ACXLW Saturday Meeting #112 — The Land Trap & Why Our Brains Crave Ideology

📅 Date: Saturday, January 24, 2026
🕒 Time: 2:00 PM
📍 Location: 1970 Port Laurent Place, Newport Beach, CA 92660
👤 Host: Michael Michalchik — michaelmichalchik@gmail.com | (949) 375-2045

ACXLW Saturday Meeting #112 — The Land Trap & Why Our Brains Crave Ideology

Conversation Starters

1) The Land Trap (text + video)

Read: Book Review by Lars Doucet → https://progressandpoverty.substack.com/p/book-review-the-land-trap-by-mike (Progress and Poverty)
Watch: Related video short → https://youtu.be/L7vGUOgSulM

Summary (medium length)

• The review distills Mike Bird’s thesis: because land is scarce, immobile, and ideal collateral, modern credit cycles and investment booms revolve around land values—which can crowd out productive investment and amplify inequality. (Progress and Poverty)
• Historic and global cases (e.g., Japan’s bubble/bust; China’s real-estate-centric policy trilemma) show how states and banks become structurally tied to property prices, making downturns politically and financially perilous. (Mercatus Center)
• Reviewers frame Bird’s book as a Georgist-adjacent wake-up call: if land sits at the core of balance sheets (from households to franchises), reforms that change how we tax, zone, and collateralize land may be prerequisite to healthier growth. (Progress and Poverty)

Questions (provocative & concrete)

1. If land is the collateral core of finance, which reforms would actually shift capital back to productivity—LVT variants, zoning by-right, or haircuts on land collateral—and which might backfire? (Progress and Poverty)
2. In systems like China’s, any fix creates a distributional shock (to households, banks, or the wider economy). Where should that shock be absorbed, and by what mechanisms, to minimize long-run damage? (Mercatus Center)
3. As climate risk and engineering (e.g., safe up-zoning) effectively create/erase usable land, how should a “Georgism for the Anthropocene” update tax and planning to reflect shifting endowments? (Financial Times)

2) Why Our Brains Crave Ideology (article + short + AI summary)

Read: Nautilus → https://nautil.us/why-our-brains-crave-ideology-1203194/ (Nautilus)
Watch (short): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6HYcn5vKv8
AI podcast-style notes: NotebookLM (link provided)

Summary (medium length)

• Political neuroscientist Leor Zmigrod argues ideological attachment is shaped by cognitive style: lower cognitive flexibility and higher need for order predict stronger, more rigid ideology across content (left/right, secular/religious). (Nautilus)
• Laboratory tasks (e.g., Wisconsin Card Sorting) connect flexibility vs. rigidity to openness or dogmatism; ideology helps manage uncertainty but can become a rigidity trap when reinforced by social environments. (Vox)
• The upshot: cultivating flexibility and uncertainty-tolerance may reduce extremism without demanding value-neutrality. (Vox)

Questions (provocative & practical)

1. If rigidity tracks cognitive style, should communities intentionally train cognitive flexibility (perspective-taking drills, uncertainty “reps”)? Where’s the ethical line between education and ideological grooming? (Vox)
2. Which deliberation norms (devil’s-advocate rotation, pre-mortems, anonymized argument maps) measurably counteract predispositions—without eroding principled conviction? (Vox)
3. If heightened threat sensitivity feeds dogmatism, do doom-scroll media diets train ideological reflexes—and what interventions (friction, reframing, rate limits) change outcomes? (Financial Times)

Bridge Prompt: Land vs. Mind

Both pieces describe traps that seek stability but yield rigidity—one in balance sheets, one in brains. Which levers (policy for land; practices for minds) unlock flexibility without chaos?

Logistics & Traditions

• 🚶 Walk & Talk: After we kick off, we usually take an hour-long walk. Nearby mini-malls with takeout (try Gelson’s or Pavilions in 92660).
• 🎁 Share a Surprise: Bring something that unexpectedly changed your view of the world.
• 🧭 Future Directions: Pitch topics, formats, or experiments for upcoming weeks.

See you Saturday!