In this YouTube commentary, the presenter explores a provocative business idea: exploiting the extraordinary fiscal surplus of Loving County, Texas—a county of roughly 24 residents that generates $50‑$56 million in annual cash flow and holds about $200 million in assets, primarily from oil production. The video walks through the county’s geography, its tiny town of Mentone, and the structure of Texas county government (county judge and a four‑member commissioners court). The speaker draws a parallel to Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which distributes state oil wealth to residents, and proposes a scheme where a group of new residents moves to Loving County, becomes eligible to vote, and then elects themselves to the county’s governing bodies. By controlling the board, they could redirect the surplus as dividends to the new “shareholders.” The presenter outlines the steps of the plan, highlights the current county judge’s controversial background, and questions the ethical and legal feasibility, inviting legal experts to comment on why the scheme might fail. The overall tone is speculative, conversational, and slightly tongue‑in‑cheek, while expressing both fascination and moral discomfort.
Chapters
All right, I want to pitch you on the craziest business idea I've had in a while, and this one's pretty crazy, but I'm putting it out there because actually I don't know if it'll work. Here's how it all came together. So, uh, there was this discussion a couple days ago on Twitter about what was happening with small towns across America and how a lot of people really would like that small town lifestyle, but there's a problem with these small towns— there's no real opportunity there. So, you know, of course it starts a discussion, and one of the replies was super interesting. I came from my buddy and I'll put the reply up here on the screen. And this is what he wrote. He said, "Have you ever taken a look at Loving County? They've got $200 million on the county balance sheet and will run a $50 million surplus in 2025. Even so, the population will drop to 2 dozen or so in the coming decade. There's probably an opportunity there." And I was like, "Huh, that's super interesting." Well, first of all, let's figure out where Loving County is. So I went and looked at where Loving County is. As one does by typing it into Google Maps. So it turns out Loving County is way, way, way out in West Texas. So I live here in San Antonio. Dallas is here. El Paso is way over here. Loving County is way out here. It's a whole bunch of, well, nothing. Interestingly enough, here's New Mexico. And if you look here and zoom in on what happens a lot in Loving County, each one of these little white dots and a road going to it, that's an oil well, which is kind of the first hint as to how Loving County has $200 million in cash and $50 million in revenue each year with only 24 residents. There is just oil well after oil well after oil well out here. This is all kind of Permian Basin, West Texas type stuff. So that's where Loving County is. It's out in West Texas. So the way Texas is arranged, and I know this because I'm in Texas, so fun fact for you, as a kid, they make you take not one, not two, but three years of Texas history in public high schools in Texas. We are that proud of our state. So anyway, there are 254 counties in the state of Texas. Each one basically gets to govern itself. So this is a governable area of which there is a group of folks called the county commissioners who kind of create ordinances and exercise the powers of that specific county. And this is one of those counties. It just happens to be one with somewhere between 0 and 64 people. In the 2020 census. It is the least populous county in the United States with a permanent population. The county seat and only community is this down here called Mentone. So if you go look at Mentone, it's pretty hilarious. Check out Mentone. It's literally— what is it? 5, 6, 7, 12— 12 blocks, 12 square blocks. And they're not big blocks. These are not New York City blocks. So this right here is the Loving County Courthouse. All this kind of stuff. Here's the Loving County Appraisal District. Those are the people that are assessing property taxes, which to some extent is why these guys have so much money. And some of that money they take and they spend on this, which is the Loving County Community Center, which is really frickin nice. If you look here on Google Maps, like these guys, look, there's— how many times if you lived here, there's 64 people in the county, do you show up at this community center and you're the only person here? I mean, getting a tennis match must be hell because it's, it's not like, it's not like there's a lot of opponents here. So I saw this, this is what Mentone is, and it's this little town and like it's literally 3 hours drive to anything. So super interesting. And then so going back to Fitz's stuff, like we've got this county, it's got $200 million in balance sheet and it's making $50 million a year in cash, mostly because it's like an oil county. So let's— next I said, okay, let's go look at the Loving County financial report and see if he's right. All right, here is their annual financial report. This is 2020. Let's see if we can find 2024. The Lubbock County adopted budget, budget certificate. Property taxes. They're making $5 million, $5 million more in last compared to last year's budget in property taxes. So this is all the stuff where they're spending money. Total activity, total budget. Now, where's the balance sheet? In 2021, these guys had a $36 million surplus. In 2022, they had a $13 million surplus. In 2023, they had a $31 million surplus. This county is just printing money. Like, it's just like, it's pretty amazing. All right. Let's see. Can we find their balance sheet? So that's their budget. They're just vomiting cash, which is cool. Let's go look and see how much money they're planning on making in 2025. In 2024, they did a budget surplus of $6 million. So they spent a bit more money this year than they did the previous year, but they were just vomiting cash. It's crazy. Is that 56 or 6? Oh, that's $56 million. They made $56 million. Surplus in this tiny little county. All right. So this is super interesting. But there's something else that I thought of, which is the state of Alaska has a permanent fund. The permanent fund that Alaska has is really interesting, which is it has $54 billion and the permanent fund owns a bunch of assets. and it basically pays the people who live in Alaska a dividend each year. So in 2024, they paid each citizen $1,702 as part of this permanent fund. So there is a precedent for counties and states and cities taking surpluses and giving it to their folks that live in that particular jurisdiction. One of the things that was interesting about 1980s folks who were doing what was called corporate raiding back then is they would go in and buy up the shares of individual companies with the idea of then transforming those companies, potentially going and looking at things that those companies had as assets and distributing that to the shareholders. Well, in the case of a county, who are the shareholders? Well, it's the people that live there. Well, how could we create some shareholders? Well, it turns out all you need to do in order to get residency and vote in a place like Loving County is to move there. So it's interesting. Unlike in a place like Dallas, which has 7 million people, you'd have to move millions of people to Dallas in order to have a say in the government there. Here, you could basically go into Mentone, move 30 people there, turn them into voters, and then basically elect you and your folks as members of the government. Just kind of crazy. So let's look at the county government in Loving County and how they're organized. Okay, so the way Texas counties work is there are different folks that participate. There's the county judge, who is the chief county executive. They're not a judge. They're like the president of the county, the mayor of the county, let's call it that. And then there's commissioners court, and together they function as folks that vote on ordinances and spending and all that kind of stuff. So commissioners court here appears to have 1, 2, 3, 4 commissioners. Fascinating. So you got 4 commissioners and I'm guessing you have the county judge. So those 5 are the ones who are voting on everything. So you need 3 of these rolls to basically pass whatever you want. That's a voting bloc. The county judge is the Honorable Skeet Lee Jones. Oh my God. I bet Skeet Lee Jones is a character. Rural Texas official indicted and charged with stealing cattle. What? Texas is frickin' awesome, dude. This guy's stealing cows. Oh, so sick. You've got to be kidding me. The county judge is a guy who went and stole a bunch of cows. These guys look like criminals. Oh, it's amazing. How do you get busted stealing cows? How hard is that? So back to the idea here. They have $200 million in cash. 50+ million in income, and it gives you a chance that's pretty crazy here. Like, the basic idea would be you move 30 to 40 adults of voting age out to Mentor, have them live there for a period of time, qualify, and then elect folks to the board that would change the policies. And the policies would be We're going to start giving a lot of this money out that we're sitting on as a county back to the residents. And basically, like, the scheme could be that you work with the residents that you move there to split the money with you. So you fund it and then you go do an LBO or hostile takeover of a county. Yeah, I mean, with $200 million and $50 million in cash, like, what would this business trade for if it was on the public markets? Like $50 million and growing in revenue and $200 million in cash. If this county was a business, it'd be valued at several billion dollars if it was publicly traded. All right. Well, this is just a creative idea because I ran across this today and I spent a half hour just digging in and Googling until I learned about Skeet, because Skeet's Crazy. Just one of the most Looney Tunes ideas I've ever seen, that you could go do a hostile takeover of a county and basically plant yourself in as a resident and then decide that, well, since you've decided to live out in the middle of nowhere, you deserve to be well compensated for it, and so should everybody else that lives there. And yeah, that's the great idea. So there's something wrong with this besides the ethical part of it. It just doesn't feel right. But it is an opportunity, especially if you want to run for county judge and supplant a guy who just happens to be a cattle wrestler who's the county judge. So anyway, if you're a lawyer, tell me why this won't work. But it could just totally do it. You just move a bunch of people out there, take over the county government, and then just start handing out checks to everybody. Why the hell not? Let me know what you think in the comments below. See you. Bye.
