Well, I shouldn't answer any questions on the subject, but I will. You know, there's all kinds of people watching this that are long Bitcoin, and there's nobody that's short, and nobody wants their windpipe stepped on. I don't blame them. I don't like people to step on my windpipe.
But I would say this: that if the people in this room owned all of the farmland in the United States, and you offered me a 1% interest in it, and you said for a 1% interest in all the farmland in the United States, pay us this bargain price, $25 billion, I'll write you a check this afternoon. 25 billion. Now I own 1% of the farmland.
If you tell me you own 1% of the apartment houses in the United States and you offer me a 1% interest, so I'll have a 1% interest in all the apartment houses in the country, and you want another 25 billion or something, I'll write you a check. You know, it's very simple.
Now, if you told me you owned all of the Bitcoin in the world and you offered it to me for $25, I wouldn't take it because what would I do with it? I'd have to sell it back to you one way or another. I mean, they may not have the same people, but it isn't going to do anything. The apartments are going to produce rental, and the farms are going to produce food.
And if I've got all the Bitcoin, you know, I'm back where whatever his name was, who may or may not have existed, was, you know, 15 years ago. If I've got it all, he could create a mystery about it. But everybody knows what I'm like. I mean, so if I'm trying to get rid of it, you know, people will say, well, you know, why should I buy some Bitcoin from you? I mean, why don't you call it Buffetcoin? You know, make your own or something. What? Do something. But I'm not going to give you anything for it. And you'd be right, incidentally.
But that explains the difference between productive assets and something that depends on the next guy paying you more than the last guy got. Now, yet, if you look at it, a lot of commissions have been paid, and there's, I mean, there's all kinds of frictional costs that are very real that somebody has paid to a bunch of people who facilitate this game.
But whatever one group of the public has taken out, or one group of owners has come in from other people. I mean, it's other people have entered the room and they've moved money around, but there's no more money in the room. That just changed hands with a lot of maybe fraud and costs involved, and you know, a whole bunch of things. You lose, you know, you forget the numbers and forget the equation. You can do that with a lot of things. I mean, it's been done throughout history.
Certain things have value that don't produce something tangible. I mean, you can say a great painting, you know, probably will have some value 500 years from now. May not, but the odds are pretty good that if it was a big enough name.
If somebody wants to sell you a pyramid or something and you can charge the viewers, or, you know, it'll be around a long time and won't produce anything. But people will find it interesting to go there because they read about the pyramids. But basically, assets to have value, they have to deliver something to somebody.
And there's only one currency that's acceptable in the United States. I mean, you can come up with all kinds of things. We can put up Berkshire coins, or you know, we can put up Berkshire money or anything like that, but we get in trouble, I guess, if we call it money. But in the end, this is money.
And there's no reason in the world why the United States government, whose currency people prefer — we literally, there's just under 2.3 trillion just of these little pieces of paper floating around some places. 7,000 for every man, woman, and child in the United States. And of course, most of them probably aren't in the United States. Who knows? But this is the only thing that's money.
And anybody that thinks the United States is going to change the way they let Berkshire money replace theirs, you know, is out of their mind. So anyway, with those few deficiencies, whether it goes up or down in the next year or 5 years, 10 years, I don't know. But the one thing I'm pretty sure of is that it doesn't multiply. It doesn't produce anything. It's got a magic to it. And people have attached magics to lots of things. I mean, the gold in Wall Street magic.
The one development I really do think is actually important, but I don't know any way to do anything about it. My general sense, and there's no way to prove it, but I essentially believe people are now behaving somewhat more tribal than they have for a long time. I mean, people are always going to be partisan, and they're going to have religious beliefs. They're going to have all kinds of things. But it gets pretty tribal.
And I want to tell you, I speak from experience because I've been tribal. And you know, we're confessing today. Nebraska football is tribal. And when I watch a television set and I see Nebraska stepping out of bounds by a foot, but somehow the ref misses it and calls it in, and then they show six replays, I'll continue to believe it was in even though it's right in front of my eyes and they stepped out. You know, that's tribal behavior and it's fun.
I mean, I've participated, but it can get very dangerous when one group of people say 2 plus 2 is five and another say 2 plus 2 is three, you know, and they're going to give you those answers if you call them.
And the interesting thing is, to me at least, and partly because of my age, but I actually think that just from memory, that the last time that the country was seen as tribal was actually when I was a kid and Roosevelt was in. Either you hated Roosevelt or you loved him. I mean, nobody cared about the fact that Alf Landon was running or Wendell Wilkie was running against him. They just had these feelings.
They either had Roosevelt's picture on the wall and named their kids after Roosevelt, or they hated him and they thought he was going to, you know, no third term and, you know, I mean, a million things. And the country was very, very tribal in the 30s, but Roosevelt's tribe was bigger. And in my opinion, they did some wonderful things.
But I happen to grow up in a household where we didn't get served dessert until we said something nasty about Roosevelt. I mean, I'm speaking, you know, and believe me, if you don't get dessert, you're going to say something nasty about Roosevelt. And so you trained them young and, you know, all kinds of things. And, you know, people, they had a partisan behavior and they had a certain amount of tribal always.
But I don't think it's a good development for society generally when people get tribal regardless. And I mean...
