So if a jury is pulled 0:02:26 - 0:02:50 from one of AAA normal American County these days, the population is vastly condensed in a city or one or more cities there. And so any jury is going to be pulled proportionally from that city. And again, you end up with a situation where you, you, they're not your peers, you're not judged by your peers 0:02:49 - 0:03:14 , you're judged, judged by a bunch of city people who don't think the way you do, then you've got the huge issue of property tax. So a county depending on what state and how much interface it has with the state budget, the county has the greatest leeway to reduce or completely remove property tax. And 0:03:14 - 0:03:37 so let's look at one state, every state has different laws, but Montana happens to have on the books already. A law and a process for dividing counties. So there, it's a very simple process. You have to get more than 50% of the people who live in the new proposed county to sign a petition. Then it goes 0:03:37 - 0:03:59 on to the ballot of the existing county and more than 50% of people have to vote for it. That's in a nutshell. That's all it takes. Ok? So here are the counties of Montana. And what I'm gonna do here is make the case for why this is not gonna happen in any sizable number of instances. Ok. So, and, and 0:03:59 - 0:04:16 why it would probably take a lawsuit to succeed a lawsuit with a judge willing to do something other than what the law says, which can happen, but it's very unlikely. So here are the counties in Montana. Now, I just so happen to have this website up that gives you a list of the numbers. Now, I told you 0:04:16 - 0:04:40 the rules. So go away. So in order to assure that you can get more than 50% of the existing county to support the split, uh because if uh by default, they're not gonna want to do that, you're going to have to double the population of the county. So there's your first challenge, right? You have to assemble 0:04:39 - 0:05:01 thousands of people who agree with you and will support this and who won't make it as bad as where they came from. So let's start at the bottom of the list. So you can see there are actually some really tiny counties in Montana, which is surprising if we go to Webo County, that's a huge geographical 0:05:00 - 0:05:23 region, but there are only 910 people there, which is good if you're trying to move to a place that you wanna be when everything falls apart. That's a good thing. Ok? And of course, it's surrounded by sparsely populated land too. And here's another one. So that's we be over here at Deer Lodge. That's 0:05:22 - 0:05:42 another county. Now, I'm just gonna tell you if you don't know anything about Montana geography. These are the nice places. This is the nasty plains, ugly, you know, like, uh, like the middle of Idaho kind of territory. All right. So that's not great. Just windswept and bear. This is the forested, nice 0:05:42 - 0:06:04 rivers and lakes area. Ok. So we're gonna look at Weo specifically and deer lodge just because there are a lot of counties and there's no time for all that. So let's start with, with Weo. It's got 910 people. So you can on Zillow, you can actually type in a county in a state and it will pull up that 0:06:04 - 0:06:30 whole county. So look at this, there's like nothing for sale at all out on the farms you zoom in what you find is. There's exactly one town in this whole county. Not surprisingly, it's called Weibo. So this is what you have to choose from. There are a few lots if this is gonna pull up. Uh, that, that's 0:06:29 - 0:06:48 a, that's a house. So they're cheap houses. That's a good thing. Right. But they're also cheap houses. You know, the biggest problem that you have in pulling in this number of people is actually not finding the people who agree with you. That's a challenge. But it's the easier problem. The other two 0:06:48 - 0:07:09 problems that are much bigger is one, there are no jobs there in any of these places, there are no jobs. So the only people that could come are people who are willing to completely retool, which tend to be very poor people because they don't have anything to lose. And they also tend to be people who 0:07:08 - 0:07:31 would not necessarily add a whole ton of value by coming. Those are separate things. But it usually is the case that if they're that poor, they have other issues, so to speak. The other issue is that people just won't move, they will only move if they see the move as something obviously better, right 0:07:31 - 0:07:51 ? This second. And of course, the main reason for doing all this is to prepare for things that are in the future. And so when people look to sell their house, they're looking for a house of at least as high quality at a lower price than what they're gonna sell their old house at. And that's an almost 0:07:50 - 0:08:09 impossible equation to solve. So let's look at Weibo, um, look how old and, and plain and nasty this house is. Ok. I don't even have to click on the pictures you can already see and people turn up their noses at that. Now it's dirt cheap, right? But, but most middle class families in America today would 0:08:09 - 0:08:30 not be happy with this small of a house, this old of a house. Ok. And, and we haven't looked at the neighborhood, but if we zoom in here, it's, this is not the rural life, this is a town. Ok. And it's an old dumpy town. No offense to people when we vote. But like these are all super cheap houses, which 0:08:30 - 0:08:53 is a good thing, but they're all right next to each other. There's no fields here. Ok. Now, if you were a gazillionaire, you could probably come in here and convince an awful lot of people to move. But this raises another issue. If you get, if you get 910 new people moving in, what do you think is gonna 0:08:53 - 0:09:10 happen to these property prices? And this is something that's been seen in the, in the past when people tried to do this, the property values go through the roof. If you want to buy out these people, there'd be holdouts. It's like, uh, buying out shareholders for a company, there'd be holdouts and you're 0:09:10 - 0:09:31 gonna struggle to convince those people. So, really what you need are tracts of land that you could buy for cheap and then build up. That's, that's probably a better situation than trying to get houses in a town. But like I said, the good news is, is these, these places are really inexpensive, you know 0:09:31 - 0:09:53 , but they're old style houses and uh, they're small but there it is. Right. And there's no work here. You'd have to start businesses here that somehow sold products to people that didn't live here. So whether that's manufacturing, you're shipping it out or things that you do online or whatever else 0:09:52 - 0:10:17 , you're not gonna be selling to people here. There's no money. Right. So that's we go all right. Now, let's look at, at deer lodge. So deer Lodge is a much nicer place and because of its proximity to, um, well, really any city, there aren't too many in Montana. But if we zoom out here, we could ask 0:10:17 - 0:10:37 the question. Where's the closest Costco? That's a good way of gauging, um, where you are and, and how far it is. It's quite annoying that there's no map scale on this. I think anyone who has a map application and there's no distance scale should just be slapped in the face. But here's Helena, here's 0:10:36 - 0:10:55 Butte. They each have a Costco, here's Bozeman. Those are the cities, these all have names, but if you drove through them, they're just tiny little places. Ok. Like Lincoln has a neighborhood grocer. That's basically a convenience store. Same thing with Seeley Lake. Ok. Missoula's got Costco. So here's 0:10:55 - 0:11:17 the Costco triangle here, here and here. Ok. Just so you know where you are and, and there's Bozeman. So proximity to Bozeman, Bozeman bleeds out property value. It's insanely expensive. Ok? It's, it's like the up and coming Jackson Hole and so it's poisoning everything around because people are commuting 0:11:16 - 0:11:34 in and it's just a cascade of inflated house prices. But this is a nice place if you look at it on a map. In fact, if we just look at these houses, you can see there's landscapes, there are trees and stuff in the background. So if we just, I'm clicking a random dot So we have land, here's 20 acres for 0:11:33 - 0:11:57 30 th excuse, excuse me, 300,000, which is pretty dang good price per acre as far as Montana goes. Um, especially if it's a wooded lot, you know, pretty. Oh, this one's got water even better. So, but what happens with most of these lots is that usually they don't have electricity, they always try to 0:11:57 - 0:12:20 dress it up to like in a couple of years, electricity might be close to here. So I'm not seeing anything about it, but we'll check here. I don't see anything about electricity usually if it doesn't say it doesn't have it. Yeah. There you go. Um, so you're, you're gonna be off the grid there. Now, the 0:12:20 - 0:12:45 grid can come to you over time. This looks like pretty, pretty spot of land. What is this is at the neighbor's house or? They just didn't describe it? OK. Got some kind of, that's interesting. Huh. Sell your wife on that. This looks like some kind of glamping set up. Interesting. OK. Anyway, you get 0:12:45 - 0:13:08 the point. All right. So are you gonna be able to orchestrate a mass move into this county? It's definitely more feasible than the other. But this is what you run up against raw land for like 300 k, nice size properties though. And very pretty views and things or developed land for, um, less than you'd 0:13:08 - 0:13:30 pay in a lot of other places, but you're not gonna have any farmland. It's just gonna be a dumpy old house, you know. So a lot of these places that are potentials are gonna look a lot like crummy houses in Salt Lake City and what they used to go for maybe 10 or 15 years ago, maybe more. Ok. So here's 0:13:30 - 0:13:55 one that's price here. What is this? Here's a new construction tiny house. Anyway, you get the point, right? But same deal. So let's look back at, uh, was this Deer Lodge, I think Deer Lodge County? All right. So you'd have to convince 10,000 people to move there. Good luck with that. Oh, and by the 0:13:55 - 0:14:12 way, just suppose that somehow you could do that and just suppose that it didn't go amok because the people, uh, you know, the more people you tried to bring together, the more they're going to do crazy things and not do what you wanted them to do. What do you think the people who already live there 0:14:12 - 0:14:33 are going to do about it? They are going to do everything they can to stop you because they don't want things to change. Ok. As a rule, they don't want a bunch of yahoos moving in and jacking up their property values and their property tax. Ok. So you'd what you'd want, maybe, maybe opportunity is the 0:14:33 - 0:14:50 opportunity. What you'd want is something separate that you could flood into and then split off from the main county and get the, get the votes to do so or this area up here, which I doubt if there's a lake, you can forget it. I don't even have to click here. I know all this is gonna be through the roof 0:14:50 - 0:00:00 expensive. Ok. But cracker, that sounds appealing. Uh Anyway, so, um, if you look at these places, I don't have any idea what this is. So, yeah, look how pretty that is, right? So maybe that ends up being the key, but you're not gonna find like a 10,000 acre ranch that you can then subdivide, right? 0:00:00 - 0:15:45 These are just little, little places. It's pretty though. Ok? So you get the point, very challenging. So that's why I, I really So I fully expect cities and counties, maybe even states to divide, obviously, not all of them. And I'd say probably not even very many, but I think it's gonna happen and I 0:15:45 - 0:16:02 know it's already happening. It's one of those easy predictions to make because it's actually already happening. It's just, most people don't pay attention. However, obviously, no state has divided yet, but cities and counties are being divided. There was one, I think it was Baton Rouge. There's a recent 0:16:01 - 0:16:22 deal where the they tried to do it through votes, it was blocked and so they sued and won and I think that's what it would take because I, I just cannot see people getting the votes and if you're gonna do a lawsuit, you need the money to back that and probably some pr as well. But uh I just, I just don't 0:16:22 - 0:16:55 see anything like this happening in the way that people imagine it would. And so it has to happen in another way and that other way is going to be a response after things happen to weaken the control that the government has over the land of the United States. I hope I said that carefully enough. My point 0:16:55 - 0:17:28 is whether through natural disasters, invasion diseases, a range of really unfortunate catastrophes, shortages with, with food or other goods, widespread economic calamities, whatever the case may be, some basket of things. I believe there will be at least regions of the United States that will become 0:17:28 - 0:17:54 less governed and it will be at that point that people collect in different spots, like minded people. And this is very different than going through the route of our current national and local government. I believe that that door is closed and in fact, I believe it closed firmly at the, uh, during the 0:17:54 - 0:18:22 civil war that, that long ago, I think since the civil war, there is absolutely no chance of an independent, we'll say city for light, lack of a better word, an independent city rising up. And it, I think it, it's been proven multiple times that even before that it wasn't going to happen because people 0:18:21 - 0:18:49 tried and they failed time and time again, they were exiled by the, by the local government and the national government. Um So that door I think is firmly shut and it's a, it's a wonderful example of how people imagine in their heads, pathways to outcomes. And this is at every scope of life, they imagine 0:18:49 - 0:19:17 pathways to outcomes without bothering to walk through it in higher detail. And so they cling to assumptions that are provably false and it causes a lot of problems. So if you think that the pathway from here to Zion includes creating cities of refuge that are operating in conjunction and under the banner 0:19:16 - 0:19:41 of local and federal law and governance, you're smoking crack. How could that ever happen? It can't, but you probably haven't even looked into the process of how does, how do you split a county in whatever state you're thinking this is gonna happen in, it's, it's, uh, it's not gonna happen, not in the 0:19:41 - 0:20:08 way it would need to, to accomplish what you, what it would have to. So, and, and you absolutely couldn't have it without that. There's no way, there's no way that, that, uh, a secular county and, and I don't mean secular in the distinction of religious versus secular. Let's just say a status quo county 0:20:08 - 0:20:33 , a county run like all counties are with this, this consistent march towards outright socialism, which is what all of them are doing. This is, this is why your property taxes will always go up amongst all the other problems. You know, and you say, well, why is that such a problem? There are many, many 0:20:32 - 0:20:51 , many reasons why ever increasing property tax is a problem. But let's just focus on one, any of these places that people would move to. There's no work. So that means you're gonna go from your, your sales job where you're making $250,000 a year and you get to goof off at home more than half of the 0:20:51 - 0:21:15 day. You're gonna go from that to having to work in a field all summer long, picking green beans or weeds or spinning wool so that you guys can make clothes for yourself. And I don't see a line out the door for that. Right. But assuming that you could get the people to sign up for that, this farming 0:21:15 - 0:21:37 communal kind of life basically being Amish without the funny clothes you're going to in haircuts. I mean, you could have the haircuts if you want, you're going to have to convince people, I'm sorry, you're gonna have to find a way for people to live on very, very, very little money and you can't do 0:21:37 - 0:22:01 that while paying property tax, it can't be done. So in conjunction, you might ask, ok, given all of this, let's say you're right with this, then what can people do before everything falls apart? Do we just sit around and wait for that? No, the point of it is to inform what you're aiming for. It's not 0:22:01 - 0:22:26 going to be a county or a city. It's gonna be what I would call a super family. In other words, you get yourself straight, you get your spouse and your kids straight and then once that's all lined up and running as it as it should. So you're aligned with what the Lord would do in your place, then you 0:22:25 - 0:22:46 can find another family to maybe join up with, join forces and go somewhere and try to figure out how to solve all the problems that occur at that scale because it's the same problem. It's the same problem that happens in you as an individual as you work through. Getting to the point where you're willing 0:22:46 - 0:23:07 to align with God as an individual, it's the same problem that happens as you do that as a family. And it's the same problem as two families or three families and it, it just continues to scale. So if you're early to the game, you could work out a lot of those problems early and be better equipped for 0:23:07 - 0:23:33 whatever happens after that. If you just wait, the odds are high, you won't get the chance because you'll probably die before that happens. And the other thing is, it just is a lot to do. It's a lot of things that you can't see until you get into it. And so you'll need the time to work through those 0:23:33 - 0:00:00 things. So there's some thoughts on that.