investing in less

INVESTING IN LESS
Most tree huggers could care less about Peak Oil other than it will usher in their perfect paradise much sooner. This ignores the whole mass die off issue, but no one ever claimed that the environmental movement had a lot of intelligence behind it. They wear their Birkenstocks made two thousand miles away and drive their imported Volvo to meeting where everyone sits in a group hug and chants to communicate with Mother Earth. Just like the rest of the general population, they survive because of and are surrounded by the Oil Age and think nothing of it. One thing they should be paying attention to is that there is only a small window open to invest in alternate energy. Not to duplicate our current energy use, that would be impossible, but to have any energy at all once the last drop of affordable oil has been burned up in the last SUV driving to buy the last Central American bred hamburger. If we don’t invest now, there won’t be enough surplus energy left in the future to do so.
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You need to use the relatively cheap oil of today to invest for an energy source tomorrow ( I’m ignoring the whole issue if wind is sustainable mechanically speaking and just using it as an example ). So too do you need to invest right now in a lower cost future. It takes time and investment for a lower cost, more frugal tomorrow. I’ve covered this before. You can’t live decently without the investment, and you must invest now while excess energy and your salary from that are available. Almost all of our jobs are frivolous, unnecessary and unsustainable without surplus petroleum. Use that gift now and invest in the equipment you won’t have tomorrow. We all invest in food and ammunition, but that isn’t the only thing soon to be in short supply. Land will always be available in this country. Junk land isn’t wanted even at $500, half an ounce of gold. Come the die-off, even more land will become available. But to survive the economic meltdown, you need to get that land before you are unemployed. How long do you think cheap land will stay available once a small percentage increase in the population starts to panic? You saw how quick ammunition and rice became unavailable at any price.
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Right now, solar panels are selling for $75 for 15 watts. $5 a watt. Yes, you can buy them a lot cheaper per watt by buying a larger unit. Soon, if even a very small percentage of the population becomes new preppers, they zoom up in cost or you see shortages. Solar panels won’t last a lifetime ( get the crystal kind, not the thin film, if you want longevity rather than higher output or cheaper price ), but they will last decades. Once bought, a piece of land is a lifetime rent-free proposition. Get junk land, and either have a shelter set up on an axel or under the legal limit is square feet to be considered a shelter and your property taxes are negligible. Once bought, your stash of wheat lasts a lifetime and requires no other investment. Don’t wait, in other words. Prices are only going up, and you need to invest now, not after it is too late. Once it’s gone, that is it. We are approaching resource peaks in every form. Even if you don’t use it, have it. If you are paranoid enough, you need to act as if it all falls apart tomorrow.
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I’m going to cut my word count in half for my daily articles. Let me know if this offends you terribly. Don’t tell me this particular article offended you, I know it is rehashed crap. My mind is elsewhere. I would like to write more book-wise. If that pans out, I’ll keep these articles short. If it falls through, I’ll go back to my old norm of 1k+ words.
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