#13 Akhil Patel: The Secret Wealth Advantage

I confess coming to this conversation as a sceptic. An 18.6 year property cycle feels too deterministic and over-reliant on backfitting data to support a fallacious narrative. Even if it’s true, how actionable is it? However, having sat down with Akhil Patel to discuss his book “The Secret Wealth Advantage: How you can Profit from the Economy’s Hidden Cycle”, I left more open-minded. He explained, through first principles how Land behaves differently to Capital as a factor of production as per Ricardo’s Law of Rent. Perhaps it’s not exuberant credit expansion leading to excess leverage that causes recessions? Indeed perhaps that’s just a symptom of the true cause: land speculation.This first-principles thinking meant that in the 19th century, the discipline of classical economics was distorted by wealthy landowners, in order to smother the rising popularity of Henry George. This cemented the property cycle (sorry) which has been the cause of boom and bust ever since. The book provides thoughts (not advice!) on what might be doable at various stages of the cycle. More than a to-do list however, our conversation will challenge your perception of how the world works. He was articulate, entertaining, and I recommend his book which I’ve linked to below. I invite a dialogue from all sceptical folks. Thanks to Fred Harrison for making this conversation possible. This podcast was produced by Matt Cooper with music made specially by Loverman.The book: https://thesecretwealthadvantage.com/This podcast was produced by Matt Cooper with music composed by Loverman.