Are there really "millions" of Otises out there?

I've heard this question before and reflected upon it a bit.  

For those who don't know, an "Otis" is someone who is willing to give their land to someone useful when they need someone to take over (or they die).  Typically this would be older folks with land who either don't have kids or would rather give their land to people who will maintain it instead of selling it.

You can approach the question from a point of counting up from zero.  How many Otises do Paul and I know?  Maybe a few dozen.  I personally know three locally.  Then extrapolate up.  

The other way is to take the world population and divide it by 2 million Otises (7.8 billion/2 million = 3,900).  So to have "millions" of Otises we need 1 out of every 3,900 humans to be an Otis.  

Yes, a lot of people live in poverty or big cities.  But keep in mind that an Otis also can just be a financial benefactor.  Instead of giving land to a young PEP participant, they could give start-up coin.  Big cities have lots of that sort of Otis.

So based on this squishy math, I think it's very reasonable to say there are millions of Otises out there.  To say "tens of millions" would require a little more data collection...

I get the arithmetic, but It's hard to see how that applies to an individual PEPer.

The typical person has maybe 100 people in their network of friends. Maybe 1000 in their network of acquaintances. Humans are pretty much hardwired like this. So that "1 Otis in 3900" means I maybe have a 1/4 chance of having an Otis in my network.

The people who are super efficient networkers in life tend to also be pretty successful, because being good at building strong social networks is important for success. So the people with big social networks who are more likely  to know an Otis maybe are less likely to need/want an Otis. The people with smaller social networks are more likely to need/want and Otis, but are less likely to know one AND critically less likely to have the skills to extend their network to find one.

Bridging the gap between the Otis types and the people they are looking for seems hard. Not impossible, but I think that is where the challenge is.

I was also trying to say that IF there are 2 million Otises, that is one in every 3900.  I was showing how few Otises there need to be to satisfy the "millions" claim.  But in reality I think it's much more common.  For me, I know maybe 100-200 people and of that there are at least 3 Otises.  

So if there are 1000 people in your network of acquaintances, I bet there are dozens of potential Otises in there.

I think I agree with what you said about networkers.  Luckily Paul came up with SKIP to help those groups bridge the gap with one another.  Someone might only have a small circle of acquaintances but if they're PEP3 certified and posting on permies where the Otises can see them, they'll be in great shape.

I think your maths is way way off, sure there might be 7.8 billion people in the world, but many billions of those live in conditions that instantly count them out from being an Otis  The population of all of the Americas and Europe doesn't even hit 2billion Even if we add in Australia and various other places with good living standards and "free" money it won't creep much over 2billion if at all.  And of course many of them also live day to day without savings and MOST of them live without land. I know a fair number of people several hundred and since I associate with lots of food producers I know land owners, I do not know anyone other than myself who doesn't have an heir.

Oh, having heirs and wanting those heirs to get your land aren't necessarily the same thing.  They are for many but plenty of people with a little slice of heaven don't want it sold (by their heirs) to the highest bidder to be turned into a subdivision.

Even if we disregard the 6.8 billion humans living in the "poorer" conditions, it puts the Otis ratio at 1 in 500 in order to have 2 million Otises in the remaining 1 billion.

To reiterate, I consider Otises to include:

People with land or assets and no heirs

People with land or assets and heirs that are financially sound and don't need all their inheritance

People with land or assets and heirs that they don't want to give their land to since they'll sell it off

I'm not saying that these people even know they might be an Otis or would have thought of this issue.  They very well might be simply planning on willing all their stuff to their kids or a non-profit and knowing it may get bulldozed.  And feeling a bit sad about it but not knowing any alternative.

I've talked to several people in the last few weeks and described SKIP.  They were generally older and when I described an Otis, they resonated with that.  Some thought they fit the bill.  

Almost every time I discuss the issue of younger folks wanting to get onto the land and older folks without someone to take over their place, a healthy fraction of people I'm talking to realize they could be an Otis.  

Maybe I just live in a perfect part of the world but I suspect for most of the US (outside of cities), this is the case.  And likely many other countries as well...