RAFTING RETREAT
I believe there has been one book, probably about twenty years old now, on sailing as a survival strategy. For us land lubbers, this was never a viable option. However, as I have mentioned previously, inland water vessels are within our grasp. You don't have to know about strange things such as lee or starboard ( forgive me if I'm off on my terms, having been a grunt rather than a squid ), topknots or other doohickies. Plus, you can eliminate the expenses involved in ocean going ships. I know there is at least one group that pretty much lives at sea most of the time, down in the tropics somewhere. South China Sea, perhaps? This has allowed some kind of autonomy in an area not known for its celebration of individuals ( at least on the mainland rice growing areas ). They trade with islanders, get repair and building materials. That doesn't sound like too harsh of an existence. But they have a tribal support system. I wouldn't really want to be a lone individual sailing the seven seas. Don't get me wrong, I think I could do the whole hermit thing rather easily. But "Waterworld" keeps coming to my mind, your boat is destroyed and your only option is to bob in the water for a few days until you are shark food. On land, not only is it a lot cheaper, but you can escape and restart if needed with a much better chance of escape.
*
But fresh water boating doesn't have the disadvantages of salt water escape. Granted, you forego the major advantage which is total escape from all oppressive elements. But you don't have the disadvantages which are high cost and dependence on one craft. I don't even have one ready made shelter but two, I can't imagine limiting my options like that. While fresh water boating, if your craft is damaged, you can go ashore easily. You can live there, or replace your craft with a homemade one. You can improvise with a raft to replace your houseboat. Yes, you can build your own salt water boat, but you have to worry about storms killing you easier. You don't have to worry about running out of fresh drinking water. If your primary food source decreases you can go to land and kill something. There are always wild plants to harvest close by. You can plant semi-wild gardens in secluded areas not easily accessible by land. Living on the water allows you the advantage of being mobile, even in populated areas. Without the disadvantages of road travel. No, it won't be 100% safe, others will have the same idea. But you are eliminating a lot of the competition. On a farm, the land can be fought over. On the water, in theory you can move to a less contested area.
*
Several areas suitable come to mind. The Delta region in California, stretching from the Bay Area to Sacramento. The Mississippi. The Louisiana or Florida swamps. The St. John's river in Florida. I know there are quite a few others. The thing to keep in mind is that you need a large area in which to escape if there is trouble. One short river won't do the trick. A small lake, such as Lake Tahoe, is too constricted. You are setting yourself up for failure. The competition for the limited resources will get you killed. The cheapest route would be to have a Unibomber shack hidden somewhere deep in the back country, and a small boat to get around in, to hunt for food and to recon the dangers. The more expensive plan would be to live on the boat. Either way, have plenty of caches around the area. You could start to live this lifestyle now, and come the Apocalypse you would hardly notice any changes ( other than a lot more people shooting at you ). On large waterways, I would imagine you could live a lot less of a regulated lifestyle, at least as opposed to a nomadic car living experience.
*
I know there would be a bit of a learning curve. Even sailing on a stagnant pool of water is not the same as being on solid land. But it can't be that difficult. Even if you really screwed up, it is a short swim to the shore ( of course, down South you might be swimming through water moccasins and alligators ). You can cheaply stay on the move, nature grows all your food, if there is a shortage you float away to a better area. You are a little safer than on land, although not nearly as safe as on the ocean. You will still need dog to alert you to a swimming ninja attack, but you can feed it fish guts instead of expensive dog food. Coastal flooding doesn't effect you. You can live in a temperate climate without the expense of real estate. Just beware of the need to cache food supplies. You can never be 100% sure of dry supplies unless you cache. On land, you need a motor. On water, you can get by without one in an emergency. You can build your own craft with little more than plastic 55 gallon drums you pick up cheap at a cola bottling plant. You can fish for a living. There is no property taxes.
*
There are dangers, of course. You are surrounded by a moat, which also means you can't escape as easily. If your home is damaged, and our current economy is broken, you are stuck with constructing a primitive craft such as a lumpy raft. Your living space is even more cramped than a travel trailer. You might get really sick of eating fish and wild weeds. If you are poling along, a boat with a big motor can run you down and throw you in that parties stew pot. A few bullets can sink you. But I think, all in all, not a bad alternative to land based retreats. If boats are your bag, baby.
END
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
colonies
COLONIES
All right! Glad to see dissent and mutiny in the comments section again. It makes things much more lively. Of course, please be aware that any such persons will be marked for future liquidation under the Bisonia dictatorship. Today we are going to talk about your future in an imperial colony. I don't think I've devoted an article to it before. If I did, please forgive my imperfect memory. While some of us are exceptional in that regard, I'm not part of the Borg which can draw from the hive mind. I Hoover up a ton of information, it mixes and melds and I pop out this kind of drivel. The creative process does not allow rote memorization. I've only been able to remember one telephone number in my life and that was the only place I lived more than a few years.
*
Colonies are nothing new. They have been around since organized armies at the start of the Agricultural Revolution. If you are on the winning side, it is pretty cool to have new lands and resources to plunder. The spoils of war. Even cooler is the original population of that land being forced to do all the work providing you with those resources. Then, after the military outlay, it is all gravy. You are just raking it in. And you need to have a military anyway, if for no other reason than not to end up someone else's colony. So that is a fixed expense and winning a war and acquiring a colony is as close to a free lunch as you can get. Now, not everyone has fabulous luck getting and running colonies. The Romans were pretty darn good. Britain did a bang up job. America is the undisputed champ. Spain did okay, while France pretty much embarrassed everyone ( of course, under the direction of Champlain they administered one one the most benevolent colonies around ). I won't even mention those countries settling for ice bound islands. Or Germany's pathetic acquisition of a few fly specks in the tropical Pacific or the leftovers in Africa.
*
More often than not, colonizing is a survival strategy. You can't feed everyone on the land you have, so you expand the farming area at your neighbors expense. A gentle form of genocide keeps that population from eating too much into your imports. After fighting amongst themselves for centuries the Europeans had enough of a technological lead to colonize pretty much the rest of the world. When that began yielding decreased amounts of wealth they once again went to war for the ultimate consolidation. The joke was on them because the new kid on the block with the overwhelming majority of the coal and oil took over and made then vassals of its central bank. Suckers. Of course, the new kid, being an adolescent, had no restraint and lived it up in the grandest party of all time and blew through that fabulous wealth quickly.
*
We are now in the process of the globes dominant imperial power quickly losing control as the resource base was striped quicker than necessary from importing cheap labor to keep the locals in extreme comfort. The twenty five percent population increase coincided with the global fall off in oil production and unfavorable weather patterns ( natural or Gore Warming, it doesn't matter anymore ). And the use of paper currency to forestall the resource decrease consequences. All that money spent on education and nobody ever heard of the Mayans?
*
As the empire collapses, centralization will falter. Political units will shrink smaller and smaller. I'll leave alone the subject of urban area and rural area colonization within our own borders. For now, we can travel to a near future after the US has disintegrated. Far more worrisome than the traveling gang of motorcycle hoodlums will be the arrival of new petty kingdoms and home grown tyrants. War will remain a constant, your beet and rutabaga field will change hands on a regular basis. One week a serf, the next paying fifty percent taxes. Then, as things stabilize and it becomes more difficult to overthrow the next government, you go from a constant state of war to a constant state of being ruled and overtaxed. Then, your glorious dream of living off the land and growing your own food backfires. You won't be allowed to remain a Yeoman farmer, independent and living off your own labor. No, you will most likely become a more primitive version of today's Third World farmer. You will grow what you are told, and you will be lucky if the surplus feeds your family. That is if you aren't deliberately starved off the land so the exploiters local farmers, say perhaps retiring soldiers given a land grant, can take over your land.
*
Now, for the love of God, please don't complain how I hate farming and how there is no other way to survive, etc. As I've tried to explain numerous times, times beyond counting, so many times I feel it is tattooed on my forehead, I'm not telling you farming is a bad idea. I'm telling you that it is only the best of many bad choices and that you need to be fully aware of the realistic dangers you face. As much as I'd love this to be the end of a parasitic order and the start of a new freedom, it is only going to get worse rather than better. You will become a cog in someone else's machine. Your land will import cash crops and you will try to survive on a vegetable garden or be forced into buying inferior foods in a market economy. Your plan on the ultimate survival technique, growing your own crops, has many problematic futures. Freaky weather, outright theft, colonization. Instead of farming being your ultimate back up plan, you need to have a plan for farming failing. You see, this is why I don't have advertisers or tens of thousands of readers. I don't offer easy solutions ( who wants to eat wheat kernels, live in a trailer, shoot old surplus guns? ) and I try to rain on everyone's parade. I call it realistic, you can choose your own term. And, by the way, I know this is the same old tired argument against farming I've already made, just with a new name and form of governance thrown in for camouflage. If I repeat myself enough you will agree with me, just to shut me up. Enjoy your brave new world. You were a wage slave, next you can tied to the land, malnourished and disease ridden.
END
All right! Glad to see dissent and mutiny in the comments section again. It makes things much more lively. Of course, please be aware that any such persons will be marked for future liquidation under the Bisonia dictatorship. Today we are going to talk about your future in an imperial colony. I don't think I've devoted an article to it before. If I did, please forgive my imperfect memory. While some of us are exceptional in that regard, I'm not part of the Borg which can draw from the hive mind. I Hoover up a ton of information, it mixes and melds and I pop out this kind of drivel. The creative process does not allow rote memorization. I've only been able to remember one telephone number in my life and that was the only place I lived more than a few years.
*
Colonies are nothing new. They have been around since organized armies at the start of the Agricultural Revolution. If you are on the winning side, it is pretty cool to have new lands and resources to plunder. The spoils of war. Even cooler is the original population of that land being forced to do all the work providing you with those resources. Then, after the military outlay, it is all gravy. You are just raking it in. And you need to have a military anyway, if for no other reason than not to end up someone else's colony. So that is a fixed expense and winning a war and acquiring a colony is as close to a free lunch as you can get. Now, not everyone has fabulous luck getting and running colonies. The Romans were pretty darn good. Britain did a bang up job. America is the undisputed champ. Spain did okay, while France pretty much embarrassed everyone ( of course, under the direction of Champlain they administered one one the most benevolent colonies around ). I won't even mention those countries settling for ice bound islands. Or Germany's pathetic acquisition of a few fly specks in the tropical Pacific or the leftovers in Africa.
*
More often than not, colonizing is a survival strategy. You can't feed everyone on the land you have, so you expand the farming area at your neighbors expense. A gentle form of genocide keeps that population from eating too much into your imports. After fighting amongst themselves for centuries the Europeans had enough of a technological lead to colonize pretty much the rest of the world. When that began yielding decreased amounts of wealth they once again went to war for the ultimate consolidation. The joke was on them because the new kid on the block with the overwhelming majority of the coal and oil took over and made then vassals of its central bank. Suckers. Of course, the new kid, being an adolescent, had no restraint and lived it up in the grandest party of all time and blew through that fabulous wealth quickly.
*
We are now in the process of the globes dominant imperial power quickly losing control as the resource base was striped quicker than necessary from importing cheap labor to keep the locals in extreme comfort. The twenty five percent population increase coincided with the global fall off in oil production and unfavorable weather patterns ( natural or Gore Warming, it doesn't matter anymore ). And the use of paper currency to forestall the resource decrease consequences. All that money spent on education and nobody ever heard of the Mayans?
*
As the empire collapses, centralization will falter. Political units will shrink smaller and smaller. I'll leave alone the subject of urban area and rural area colonization within our own borders. For now, we can travel to a near future after the US has disintegrated. Far more worrisome than the traveling gang of motorcycle hoodlums will be the arrival of new petty kingdoms and home grown tyrants. War will remain a constant, your beet and rutabaga field will change hands on a regular basis. One week a serf, the next paying fifty percent taxes. Then, as things stabilize and it becomes more difficult to overthrow the next government, you go from a constant state of war to a constant state of being ruled and overtaxed. Then, your glorious dream of living off the land and growing your own food backfires. You won't be allowed to remain a Yeoman farmer, independent and living off your own labor. No, you will most likely become a more primitive version of today's Third World farmer. You will grow what you are told, and you will be lucky if the surplus feeds your family. That is if you aren't deliberately starved off the land so the exploiters local farmers, say perhaps retiring soldiers given a land grant, can take over your land.
*
Now, for the love of God, please don't complain how I hate farming and how there is no other way to survive, etc. As I've tried to explain numerous times, times beyond counting, so many times I feel it is tattooed on my forehead, I'm not telling you farming is a bad idea. I'm telling you that it is only the best of many bad choices and that you need to be fully aware of the realistic dangers you face. As much as I'd love this to be the end of a parasitic order and the start of a new freedom, it is only going to get worse rather than better. You will become a cog in someone else's machine. Your land will import cash crops and you will try to survive on a vegetable garden or be forced into buying inferior foods in a market economy. Your plan on the ultimate survival technique, growing your own crops, has many problematic futures. Freaky weather, outright theft, colonization. Instead of farming being your ultimate back up plan, you need to have a plan for farming failing. You see, this is why I don't have advertisers or tens of thousands of readers. I don't offer easy solutions ( who wants to eat wheat kernels, live in a trailer, shoot old surplus guns? ) and I try to rain on everyone's parade. I call it realistic, you can choose your own term. And, by the way, I know this is the same old tired argument against farming I've already made, just with a new name and form of governance thrown in for camouflage. If I repeat myself enough you will agree with me, just to shut me up. Enjoy your brave new world. You were a wage slave, next you can tied to the land, malnourished and disease ridden.
END
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
don't care, pay now
DON'T CARE, PAY NOW
Before I forget again, many profound thanks and obsequious bows of gratitude to E.A.B. for a very generous donation. Now I can pay for my inverter that cost far more than I thought ( I had fried the socket plug and the inverter, along with the batteries-although in my defense the batteries were five years old and thus my kinda sorta forgetting to water them didn't hasten their demise too badly ). A previous snail mail donation went towards paying for the twenty feet of heavy duty wire I took directly from the batteries ( I had two new ones I've been separately charging that took the place of the old dry ones ) to the inverter. When you send a donation I usually let it sit around until I need it for something critical, bike parts or off-grid equipment. No going out to dinner or the casino. If you would like to donate on a regular basis, a buck a month would be wonderful. I only need every single reader to sign up for that and then I don't have to work in town anymore. Send an e-mail, jimd303@netzero.com , and in the body place your address and "monthly donation reminder". I put you on the PayPal mailing list and they send out a reminder that it is time to donate. This doesn't obligate you, it just reminds you. In three years my child support will be over and then only half of you need to donate. Hell, we won't even be around then, but long been eliminated from our neighbors digestive system. You might as well help a brother out until then.
*
I don't know if you've slept through the last decade, but economic times have grown a bit more difficult. As our economic pie has shrunk, more and more institutions are desperately fighting for survival. 90% of the time it means they screw you over to make it. The government is an obvious target, but all entrenched organizations do it. Corporations and non profits even take a page from the Roman Catholic playbook on how to fleece the sheep. This follows up on my comment yesterday that no one cares how little money they leave you to survive on. I don't care if you are on welfare, Social Security, work for a local government, work minimum wage or collect cans from the underpass. You will see your property tax quadrupled, sales tax doubled, income withholding tripled, Internet connections put on a toll, and all services drastically reduced before the city or state you are in will take a death cut in revenue. The Federal government will cause 1,000% inflation before they cut one department. Corporations will lay off the last worker and ship the last department to India before they cut one cent from their CEO bonuses. It isn't just naked greed, although that is rampant. It is regular positions of power and profit for the first time being threatened. Before, they survived on our surplus, but as that was eliminated they must start eating the seed corn.
*
Before, a lot of wealth redistribution was all about vote buying and more importantly part of the process of divide and conquer. It didn't cost politicians anything to double workers withholding and pay an additional 25% to retirees. They skim off the extra, workers hate retirees, retirees fear a worker revolt and thus feel vulnerable and thus hate the workers. Multiply that across the board for every tax and spend program. All of the drones hate or fear or are envious of each other and blame is deflected from the people in power living off the extra. I rag on Social Security recipients and welfare bitches, but I also understand the power and wealth behind it. Of course, I also like to hate just about anyone anyway. Give women the vote and make divorce a paying proposition and force employers to hire females even for jobs they are incapable of performing physically, and the genders hate each other. Make laws that allow executives to earn thousands of times a workers salary and the workers hate the business owners. Give blacks jobs they aren't qualified for and whites hate them. Etcetera.
*
Let me give my new favorite example of corporations screwing you. I used to love Wal-Mart. I sang their praises at every opportunity. I gave them plenty of endorsements to my limited circle of readers. I refused to buy property that wasn't within thirty miles of one of their Super Stores ( and I've bought six lots ). They were my only stop shopping for almost fifteen years ( other than books, which has always been Amazon, and who hasn't turned evil ). No, they are out to get me personally. I am convinced that my name actually comes up in board meetings. They are eliminating a lot of excess inventory, so that I am forced to stockpile items I normally wouldn't. They are eliminating most generic brands. Sure, they have the cheapest name brand, but I don't buy that crap. The name brands they do carry and I do buy are crap. Like the Bell brand in the bicycle department. Total worthless crap. Every item from them has disappointed me, from the guaranteed non flat inner tube that went flat to the $20 seat that had its cheek pads peel off in a few weeks. They no longer carry the cheap name brands, but the more expensive ones. Such as the Spam debacle. Virginia ham type for $1.18 was eliminated. Now you can have the $1.59 generic or the $2+ Spam. No thanks. The latest insult is the Cup Of Noodles. Nissan was a quarter. Manchurin was thirty eight cents. Now, no more Nissan. The price didn't go up, you just don't have the option to buy the cheaper brand. I could go on and on, but the short story is I have to go shopping in many different places now. Bastard Whores.
*
My property taxes just went up fifty percent. No big deal, it is now $10 instead of six. Although that does translate into nearly an once of silver rather than a half once. I'm sure you folks with houses are really getting screwed a lot worse than that. You are up side down on your house, yet your assessed value doubled. And the only excuse is that your county needs the money. Need, the last refuge of the welfare masses, the Post Office and other communists. They aren't obligating themselves to better service, just taking what they need. All levels of government will be acting the same. All corporations will be cutting choices and offering worse products. And this is just the beginning of the crash. What fun we have ahead of us.
END
Before I forget again, many profound thanks and obsequious bows of gratitude to E.A.B. for a very generous donation. Now I can pay for my inverter that cost far more than I thought ( I had fried the socket plug and the inverter, along with the batteries-although in my defense the batteries were five years old and thus my kinda sorta forgetting to water them didn't hasten their demise too badly ). A previous snail mail donation went towards paying for the twenty feet of heavy duty wire I took directly from the batteries ( I had two new ones I've been separately charging that took the place of the old dry ones ) to the inverter. When you send a donation I usually let it sit around until I need it for something critical, bike parts or off-grid equipment. No going out to dinner or the casino. If you would like to donate on a regular basis, a buck a month would be wonderful. I only need every single reader to sign up for that and then I don't have to work in town anymore. Send an e-mail, jimd303@netzero.com , and in the body place your address and "monthly donation reminder". I put you on the PayPal mailing list and they send out a reminder that it is time to donate. This doesn't obligate you, it just reminds you. In three years my child support will be over and then only half of you need to donate. Hell, we won't even be around then, but long been eliminated from our neighbors digestive system. You might as well help a brother out until then.
*
I don't know if you've slept through the last decade, but economic times have grown a bit more difficult. As our economic pie has shrunk, more and more institutions are desperately fighting for survival. 90% of the time it means they screw you over to make it. The government is an obvious target, but all entrenched organizations do it. Corporations and non profits even take a page from the Roman Catholic playbook on how to fleece the sheep. This follows up on my comment yesterday that no one cares how little money they leave you to survive on. I don't care if you are on welfare, Social Security, work for a local government, work minimum wage or collect cans from the underpass. You will see your property tax quadrupled, sales tax doubled, income withholding tripled, Internet connections put on a toll, and all services drastically reduced before the city or state you are in will take a death cut in revenue. The Federal government will cause 1,000% inflation before they cut one department. Corporations will lay off the last worker and ship the last department to India before they cut one cent from their CEO bonuses. It isn't just naked greed, although that is rampant. It is regular positions of power and profit for the first time being threatened. Before, they survived on our surplus, but as that was eliminated they must start eating the seed corn.
*
Before, a lot of wealth redistribution was all about vote buying and more importantly part of the process of divide and conquer. It didn't cost politicians anything to double workers withholding and pay an additional 25% to retirees. They skim off the extra, workers hate retirees, retirees fear a worker revolt and thus feel vulnerable and thus hate the workers. Multiply that across the board for every tax and spend program. All of the drones hate or fear or are envious of each other and blame is deflected from the people in power living off the extra. I rag on Social Security recipients and welfare bitches, but I also understand the power and wealth behind it. Of course, I also like to hate just about anyone anyway. Give women the vote and make divorce a paying proposition and force employers to hire females even for jobs they are incapable of performing physically, and the genders hate each other. Make laws that allow executives to earn thousands of times a workers salary and the workers hate the business owners. Give blacks jobs they aren't qualified for and whites hate them. Etcetera.
*
Let me give my new favorite example of corporations screwing you. I used to love Wal-Mart. I sang their praises at every opportunity. I gave them plenty of endorsements to my limited circle of readers. I refused to buy property that wasn't within thirty miles of one of their Super Stores ( and I've bought six lots ). They were my only stop shopping for almost fifteen years ( other than books, which has always been Amazon, and who hasn't turned evil ). No, they are out to get me personally. I am convinced that my name actually comes up in board meetings. They are eliminating a lot of excess inventory, so that I am forced to stockpile items I normally wouldn't. They are eliminating most generic brands. Sure, they have the cheapest name brand, but I don't buy that crap. The name brands they do carry and I do buy are crap. Like the Bell brand in the bicycle department. Total worthless crap. Every item from them has disappointed me, from the guaranteed non flat inner tube that went flat to the $20 seat that had its cheek pads peel off in a few weeks. They no longer carry the cheap name brands, but the more expensive ones. Such as the Spam debacle. Virginia ham type for $1.18 was eliminated. Now you can have the $1.59 generic or the $2+ Spam. No thanks. The latest insult is the Cup Of Noodles. Nissan was a quarter. Manchurin was thirty eight cents. Now, no more Nissan. The price didn't go up, you just don't have the option to buy the cheaper brand. I could go on and on, but the short story is I have to go shopping in many different places now. Bastard Whores.
*
My property taxes just went up fifty percent. No big deal, it is now $10 instead of six. Although that does translate into nearly an once of silver rather than a half once. I'm sure you folks with houses are really getting screwed a lot worse than that. You are up side down on your house, yet your assessed value doubled. And the only excuse is that your county needs the money. Need, the last refuge of the welfare masses, the Post Office and other communists. They aren't obligating themselves to better service, just taking what they need. All levels of government will be acting the same. All corporations will be cutting choices and offering worse products. And this is just the beginning of the crash. What fun we have ahead of us.
END
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
one income extended family
ONE INCOME EXTENDED FAMILY
Are you ready for your income to shrink 40%, as your grown children are moving back home and your aging parents are kicked out of the nursing home or their Florida retirement home? And that's the best case scenario where at least one of you keeps an income and you stay off of that junk land you didn't buy living in the tent you don't own. Now, I could drone on and on about cutting the cable and installing a roof top antenna. I could talk about substituting beans for some of your meat. We could talk about giving up one if not both cars, even though I know the average American would rather carve the bloody word "loser" into their forehead than give up their pimpin ride, yo. All these things will of course be necessary. But you also need to keep in mind that there is no such thing as the average middle class existence buying canned seeds and collecting rimfire ammo one second and fighting off jack booted thugs the next. In between a lot of crap is coming down and making your life very difficult. I'm not talking about a long slow collapse. I hate that theory. It is a cop out misdirecting you into believing you have plenty of time. We have been in a long slow collapse since the early Seventies. We are now on the edge of the abyss and will very shortly plunge over. But there will be a short period of time when everything that possibly can will go wrong.
*
Your spouse will lose his job. I say a 40% income loss, it could be 50% or 60%. Hubby can perhaps sell your embroidered unicorn backpacks on E-Bay, or pick up cans on the highway. Whatever. Just assume your income is going to take a big hit. Then, Obammy, on instructions from the bankers, will make health insurance mandatory. One last bubble while the last of the elite scamper away to their Caribbean hide outs with satchels of decaying dollars. Luckily for us, in the end they will die as horribly as the rest of us, since they think money is the only survival tool they need. At least karmic justice will be served. Even minimum wage drones most likely will see their income further garnished. As has been repeatedly taught to me by experience, when it comes time to redistribute income, the government could care less if you have enough left over to survive on. Don't believe me? Try living on $400 a month take home paying rent ( and that was on $9 an hour gross ). This is desperation situation time for the banks and businesses. Why else would the bail out liabilities go as high as 23 TRILLION bucks ( and that figure is from the Treasury I.G. )? They aren't even worried about our inability to pay the interest on that amount, let alone ever repay it. It is an impossible amount- wheelbarrow full of cash type inflation is the only way to repay. And it doesn't matter, because our economy isn't going to recover. Green shoots will grow out of my butt first.
*
You've lost half the household income. Your paycheck withholding went from thirty to forty percent ( and the medical portion will assuredly increase given enough time-the government will cut costs and pass on the savings as well as the Post Office does ). Food is inflating at a minimum of twenty percent a year. Next, your kids move back home. Your son dropped out of college after he racked up thirty grand in debt through a private bank loan ( backed by taxpayers of course ). Can you even discharge student loans through bankruptcy? Your daughter is knocked up by a macho bad boy gang member and thrown out on the street. She comes calling with about two months to go before she squirts the puppy. As soon as you seriously consider going postal on the family and suiciding by cop, you get news that your aging parents have lost the condo in Florida, don't have the cash to buy a used mobile home in a park, and will be moving in with you right after next months check arrives to finance their move. Before you know it you are going to have two adults and a dog living with you, all with bad hips and the inability to get to the toilet in time.
*
What could possibly go wrong next? Gasoline climbs to ten bucks a gallon. Now getting to work proves almost impossible. You have to get up two hours early, carpool to downtown, then take a city bus that has a half hour flexible arrival time and is full of crack whores and homeless guys that haven't showered since the first Bush administration. And this is all before crime increases and you get laid off and store shelves start coming up empty. Or ration cards or political dissident camps. Or mass food shortages from Gore Warming and crop failures followed by grain fungal outbreaks and fertilizer shortages. Or heating oil becomes unavailable for any price. Or civil war breaks out next to your super farm retreat. Or sea levels rise ( what about that strange two foot surge the entire east coast just had, or New Zealand shifting an inch from one quake, or...? ). Are you paranoid enough? Because more than one bad thing is going to happen. Don't let down your guard. Be very afraid.
END
Are you ready for your income to shrink 40%, as your grown children are moving back home and your aging parents are kicked out of the nursing home or their Florida retirement home? And that's the best case scenario where at least one of you keeps an income and you stay off of that junk land you didn't buy living in the tent you don't own. Now, I could drone on and on about cutting the cable and installing a roof top antenna. I could talk about substituting beans for some of your meat. We could talk about giving up one if not both cars, even though I know the average American would rather carve the bloody word "loser" into their forehead than give up their pimpin ride, yo. All these things will of course be necessary. But you also need to keep in mind that there is no such thing as the average middle class existence buying canned seeds and collecting rimfire ammo one second and fighting off jack booted thugs the next. In between a lot of crap is coming down and making your life very difficult. I'm not talking about a long slow collapse. I hate that theory. It is a cop out misdirecting you into believing you have plenty of time. We have been in a long slow collapse since the early Seventies. We are now on the edge of the abyss and will very shortly plunge over. But there will be a short period of time when everything that possibly can will go wrong.
*
Your spouse will lose his job. I say a 40% income loss, it could be 50% or 60%. Hubby can perhaps sell your embroidered unicorn backpacks on E-Bay, or pick up cans on the highway. Whatever. Just assume your income is going to take a big hit. Then, Obammy, on instructions from the bankers, will make health insurance mandatory. One last bubble while the last of the elite scamper away to their Caribbean hide outs with satchels of decaying dollars. Luckily for us, in the end they will die as horribly as the rest of us, since they think money is the only survival tool they need. At least karmic justice will be served. Even minimum wage drones most likely will see their income further garnished. As has been repeatedly taught to me by experience, when it comes time to redistribute income, the government could care less if you have enough left over to survive on. Don't believe me? Try living on $400 a month take home paying rent ( and that was on $9 an hour gross ). This is desperation situation time for the banks and businesses. Why else would the bail out liabilities go as high as 23 TRILLION bucks ( and that figure is from the Treasury I.G. )? They aren't even worried about our inability to pay the interest on that amount, let alone ever repay it. It is an impossible amount- wheelbarrow full of cash type inflation is the only way to repay. And it doesn't matter, because our economy isn't going to recover. Green shoots will grow out of my butt first.
*
You've lost half the household income. Your paycheck withholding went from thirty to forty percent ( and the medical portion will assuredly increase given enough time-the government will cut costs and pass on the savings as well as the Post Office does ). Food is inflating at a minimum of twenty percent a year. Next, your kids move back home. Your son dropped out of college after he racked up thirty grand in debt through a private bank loan ( backed by taxpayers of course ). Can you even discharge student loans through bankruptcy? Your daughter is knocked up by a macho bad boy gang member and thrown out on the street. She comes calling with about two months to go before she squirts the puppy. As soon as you seriously consider going postal on the family and suiciding by cop, you get news that your aging parents have lost the condo in Florida, don't have the cash to buy a used mobile home in a park, and will be moving in with you right after next months check arrives to finance their move. Before you know it you are going to have two adults and a dog living with you, all with bad hips and the inability to get to the toilet in time.
*
What could possibly go wrong next? Gasoline climbs to ten bucks a gallon. Now getting to work proves almost impossible. You have to get up two hours early, carpool to downtown, then take a city bus that has a half hour flexible arrival time and is full of crack whores and homeless guys that haven't showered since the first Bush administration. And this is all before crime increases and you get laid off and store shelves start coming up empty. Or ration cards or political dissident camps. Or mass food shortages from Gore Warming and crop failures followed by grain fungal outbreaks and fertilizer shortages. Or heating oil becomes unavailable for any price. Or civil war breaks out next to your super farm retreat. Or sea levels rise ( what about that strange two foot surge the entire east coast just had, or New Zealand shifting an inch from one quake, or...? ). Are you paranoid enough? Because more than one bad thing is going to happen. Don't let down your guard. Be very afraid.
END
Monday, July 27, 2009
and you didn't prepare
AND YOU DIDN'T PREPARE
Over the last three years, port and rail freight is down 30%. Our consumer society is over, but you didn't prepare. In the last three years, oil imports are down 20%. 30% of our corn is going to ethanol, even though it most likely is a net energy loser. Dwindling supplies of natural gas are used to turn oil sands into SUV juice. But you don't think any of that means our energy future will be worse, and you didn't prepare. Goldman Saks has 1,000% of its capital at risk in the credit markets. BofA is much better off with "only" 169% of its capital at risk. California's public retirement system lost a cool 100 billion. But our economy is going to bounce back any day now, so you aren't preparing. I've covered this before, but as a reminder and as a service to the new loyal minions we are going to talk about what to do at the last minute after you have failed to prepare.
*
After there is looting and power outages and the trucks stop hauling, you are screwed. But if you just got laid off six months after the wife did and your area has 20% unemployment, there is still hope for you. This is for folks that will lose the home, don't have the credit or the cash to get an apartment, can't afford a used RV since they are going up in price, yet would like to live a step above packing the family into the new living quarters manufactured by GMC. This is for those with no prospects and the inability to scrape up more than a few hundred bucks ( and don't have friends or families to help out ). For the longest time, most of us have relied on credit for emergencies. During a layoff, if you thought you would lose the home, you used the credit card and got cash for an apartment or bought a used RV and moved into a park. Or traded an office job for a retail job to at least cover some of the bills. Credit is a vast dry wasteland now, with high credit scores not even enough to secure a new shiny bauble. Those with credit cards are seeing their available limits shrink. In an emergency most folks wouldn't even care the rates jumped from twenty to thirty percent, but the shrinking credit line really cuts deep. And forget about employment. We are all starting to look like Detroit. You can find a job, but not the kind that pays rent for a family, let alone buys the food and medical care.
*
So, you only have one option. You can't earn as much as you need, so you need to reduce your living expenses drastically. The only way to do that is eliminate your rent ( or at least get it way down ) and do without a car. Again, we come back to junk land. And a tent to live in on it. Then you work for a few months flipping burgers to build a tire wall, dirt covered shack or buy a used RV. Your only expense is moving to your new area, a tent and the down payment on the land. If you can't find a job in the area at least you will qualify for Food Stamps ( if this is likely, choose an area that will be uncomfortable rather than deadly in winter ). And I'm not talking about moving all your furniture or buying a huge hunting canvas tent. You sell all your crap for chump change, and buy a few tanks of gas or a few Greyhound tickets with each family member getting one bag of clothes. And then buy a $80 piece of crap Wal-Mart nylon tent with a tarp overhead.
*
Got a lot of stuff to move? U-haul rented from the proceeds of the car sale, and extra family on the Greyhound. Can't find a piece of land in an area with jobs? Buy a lot outright for cash in east Texas or southern Arizona/New Mexico ( okay, I don't actually know the winter weather in NM so I'm guessing on that one- factor in winter weather carefully ). Then go on welfare. It will keep you fed until the collapse. Don't waver or weasel here. You are about to be living out of your car. This way you use the last of your assets to buy a low cost way of living. Of course it isn't what you want, need or desire. It's what is available to you. If a genuine miracle happens and Baby Jesus himself smiles on us all and the economy recovers ( it won't happen, but feel free to dream ) you now own a swell vacation property cheap. And I would advise making food a higher priority than a bigger shelter. Stock up on grains, the El Nino we are having/about to have will add to the global food production problems. You have been warned, ignore at your own risk.
*
Already busted with fewer assets to sell? Pay the down deposit on a piece of land, drive there. Sell your car for living expenses and hope you can get enough earnings for the land payments ( I just added a $50 a month Arizona land on my Dirt Cheap Dirt blog ). Desperate? Sure. Doesn't it beat being homeless and living in your car?
END
A quick note. I've been collecting empty Wet Wipe plastic boxes and coffee cans. A wet wipe box holds three and a quarter pounds of pinto beans. A coffee can holds about four pounds even. Free containers, even if they are only rodent resistant rather than rodent proof.
Over the last three years, port and rail freight is down 30%. Our consumer society is over, but you didn't prepare. In the last three years, oil imports are down 20%. 30% of our corn is going to ethanol, even though it most likely is a net energy loser. Dwindling supplies of natural gas are used to turn oil sands into SUV juice. But you don't think any of that means our energy future will be worse, and you didn't prepare. Goldman Saks has 1,000% of its capital at risk in the credit markets. BofA is much better off with "only" 169% of its capital at risk. California's public retirement system lost a cool 100 billion. But our economy is going to bounce back any day now, so you aren't preparing. I've covered this before, but as a reminder and as a service to the new loyal minions we are going to talk about what to do at the last minute after you have failed to prepare.
*
After there is looting and power outages and the trucks stop hauling, you are screwed. But if you just got laid off six months after the wife did and your area has 20% unemployment, there is still hope for you. This is for folks that will lose the home, don't have the credit or the cash to get an apartment, can't afford a used RV since they are going up in price, yet would like to live a step above packing the family into the new living quarters manufactured by GMC. This is for those with no prospects and the inability to scrape up more than a few hundred bucks ( and don't have friends or families to help out ). For the longest time, most of us have relied on credit for emergencies. During a layoff, if you thought you would lose the home, you used the credit card and got cash for an apartment or bought a used RV and moved into a park. Or traded an office job for a retail job to at least cover some of the bills. Credit is a vast dry wasteland now, with high credit scores not even enough to secure a new shiny bauble. Those with credit cards are seeing their available limits shrink. In an emergency most folks wouldn't even care the rates jumped from twenty to thirty percent, but the shrinking credit line really cuts deep. And forget about employment. We are all starting to look like Detroit. You can find a job, but not the kind that pays rent for a family, let alone buys the food and medical care.
*
So, you only have one option. You can't earn as much as you need, so you need to reduce your living expenses drastically. The only way to do that is eliminate your rent ( or at least get it way down ) and do without a car. Again, we come back to junk land. And a tent to live in on it. Then you work for a few months flipping burgers to build a tire wall, dirt covered shack or buy a used RV. Your only expense is moving to your new area, a tent and the down payment on the land. If you can't find a job in the area at least you will qualify for Food Stamps ( if this is likely, choose an area that will be uncomfortable rather than deadly in winter ). And I'm not talking about moving all your furniture or buying a huge hunting canvas tent. You sell all your crap for chump change, and buy a few tanks of gas or a few Greyhound tickets with each family member getting one bag of clothes. And then buy a $80 piece of crap Wal-Mart nylon tent with a tarp overhead.
*
Got a lot of stuff to move? U-haul rented from the proceeds of the car sale, and extra family on the Greyhound. Can't find a piece of land in an area with jobs? Buy a lot outright for cash in east Texas or southern Arizona/New Mexico ( okay, I don't actually know the winter weather in NM so I'm guessing on that one- factor in winter weather carefully ). Then go on welfare. It will keep you fed until the collapse. Don't waver or weasel here. You are about to be living out of your car. This way you use the last of your assets to buy a low cost way of living. Of course it isn't what you want, need or desire. It's what is available to you. If a genuine miracle happens and Baby Jesus himself smiles on us all and the economy recovers ( it won't happen, but feel free to dream ) you now own a swell vacation property cheap. And I would advise making food a higher priority than a bigger shelter. Stock up on grains, the El Nino we are having/about to have will add to the global food production problems. You have been warned, ignore at your own risk.
*
Already busted with fewer assets to sell? Pay the down deposit on a piece of land, drive there. Sell your car for living expenses and hope you can get enough earnings for the land payments ( I just added a $50 a month Arizona land on my Dirt Cheap Dirt blog ). Desperate? Sure. Doesn't it beat being homeless and living in your car?
END
A quick note. I've been collecting empty Wet Wipe plastic boxes and coffee cans. A wet wipe box holds three and a quarter pounds of pinto beans. A coffee can holds about four pounds even. Free containers, even if they are only rodent resistant rather than rodent proof.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
guest article
GUEST ARTICLE
Collapse Finances
Whether the world sees a sudden collapse or a slow decline, things are going to get worse every day when it starts. You can't expect to do everything on your own. If you tried to can or dehydrate your foods, guard your wealth, plant and tend your garden, dig your outhouse, haul and purify your water, tend your livestock, repair your home, tend your off-grid power system, tan hides, reload bullets, wash dishes, take a bath, make candles, make bio-diesel, chop and haul wood, forage and hunt for more food, read up on skills you need, keep the rug-rats happy, clean your house, wash laundry, make soap, pay the rent or taxes, cut your hair, sew patches on your clothes, dig the root cellar you need, put in or clean out that home-made septic system, rebuild the hen-house after the coyotes break in, slaughter stock, repair fences, etc, etc, etc...... you would find you probably don't have enough hours in the day!
****
As much as many of us would like to just imagine ourselves living alone and not bothered by others, you are probably going to have to count on them for some kind of support. Not charity, it doesn't even have to be friendly, but you will need them. We are talking trade here. Barter. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.
We need to start thinking about what we know about our neighbors. The guy two doors down is a carpenter? Great, trade him some of that foraged food for repairing the fence you just don't have time to get to. The other neighbor is a school teacher out of work now due to cutbacks? Sounds like daycare help to me for the curtain climbers you have running around. Keep them out of your hair while you are melting lead for bullets. The key though is going to be making sure you have something they will want.
****
Lots of talk has centered on putting up gold and silver for barter. While having some would be fine for when it comes time to pay any taxes and getting things your neighbors just can't supply, it makes more sense to stockpile raw materials or the ability to process raw materials. Things that just don't lend themselves to easy acquisition during tough times. Even if we go through a very long descent, people will move towards more trading and less money. They won't have a choice. Lost jobs, lost pensions, inflation.... no money....
****
If you have some off-grid power when nobody else can pay the bills and is sitting in the dark, sounds like a good opportunity to trade your ability to recharge batteries for something you need. You have hens? Then you have eggs to trade. You have a solar food dehydrator? Hmm, I bet someone would love some dried fruit come winter. Got a purifier? Trade them a portion of the cleaned water to drink if they haul the sounds good. Save your back and they are happy to get bug free water. You have a stockpile of powder and primers? Someone scavenges up 20 shell casings and a pound of wheel weights for you gets 5 reloads in return for their weapon.
****
So what would be the best things to stockpile? It is going to depend on your skills and resources. If you have off-grid power (even a little) it can be traded...and used yourself if nothing is being traded at the time. Food is always going to be in demand during tough times, but not what you stockpile. That is for your own use when things go really bad. Only trade food you grow/hunt/forage. If you can't collect any, then nobody expects you to have any for trade, and are less likely to try and take your stockpiles. (So be careful who you let know you have some wheat/corn put away) Candle wax is good once all other lighting options die off, so might be worth putting back for much later.
****
Tools are the ultimate resource. Without tools, man is just another animal. Tools let us use our brains to evolve above the other animals....(though today's society sure has done a lot to stunt that growth!) If your carpenter neighbor only used tools provided by his employer, he is useless without them, and useless to you. Never trade away a tool if you can help it. Rent it out! Trade gives you a benefit once, renting gives you ongoing returns. Which is better, trade a hammer for a dozen eggs or rent it out for a an egg a day? Trade a bow saw for a cord of wood, or rent it out for a portion of whatever they cut down? You get wood and no work! Always get something as collateral though... Don't want your tools disappearing on you.
****
Some things just won't be worth putting away for trade though. Who cares about radios/tv's/dvd players when there are 6 billion of the things running around and nobody can afford electricity or batteries anyway? In some ways I even question the idea of knives for trading.... there are how many kitchen knives out there? Even a butter knife can be sharpened. Books? Trade them only if they are useful for learning a skill you already know, and think its important for someone else to learn it. Don't expect fiction to be worth a damn, too many copies readily available. At best fiction will trade straight across for something different to read. Watches, light bulbs, whiskey, and dog food are examples of useless things to stockpile for trade. (though the right alcohol could be stored in some amounts for making herbal tinctures and remedies...you could trade those). Shoes, sheets and blankets may be valuable years after the end starts and the current crop is worn out if nobody resurrects textile skills. Pots, pans, sewing needles are examples of things that will be valuable to your kids or grand kids. Never trade your guns either, those are going to be legacies handed down to your kids if you remembered to put up enough ammo/reloading supplies.
****
Does this mean you shouldn't put away anything except raw materials or tools? Heck no! Maybe you find you can't trust your neighbors after a bad deal or two. Maybe your neighbors turn out to have nothing you can use. Maybe your neighbors are too far for regular trading. What if someone steals your tools? You still need to make sure that your basic needs of life are covered. The point is to consider what you really can do with things and have the right mix put away to help you get the things you need. The mix will be different for everyone, but you need to consider it now, and don't accept what someone else tells you to store for barter. Build your own list.
TMM
Collapse Finances
Whether the world sees a sudden collapse or a slow decline, things are going to get worse every day when it starts. You can't expect to do everything on your own. If you tried to can or dehydrate your foods, guard your wealth, plant and tend your garden, dig your outhouse, haul and purify your water, tend your livestock, repair your home, tend your off-grid power system, tan hides, reload bullets, wash dishes, take a bath, make candles, make bio-diesel, chop and haul wood, forage and hunt for more food, read up on skills you need, keep the rug-rats happy, clean your house, wash laundry, make soap, pay the rent or taxes, cut your hair, sew patches on your clothes, dig the root cellar you need, put in or clean out that home-made septic system, rebuild the hen-house after the coyotes break in, slaughter stock, repair fences, etc, etc, etc...... you would find you probably don't have enough hours in the day!
****
As much as many of us would like to just imagine ourselves living alone and not bothered by others, you are probably going to have to count on them for some kind of support. Not charity, it doesn't even have to be friendly, but you will need them. We are talking trade here. Barter. You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.
We need to start thinking about what we know about our neighbors. The guy two doors down is a carpenter? Great, trade him some of that foraged food for repairing the fence you just don't have time to get to. The other neighbor is a school teacher out of work now due to cutbacks? Sounds like daycare help to me for the curtain climbers you have running around. Keep them out of your hair while you are melting lead for bullets. The key though is going to be making sure you have something they will want.
****
Lots of talk has centered on putting up gold and silver for barter. While having some would be fine for when it comes time to pay any taxes and getting things your neighbors just can't supply, it makes more sense to stockpile raw materials or the ability to process raw materials. Things that just don't lend themselves to easy acquisition during tough times. Even if we go through a very long descent, people will move towards more trading and less money. They won't have a choice. Lost jobs, lost pensions, inflation.... no money....
****
If you have some off-grid power when nobody else can pay the bills and is sitting in the dark, sounds like a good opportunity to trade your ability to recharge batteries for something you need. You have hens? Then you have eggs to trade. You have a solar food dehydrator? Hmm, I bet someone would love some dried fruit come winter. Got a purifier? Trade them a portion of the cleaned water to drink if they haul the sounds good. Save your back and they are happy to get bug free water. You have a stockpile of powder and primers? Someone scavenges up 20 shell casings and a pound of wheel weights for you gets 5 reloads in return for their weapon.
****
So what would be the best things to stockpile? It is going to depend on your skills and resources. If you have off-grid power (even a little) it can be traded...and used yourself if nothing is being traded at the time. Food is always going to be in demand during tough times, but not what you stockpile. That is for your own use when things go really bad. Only trade food you grow/hunt/forage. If you can't collect any, then nobody expects you to have any for trade, and are less likely to try and take your stockpiles. (So be careful who you let know you have some wheat/corn put away) Candle wax is good once all other lighting options die off, so might be worth putting back for much later.
****
Tools are the ultimate resource. Without tools, man is just another animal. Tools let us use our brains to evolve above the other animals....(though today's society sure has done a lot to stunt that growth!) If your carpenter neighbor only used tools provided by his employer, he is useless without them, and useless to you. Never trade away a tool if you can help it. Rent it out! Trade gives you a benefit once, renting gives you ongoing returns. Which is better, trade a hammer for a dozen eggs or rent it out for a an egg a day? Trade a bow saw for a cord of wood, or rent it out for a portion of whatever they cut down? You get wood and no work! Always get something as collateral though... Don't want your tools disappearing on you.
****
Some things just won't be worth putting away for trade though. Who cares about radios/tv's/dvd players when there are 6 billion of the things running around and nobody can afford electricity or batteries anyway? In some ways I even question the idea of knives for trading.... there are how many kitchen knives out there? Even a butter knife can be sharpened. Books? Trade them only if they are useful for learning a skill you already know, and think its important for someone else to learn it. Don't expect fiction to be worth a damn, too many copies readily available. At best fiction will trade straight across for something different to read. Watches, light bulbs, whiskey, and dog food are examples of useless things to stockpile for trade. (though the right alcohol could be stored in some amounts for making herbal tinctures and remedies...you could trade those). Shoes, sheets and blankets may be valuable years after the end starts and the current crop is worn out if nobody resurrects textile skills. Pots, pans, sewing needles are examples of things that will be valuable to your kids or grand kids. Never trade your guns either, those are going to be legacies handed down to your kids if you remembered to put up enough ammo/reloading supplies.
****
Does this mean you shouldn't put away anything except raw materials or tools? Heck no! Maybe you find you can't trust your neighbors after a bad deal or two. Maybe your neighbors turn out to have nothing you can use. Maybe your neighbors are too far for regular trading. What if someone steals your tools? You still need to make sure that your basic needs of life are covered. The point is to consider what you really can do with things and have the right mix put away to help you get the things you need. The mix will be different for everyone, but you need to consider it now, and don't accept what someone else tells you to store for barter. Build your own list.
TMM
Friday, July 24, 2009
kitchen tools
KITCHEN TOOLS
First, please mark on your calenders that tomorrow is a guest article. Please only leave butt sucking comments so as not to scare off one of my few remaining writers willing to share for free. Second, although this should be obvious stuff no one really listens to me. So I give you links to other authors telling you the same thing. In this case, that resource wars are normal and soon your asparagus patch is going to be violently attacked. http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=2876.
*
I was inspired to write this from reading the Three Amigo Survivalists at www.tslrf.blogspot.com . Thanks, guys, for plugging the Bison. Do you have the necessary tools in your kitchen for when food no longer comes in cans or frozen cardboard packages? In many cases, a lot of food is actually cheaper prepared by the Mega Ag companies. Or, even if not it is a huge hassle making your own. Like ketchup or chili. Unless you eat a lot of it and have special set ups such as an outdoor screened room for summer canning. I'm not discounting the self-sufficiency aspects of the hassle or the higher prices. Just that the bulk of us are urban dwellers and pretty much rely on the grocery store more than we should. And factoring in that most of us work full time jobs. In a lot of ways our high tech, high "leisure" society is more like a wage prison. We went from working a few hours a week killing game and hunting roots and berries to working sunup to sundown eight months a year farming to working sunup to sundown eleven and a half months a year in an office cubical. Granted, office sitting is easier than plowing but we have surrendered almost all of our time to it. And our taxes are a lot higher than what farmers paid ( even factoring in church payments, and accounting for all our hidden taxes added to our payroll deductions ). Going back to full time farming should actually see less time worked, as long as French Intensive/organics/etc. is practiced. Not saying you won't work harder physically, just that you won't be a round the clock corporate drone.
*
As I keep harping about, get your grain grinder. A China made cast iron grinder is still $25. They are designed for corn, so wheat needs to be run through three times on rough, medium, fine settings. Buy your grinder through my Amazon products page at www.bisonpress.com . If you don't, I promise you that you will feel poorly and chastise yourself soundly. You will feel like a bastard coated bastard with creamy bastard filling ( thanks, TV's "Scrubs" for that gem ). I'm only concerned for your mental state. Without a corn grinder you limit yourself on what you can store. You will spend far more than you need to. For instance, 200 pounds of white flour will cost you $72. 200 pounds of wheat kernels ( which is a lot healthier for you, can be sprouted into nutritious veggies, and will last for centuries ) plus a grain grinder will cost you $85. The grinder is paid for with your next purchase. Next, I would at least get a stainless steel thermos. Better to get a pressure cooker, but a thermos should suffice for some items. You can really reduce your cooking times. For instance, I boil potatoes for twenty minutes on the stove. With a thermos, I boil them for five minutes and throw them in the thermos to continue cooking. You can get four times the fuel use with the thermos. Unfortunately I have not had any luck with rice, and not for lack of trying different techniques. I really like fried corn mush, but I haven't had any the last year being off grid. You need to crock pot the wet meal for three hours, then cool overnight, then fly the slabs. Yummm! I haven't tried in the thermos, fearing being unable to get the slop out. But I'm sure a pressure cooker would do a great job. And work great for reduced rice cooking time.
*
You need a strainer. But don't get one of those crappy metal wire types. Get a solid piece of metal with the holes poked in it. That will last you your life time. Knives shouldn't be total crap, but a dollar butcher knife will carve up the animal flesh. You just need to sharpen it a few times during use. I've used a Chinese dollar special slicing the many convoluted layers of fat from a giant beef brisket. It was a pain, but not as painful as spending twenty bucks for a knife. Get extra cheap pots for boiling. The handles will eventually fail, get plenty at the thrift store. And cast iron. They can be a bit of a pain to keep seasoned ( and by the way, I've been using safflower oil that is three years past expiration with no ill effects- not saying it was smart, just saying expiration dates aren't cast in stone ), but will last forever. A one time expense. Teflon is a continual replacement item, with dubious health effects from the peeling finish.
*
There are plenty of doo-dads you can buy, but they can be worked around. A wine bottle for a rolling pin, for instance. Hand cutting dough rather than a pasta machine. I think I've covered the very basic items that will be hard to duplicate primitively ( a battered aluminum pot is far superior to a hand formed clay pot-use the unglazed clay for water filtering ). If not, I'm sure you'll share in the comments.
END
First, please mark on your calenders that tomorrow is a guest article. Please only leave butt sucking comments so as not to scare off one of my few remaining writers willing to share for free. Second, although this should be obvious stuff no one really listens to me. So I give you links to other authors telling you the same thing. In this case, that resource wars are normal and soon your asparagus patch is going to be violently attacked. http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=2876.
*
I was inspired to write this from reading the Three Amigo Survivalists at www.tslrf.blogspot.com . Thanks, guys, for plugging the Bison. Do you have the necessary tools in your kitchen for when food no longer comes in cans or frozen cardboard packages? In many cases, a lot of food is actually cheaper prepared by the Mega Ag companies. Or, even if not it is a huge hassle making your own. Like ketchup or chili. Unless you eat a lot of it and have special set ups such as an outdoor screened room for summer canning. I'm not discounting the self-sufficiency aspects of the hassle or the higher prices. Just that the bulk of us are urban dwellers and pretty much rely on the grocery store more than we should. And factoring in that most of us work full time jobs. In a lot of ways our high tech, high "leisure" society is more like a wage prison. We went from working a few hours a week killing game and hunting roots and berries to working sunup to sundown eight months a year farming to working sunup to sundown eleven and a half months a year in an office cubical. Granted, office sitting is easier than plowing but we have surrendered almost all of our time to it. And our taxes are a lot higher than what farmers paid ( even factoring in church payments, and accounting for all our hidden taxes added to our payroll deductions ). Going back to full time farming should actually see less time worked, as long as French Intensive/organics/etc. is practiced. Not saying you won't work harder physically, just that you won't be a round the clock corporate drone.
*
As I keep harping about, get your grain grinder. A China made cast iron grinder is still $25. They are designed for corn, so wheat needs to be run through three times on rough, medium, fine settings. Buy your grinder through my Amazon products page at www.bisonpress.com . If you don't, I promise you that you will feel poorly and chastise yourself soundly. You will feel like a bastard coated bastard with creamy bastard filling ( thanks, TV's "Scrubs" for that gem ). I'm only concerned for your mental state. Without a corn grinder you limit yourself on what you can store. You will spend far more than you need to. For instance, 200 pounds of white flour will cost you $72. 200 pounds of wheat kernels ( which is a lot healthier for you, can be sprouted into nutritious veggies, and will last for centuries ) plus a grain grinder will cost you $85. The grinder is paid for with your next purchase. Next, I would at least get a stainless steel thermos. Better to get a pressure cooker, but a thermos should suffice for some items. You can really reduce your cooking times. For instance, I boil potatoes for twenty minutes on the stove. With a thermos, I boil them for five minutes and throw them in the thermos to continue cooking. You can get four times the fuel use with the thermos. Unfortunately I have not had any luck with rice, and not for lack of trying different techniques. I really like fried corn mush, but I haven't had any the last year being off grid. You need to crock pot the wet meal for three hours, then cool overnight, then fly the slabs. Yummm! I haven't tried in the thermos, fearing being unable to get the slop out. But I'm sure a pressure cooker would do a great job. And work great for reduced rice cooking time.
*
You need a strainer. But don't get one of those crappy metal wire types. Get a solid piece of metal with the holes poked in it. That will last you your life time. Knives shouldn't be total crap, but a dollar butcher knife will carve up the animal flesh. You just need to sharpen it a few times during use. I've used a Chinese dollar special slicing the many convoluted layers of fat from a giant beef brisket. It was a pain, but not as painful as spending twenty bucks for a knife. Get extra cheap pots for boiling. The handles will eventually fail, get plenty at the thrift store. And cast iron. They can be a bit of a pain to keep seasoned ( and by the way, I've been using safflower oil that is three years past expiration with no ill effects- not saying it was smart, just saying expiration dates aren't cast in stone ), but will last forever. A one time expense. Teflon is a continual replacement item, with dubious health effects from the peeling finish.
*
There are plenty of doo-dads you can buy, but they can be worked around. A wine bottle for a rolling pin, for instance. Hand cutting dough rather than a pasta machine. I think I've covered the very basic items that will be hard to duplicate primitively ( a battered aluminum pot is far superior to a hand formed clay pot-use the unglazed clay for water filtering ). If not, I'm sure you'll share in the comments.
END
Thursday, July 23, 2009
reality avoidance
REALITY AVOIDANCE
First off, way to go comments section! Some of those rants put me to shame. Glad to see I'm able to get the crap stew stirred up. Second, thank you Loyal Minion First Class Sam for the snail mail donation. Above and beyond the call of duty.
*
Today I would like to talk about wishing I was still an alcoholic. Well, not wishing for waking up feeling like I was beaten and violated the night before, or having half a liver half way through life or having to sneak the root beer schnapps into soda cans at work because happy hour is really too far away. But the reality avoidance part of alcoholism. And I can't even indulge slightly, since I don't want to take any chance on repeating my lost decade ( I'm being dramatic- I had two hard core years of heavy drinking followed by a gradual step down until I stoped altogether in my late twenties ). It was about the time I quit assassinating brain cells that I started writing. Later that became a prime reality avoidance measure. When I say I must write to avoid insanity, that is what I refer to. I still supplement my fantasy forays into a post-apocalypse wasteland with some fiction books, movies and TV. I hate TV in that it seems to be worse than ever with rudely jerking you out of your coma with so many commercials. I'm vegetating here, shut up about 1-800-I'm-single-and-want-to-meet-a-huge-fat-chick ads. Or worse.
*
I don't know how much is just me being whacked, how much is our general laziness from an energy rich industrial economy leading to the soft life, or if it is just the bread and circuses time we are moving through. It seems that alcohol has played quite a role throughout history as a numbing device, so perhaps we are just exercising the extra options available to us right now. Perhaps it is normal to try to escape into our happy place. I even wonder if this might not be a built in self destruct mechanism designed to limit our survival ability as overpopulation once again rears its ugly head. If we are hard wired to reproduce, perhaps we are also programmed to avoid thinking about that inevitable outcome. Leading more sheep to the slaughter to increase the survivors odds. Or maybe I'm just really over thinking the whole thing. Diarrhea of the brain.
*
Why am I rambling on and on about my undeniably scary mental condition? You need to be careful how you handle reality avoidance. Having some escape, perhaps that is normal to reduce stress. Drinking, turning into a zombie in front of the TV. Kissing the dog and kicking the wife. Being a weekend adrenaline junkie. Whatever. But when you turn to a state of denial in order to avoid reality, then things turn problematic. Other than the whole teeth falling out issue and turning into a male prostitute ( and I ain't talking a Richard Gere type ) to support your habit danger, I almost think being on crack is healthier than living in denial. You are scared, you take some more crack. But you also get ready for the coming crap storm. With reality denial you make up happy thoughts in your head and so have nothing to fear. Don't worry, be happy. Heh, if I was toking up 24/7 you can believe I wouldn't be writing this. I would be a bum in Florida, scratching nits and eating out of the KFC dumpster. If they take me to jail for not paying the ex-wife, I wouldn't care because I was staying happy. I'd get my three hots and a cot. Of course, even that avoidance strategy isn't going to work much longer. With government budgets being squeezed I imagine non-violent offenders being turned over to for profit corporations that force you to work for restitution. You might think that is a great idea, but you can also bet that is where bankruptcy declaring folks are going to end up eventually. The Private Prison Inc. will charge you $20 a day in costs, actually spend $10 and pay you $3. You will never escape. And before you babble about it being un-Constitutional, remember what country you live in now. We are not the USA, but a wholly owned subsidiary of the Federal Reserve Bank. They do as they wish.
*
Your happy thoughts are you being in denial. Face up to reality. And remember, no matter how darkly you envision the future it will most likely be far worse. I'm trying to be realistic and even I can't scratch the reality of our future dystopia. I'm taking the shiny gloss off our magic mirror of reality avoidance, but I haven't totally removed it for what is underneath. Perhaps even I can't totally face up to reality. And I enjoy this kind of crap. All hail Shiva!
END
First off, way to go comments section! Some of those rants put me to shame. Glad to see I'm able to get the crap stew stirred up. Second, thank you Loyal Minion First Class Sam for the snail mail donation. Above and beyond the call of duty.
*
Today I would like to talk about wishing I was still an alcoholic. Well, not wishing for waking up feeling like I was beaten and violated the night before, or having half a liver half way through life or having to sneak the root beer schnapps into soda cans at work because happy hour is really too far away. But the reality avoidance part of alcoholism. And I can't even indulge slightly, since I don't want to take any chance on repeating my lost decade ( I'm being dramatic- I had two hard core years of heavy drinking followed by a gradual step down until I stoped altogether in my late twenties ). It was about the time I quit assassinating brain cells that I started writing. Later that became a prime reality avoidance measure. When I say I must write to avoid insanity, that is what I refer to. I still supplement my fantasy forays into a post-apocalypse wasteland with some fiction books, movies and TV. I hate TV in that it seems to be worse than ever with rudely jerking you out of your coma with so many commercials. I'm vegetating here, shut up about 1-800-I'm-single-and-want-to-meet-a-huge-fat-chick ads. Or worse.
*
I don't know how much is just me being whacked, how much is our general laziness from an energy rich industrial economy leading to the soft life, or if it is just the bread and circuses time we are moving through. It seems that alcohol has played quite a role throughout history as a numbing device, so perhaps we are just exercising the extra options available to us right now. Perhaps it is normal to try to escape into our happy place. I even wonder if this might not be a built in self destruct mechanism designed to limit our survival ability as overpopulation once again rears its ugly head. If we are hard wired to reproduce, perhaps we are also programmed to avoid thinking about that inevitable outcome. Leading more sheep to the slaughter to increase the survivors odds. Or maybe I'm just really over thinking the whole thing. Diarrhea of the brain.
*
Why am I rambling on and on about my undeniably scary mental condition? You need to be careful how you handle reality avoidance. Having some escape, perhaps that is normal to reduce stress. Drinking, turning into a zombie in front of the TV. Kissing the dog and kicking the wife. Being a weekend adrenaline junkie. Whatever. But when you turn to a state of denial in order to avoid reality, then things turn problematic. Other than the whole teeth falling out issue and turning into a male prostitute ( and I ain't talking a Richard Gere type ) to support your habit danger, I almost think being on crack is healthier than living in denial. You are scared, you take some more crack. But you also get ready for the coming crap storm. With reality denial you make up happy thoughts in your head and so have nothing to fear. Don't worry, be happy. Heh, if I was toking up 24/7 you can believe I wouldn't be writing this. I would be a bum in Florida, scratching nits and eating out of the KFC dumpster. If they take me to jail for not paying the ex-wife, I wouldn't care because I was staying happy. I'd get my three hots and a cot. Of course, even that avoidance strategy isn't going to work much longer. With government budgets being squeezed I imagine non-violent offenders being turned over to for profit corporations that force you to work for restitution. You might think that is a great idea, but you can also bet that is where bankruptcy declaring folks are going to end up eventually. The Private Prison Inc. will charge you $20 a day in costs, actually spend $10 and pay you $3. You will never escape. And before you babble about it being un-Constitutional, remember what country you live in now. We are not the USA, but a wholly owned subsidiary of the Federal Reserve Bank. They do as they wish.
*
Your happy thoughts are you being in denial. Face up to reality. And remember, no matter how darkly you envision the future it will most likely be far worse. I'm trying to be realistic and even I can't scratch the reality of our future dystopia. I'm taking the shiny gloss off our magic mirror of reality avoidance, but I haven't totally removed it for what is underneath. Perhaps even I can't totally face up to reality. And I enjoy this kind of crap. All hail Shiva!
END
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
mr. moms
MR. MOMS
Before we start today, let's pause for a fun fact. In 1989 the worlds population was 5.2 billion. Today it is 6.5 billion. The worlds population has increased by one and a third billion ( and it seems that they are all in front of you on the road on your morning commute ). But world wheat production has remained flat for twenty years. We are feeding our new mouths from stockpiled reserves, which are steadily shrinking each year ( not too surprisingly ). Yes, I understand a lot of that new population eats rice. But those sectors using wheat as the staff of life have grown just as much. Plus, you need to subtract the thirty percent of the corn turned into ethanol from our available feedstock. Once the reserves are gone, how do we eat? But, please, by all means, keep procrastinating buying your grain stockpile. Perhaps wait until the rice panic returns and this time includes wheat. At least you'll have a great stockpile of DVD's to entertain you as you starve.
*
Women's Libbers will be pleased to note that the corporate opportunities for females are going to increase drastically. Now is your time to shatter that glass ceiling. You go girl! Fem Power! Sure, whatever, I'm just a pig that wants to see you barefoot in the kitchen, pregnant. But if you think I'm a chauvinist, wait until you shackle yourself to the corporate world. No man is going to oppress me! Far better that a man CEO oppress you financially, right? Okay, don't get me all worked up again. The point here is that while there are still corporate jobs, a higher proportion are going to be going to females. You are all so eager to point out the pay differential. Men make more than women. Without debating the holdover of the single wage earner legacy, let's just accept the difference. It might only be ten percent, fifteen, whatever ( I'm sure one of you will scream the correct figure at me-although I don't know why you are complaining since I already insulted the seniors and everyone gets a turn ), but this is a nice big fat target that no bean counter is going to ignore.
*
Look, corporations by and large don't make money anymore like they used to. Invent a superior product, market it effectively, court consumers. How so old school! They new way to earn money is to churn out crap cheaper than your competitor ( assuming you have any real competition left domestically ). No expense is to be spared. Since almost the last factory has been shipped overseas, and since all your rival companies are owned by you through holding companies, where do you turn except lay-offs and productivity increases? The mass lay-offs will of course continue because there is no where else to cut costs. It certainly will not come from trimming the CEO bonuses. So, when you are busy laying off all those worthless workers you are going to ask yourself, is that enough? Or should I only retain workers that cost me 10% less? It is a very obvious answer. You go for the increases savings, boost your bonus by ten million and buy that third home in the Bahamas you've been eyeballing as a retreat for when the workers revolt and try to lynch you. Just don't forget to retain a consultant that will advise you which wines to stockpile in your cellar. Ten percent! Why, you are are first rate leader, saving all those shareholders that bought at p/e ratios of 400 to 1 from losing a fraction of a cent in dividend earnings.
*
In case you have been partially blind for the last thirty years, a lot of industries are boosting the number of female workers. Not only do they earn less, they have more docile natures that fit into the new cubicle reality. No testosterone to pollute the atmosphere of perpetual self delusion and happy corporate talk ( win riches through positive attitude alone!, there is no "I" in team! ). Much better team players ( telling the boss what he wants to hear, and meaning it at that moment ). I've already covered this before, genders have separate strengths and weaknesses. I'm not claiming one is better than the other, but I am saying you should embrace the differences instead of trying to act unisex. The simple matter is that women fit the service industry requirements better. And don't forget at ten percent savings.
*
So where does that leave dad? At home, watching the kids. You won't be able to afford day care ( all workers expecting this years cost of living wage increase are invited to submit their petitions to the circular file ). And dad was laid off months ago. He made more than minimum wage. And he was only doing the work of three people. Slacking whore! Now, it simply isn't enough that males have been systematically indoctrinated into more feminine behavior. Now they must tie on an apron and greet the wife coming home after a fourteen hour day with freshly baked rat meat stuffed with sawdust. After having watched the pack of kids all day, and having hand washed cloth diapers in cold water ( who can afford disposables or a new hot water heater? ). There isn't anything wrong with men helping with child rearing. The evil ex-wife and I took turns working opposite shifts watching the new-borns ( she pumped milk and froze it ). I didn't get much sleep but I treasured the experience and I bonded with the kids immediately. But to be the mother exclusively will not exactly train the children well. Your boy is gender confused, and will not make a very good warrior in a post-apocalypse future.
*
Look on this as the ultimate insult as our economy tail spins in for a crash landing ( to include oily smoke, explosions, and total fatalities ). You WILL take it like a bitch, in every way. Have fun!
END
Before we start today, let's pause for a fun fact. In 1989 the worlds population was 5.2 billion. Today it is 6.5 billion. The worlds population has increased by one and a third billion ( and it seems that they are all in front of you on the road on your morning commute ). But world wheat production has remained flat for twenty years. We are feeding our new mouths from stockpiled reserves, which are steadily shrinking each year ( not too surprisingly ). Yes, I understand a lot of that new population eats rice. But those sectors using wheat as the staff of life have grown just as much. Plus, you need to subtract the thirty percent of the corn turned into ethanol from our available feedstock. Once the reserves are gone, how do we eat? But, please, by all means, keep procrastinating buying your grain stockpile. Perhaps wait until the rice panic returns and this time includes wheat. At least you'll have a great stockpile of DVD's to entertain you as you starve.
*
Women's Libbers will be pleased to note that the corporate opportunities for females are going to increase drastically. Now is your time to shatter that glass ceiling. You go girl! Fem Power! Sure, whatever, I'm just a pig that wants to see you barefoot in the kitchen, pregnant. But if you think I'm a chauvinist, wait until you shackle yourself to the corporate world. No man is going to oppress me! Far better that a man CEO oppress you financially, right? Okay, don't get me all worked up again. The point here is that while there are still corporate jobs, a higher proportion are going to be going to females. You are all so eager to point out the pay differential. Men make more than women. Without debating the holdover of the single wage earner legacy, let's just accept the difference. It might only be ten percent, fifteen, whatever ( I'm sure one of you will scream the correct figure at me-although I don't know why you are complaining since I already insulted the seniors and everyone gets a turn ), but this is a nice big fat target that no bean counter is going to ignore.
*
Look, corporations by and large don't make money anymore like they used to. Invent a superior product, market it effectively, court consumers. How so old school! They new way to earn money is to churn out crap cheaper than your competitor ( assuming you have any real competition left domestically ). No expense is to be spared. Since almost the last factory has been shipped overseas, and since all your rival companies are owned by you through holding companies, where do you turn except lay-offs and productivity increases? The mass lay-offs will of course continue because there is no where else to cut costs. It certainly will not come from trimming the CEO bonuses. So, when you are busy laying off all those worthless workers you are going to ask yourself, is that enough? Or should I only retain workers that cost me 10% less? It is a very obvious answer. You go for the increases savings, boost your bonus by ten million and buy that third home in the Bahamas you've been eyeballing as a retreat for when the workers revolt and try to lynch you. Just don't forget to retain a consultant that will advise you which wines to stockpile in your cellar. Ten percent! Why, you are are first rate leader, saving all those shareholders that bought at p/e ratios of 400 to 1 from losing a fraction of a cent in dividend earnings.
*
In case you have been partially blind for the last thirty years, a lot of industries are boosting the number of female workers. Not only do they earn less, they have more docile natures that fit into the new cubicle reality. No testosterone to pollute the atmosphere of perpetual self delusion and happy corporate talk ( win riches through positive attitude alone!, there is no "I" in team! ). Much better team players ( telling the boss what he wants to hear, and meaning it at that moment ). I've already covered this before, genders have separate strengths and weaknesses. I'm not claiming one is better than the other, but I am saying you should embrace the differences instead of trying to act unisex. The simple matter is that women fit the service industry requirements better. And don't forget at ten percent savings.
*
So where does that leave dad? At home, watching the kids. You won't be able to afford day care ( all workers expecting this years cost of living wage increase are invited to submit their petitions to the circular file ). And dad was laid off months ago. He made more than minimum wage. And he was only doing the work of three people. Slacking whore! Now, it simply isn't enough that males have been systematically indoctrinated into more feminine behavior. Now they must tie on an apron and greet the wife coming home after a fourteen hour day with freshly baked rat meat stuffed with sawdust. After having watched the pack of kids all day, and having hand washed cloth diapers in cold water ( who can afford disposables or a new hot water heater? ). There isn't anything wrong with men helping with child rearing. The evil ex-wife and I took turns working opposite shifts watching the new-borns ( she pumped milk and froze it ). I didn't get much sleep but I treasured the experience and I bonded with the kids immediately. But to be the mother exclusively will not exactly train the children well. Your boy is gender confused, and will not make a very good warrior in a post-apocalypse future.
*
Look on this as the ultimate insult as our economy tail spins in for a crash landing ( to include oily smoke, explosions, and total fatalities ). You WILL take it like a bitch, in every way. Have fun!
END
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
getting mooned
GETTING MOONED
Okay, most honorable apologies and profuse feelings of unworthiness, I can't give you too much of my drivel today. I had to go to the bank and the RV parts store. Problems with the inverter and I can't do anything needing AC power. It seems I was a dumbass this whole time and was using the plug in not designed for quite the load. It is a wonder the thing worked as long as it did. Now I have to worry about if I killed the batteries. So, despite my earlier proclamation that 12 volt is so easy even I can do it, it seems I was a bit hasty in my smugness. Stay tuned on this one.
*
The major media breathlessly announced that we just had our 40th anniversary of landing on the moon. Of course, they also breathlessly announce when a celebrity in Hollywood has a stray thought on world affairs that is at complete odds with reality. Nonetheless, it seems the moon landing news is a new low even for these toupee wearing clowns trying to keep a serious face as they read the Teleprompter version of the National Enquirer. They sound like a seriously fat three chin wheezing windbag breathlessly announcing that forty years ago he delivered the touchdown for the Maryville Molesters that won them the championship. A has-been bragging about how wonderful he used to be eons ago before his 896th cheeseburger, fries and chocolate shake combination tipped his scales from beefy athlete to obese slob. Let's not get into a debate about the moon landing being a Capricorn One event or not and just assume it was real ( I don't doubt it was genuine, but it is fun to play the Devils Advocate in most matters and great fun to elevate the blood pressure on anti-conspiracy folks ). Why was that the pinnacle of our technology?
*
Back in the day, we had computers the size of rooms that couldn't match the memory of today's I-Pod. Supposedly we have advanced slightly since the last Nazi rocket scientist has voluntarily given up his secrets to us as a very good alternative to being shipped to Siberia. Unless. Unless the moon landing was the end of our assent. Shortly thereafter we did start peaking on our domestic oil supply, our dollar went off the gold standard and the entire factory system was shipped overseas. I suppose it isn't that we don't know how to get back to the moon ( yes, it is costly, but considering our supply of our ores it seems that a moon base for mining the asteroids would pay for itself ) but that we can't afford it. Unless it never happened, which would also explain things. Or that we never actually thought the Soviets to be that true of a threat and so we didn't think there was a need to colonize space as a back up plan to nuclear annihilation. Doesn't it raise a lot more questions than you thought possible? Fun stuff, now get ready for the eclipse that will kill us all tomorrow ( and you think I worry about worthless crap- the folks harping on that really need to get a life ).
END
Okay, most honorable apologies and profuse feelings of unworthiness, I can't give you too much of my drivel today. I had to go to the bank and the RV parts store. Problems with the inverter and I can't do anything needing AC power. It seems I was a dumbass this whole time and was using the plug in not designed for quite the load. It is a wonder the thing worked as long as it did. Now I have to worry about if I killed the batteries. So, despite my earlier proclamation that 12 volt is so easy even I can do it, it seems I was a bit hasty in my smugness. Stay tuned on this one.
*
The major media breathlessly announced that we just had our 40th anniversary of landing on the moon. Of course, they also breathlessly announce when a celebrity in Hollywood has a stray thought on world affairs that is at complete odds with reality. Nonetheless, it seems the moon landing news is a new low even for these toupee wearing clowns trying to keep a serious face as they read the Teleprompter version of the National Enquirer. They sound like a seriously fat three chin wheezing windbag breathlessly announcing that forty years ago he delivered the touchdown for the Maryville Molesters that won them the championship. A has-been bragging about how wonderful he used to be eons ago before his 896th cheeseburger, fries and chocolate shake combination tipped his scales from beefy athlete to obese slob. Let's not get into a debate about the moon landing being a Capricorn One event or not and just assume it was real ( I don't doubt it was genuine, but it is fun to play the Devils Advocate in most matters and great fun to elevate the blood pressure on anti-conspiracy folks ). Why was that the pinnacle of our technology?
*
Back in the day, we had computers the size of rooms that couldn't match the memory of today's I-Pod. Supposedly we have advanced slightly since the last Nazi rocket scientist has voluntarily given up his secrets to us as a very good alternative to being shipped to Siberia. Unless. Unless the moon landing was the end of our assent. Shortly thereafter we did start peaking on our domestic oil supply, our dollar went off the gold standard and the entire factory system was shipped overseas. I suppose it isn't that we don't know how to get back to the moon ( yes, it is costly, but considering our supply of our ores it seems that a moon base for mining the asteroids would pay for itself ) but that we can't afford it. Unless it never happened, which would also explain things. Or that we never actually thought the Soviets to be that true of a threat and so we didn't think there was a need to colonize space as a back up plan to nuclear annihilation. Doesn't it raise a lot more questions than you thought possible? Fun stuff, now get ready for the eclipse that will kill us all tomorrow ( and you think I worry about worthless crap- the folks harping on that really need to get a life ).
END
Monday, July 20, 2009
retirement during the collapse
RETIREMENT DURING THE COLLAPSE
I know that from time to time I've made a totally innocent remark like "Social Security is Old Fart Welfare" or something similar and people get all bent out of shape and start ranting about a non existent "lock box" sounding exactly like Al Gore after he took a few strange looking mushrooms at an Earth Day parade. I once read somewhere that the average Social Security recipient gets back everything he paid into the system after less than two years. So, in essence, if you don't die by 67 you are on geriatric welfare. Now, having said that, I also acknowledge that most of us do benefit somehow from some type of government program. Or multiple programs. If the food bank where I work for minimum wage didn't get federal grants I wouldn't have a job. I don't care if you are sucking at the government tit, I really don't. 99% of all programs are going to be funded by fiat dollars printed out of thin air, not by taxes. All of our taxes go to occupying the Iraqi oil fields and paying the bankers interest. I only get bent out of shape when people come across with the attitude that they are receiving an entitlement. No, you are not owed a retirement. If you are lucky enough to stay on the gravy train, more power to you. But don't think I want the privilege of paying higher taxes ( you can bet the SS tax will go up soon, so indirectly it is a generational tax ) and prices ( through inflation that pays most of the recipients ) so you can retire to Florida and compound that BS with an attitude you are entitled to it in the first place.
*
Look, Social Security was a good idea at first. So many workers supported so few retirees that it was a painless way to provide a social safety net. Like high Union wages it provided a remedy to a problem. But then, just like High School drop outs thinking they deserved to make $30 an hour putting screws into sheet metal helped bankrupt the car companies ( I'm not discounting the role of greedy corporate types, just saying the Unions were equal in unrealistic expectations ), too many retirees have few other savings looked to SS as a way to retire, rather than using the system as a safety net. It became an entitlement rather than something they could fall back on if needed. Want became need. Government money replaced personal savings. I know government encouraged the dependence. I understand that inflation penalizes savings. I don't blame people using the system after all this time because that is basically all we've been allowed to have. It is like taking a civil servant job, one of the last avenues left open to a middle class lifestyle. I might not agree with it, but I understand how you have few options left. The age when you had the option of opting out from government help is pretty much over.
*
So, let's leave the blame game alone, agree that there is nothing to replace the flawed system, and look into the very near future to see how you are going to get screwed on your retirement. As I have pointed out to you before, there is a huge glaring warning sign for everyone to see. In the 1950's, the Supreme Court ruled that the government was not compelled to pay you SS. They never replaced that ruling and they certainly don't advertise it. But once the Feds start to seriously get squeezed between a much worse economy and increased difficulty in keeping the global peace ( i.e., anywhere our bankers or corporates have a stake in financially becoming harder to pacify ) the last thing they are going to care about is if Grandma Gertrude can pay to keep her air conditioning turned on the lowest setting ( I don't understand why Florida retirees blast the air conditioning and then wear sweaters ). As has been amply demonstrated recently, the little people are scum and unwanted. The shrinking pie will continue to go to the bankers, corporates and politicians. Just because the Seniors were once a great voting block won't mean spit in our currently unfolding energy shrinking economy. Welfare was a product of energy excess. Period. It had nothing to do with need or want or generosity. It was a placebo and pacifier and payoff. The ending of energy surplus means welfare of all stripes is going to end.
*
Even if the Seniors are still paid, it will be in inflated dollars. I wouldn't count on even that spit in the eye, but for a time you will be paid in official inflation rate dollars rather than in actual inflation rate dollars. That is already being done and might even account in some measure for the system holding on as long s it has. As Ms. Carpenter could tell you, air is an acceptable substitute for food. Soon, that will be the official government policy. Well, sure, milk is $50 a gallon. But you can find a substitute so food inflation isn't factored into the COLA. And, sure, a bus ride is $10 ( senior discount rate ), but oil will be coming down any second now so energy isn't counted in your COLA. And that is best case scenario, if they don't start doing means testing or just simply deny new applicants or some other form of denial. One fine Florida morning I waited in line at the Food Stamp office, surrounded by nicely dressed cell phone talking minorities. I had just had my child support payments jacked up and was left with $500 a month to live on. A bit hard with rent and trailer payments at $500. I didn't qualify because my gross was too high. That is the kind of thing you can look forward to.
*
Less immigrants are coming into the country, for lack of jobs. You can be sure that their past contributions made the budget numbers look pretty good. Now add in the high unemployment rates, the local and state governments going broke and the first huge wave of Boomers retiring this year. The system is far less viable than you want to believe. If the Feds were playing with COLA numbers at the very beginning of the economic contraction, how much worse off do you think it is now? Now, all that is pretty old hat. Let's introduce the latest and greatest. Health care reform. How much would you like to wager that the root cause behind its push ( besides creating another hopefully effective bubble ) is to replace Medicare and Medicaid and the Prescription Drug plan with something a heck of a lot cheaper? Again, we will see means testing. And, unlike with SS which requires a monthly check even if the amount is reduced, medical care can be postponed and pushed back and denied on first request, etc. You can save a butt load of money denying care until the recipient dies off and saves you a lot of trouble. And, this is a backdoor euthanasia policy. See most other nations national medical care for examples.
*
Just scratching the surface here on how the old ones will be abused and killed off. It's all about population reduction and an overwhelmed welfare system facing a shrinking budget. Not at first, but eventually you will be abandoned. So enjoy the check while you can.
END
I know that from time to time I've made a totally innocent remark like "Social Security is Old Fart Welfare" or something similar and people get all bent out of shape and start ranting about a non existent "lock box" sounding exactly like Al Gore after he took a few strange looking mushrooms at an Earth Day parade. I once read somewhere that the average Social Security recipient gets back everything he paid into the system after less than two years. So, in essence, if you don't die by 67 you are on geriatric welfare. Now, having said that, I also acknowledge that most of us do benefit somehow from some type of government program. Or multiple programs. If the food bank where I work for minimum wage didn't get federal grants I wouldn't have a job. I don't care if you are sucking at the government tit, I really don't. 99% of all programs are going to be funded by fiat dollars printed out of thin air, not by taxes. All of our taxes go to occupying the Iraqi oil fields and paying the bankers interest. I only get bent out of shape when people come across with the attitude that they are receiving an entitlement. No, you are not owed a retirement. If you are lucky enough to stay on the gravy train, more power to you. But don't think I want the privilege of paying higher taxes ( you can bet the SS tax will go up soon, so indirectly it is a generational tax ) and prices ( through inflation that pays most of the recipients ) so you can retire to Florida and compound that BS with an attitude you are entitled to it in the first place.
*
Look, Social Security was a good idea at first. So many workers supported so few retirees that it was a painless way to provide a social safety net. Like high Union wages it provided a remedy to a problem. But then, just like High School drop outs thinking they deserved to make $30 an hour putting screws into sheet metal helped bankrupt the car companies ( I'm not discounting the role of greedy corporate types, just saying the Unions were equal in unrealistic expectations ), too many retirees have few other savings looked to SS as a way to retire, rather than using the system as a safety net. It became an entitlement rather than something they could fall back on if needed. Want became need. Government money replaced personal savings. I know government encouraged the dependence. I understand that inflation penalizes savings. I don't blame people using the system after all this time because that is basically all we've been allowed to have. It is like taking a civil servant job, one of the last avenues left open to a middle class lifestyle. I might not agree with it, but I understand how you have few options left. The age when you had the option of opting out from government help is pretty much over.
*
So, let's leave the blame game alone, agree that there is nothing to replace the flawed system, and look into the very near future to see how you are going to get screwed on your retirement. As I have pointed out to you before, there is a huge glaring warning sign for everyone to see. In the 1950's, the Supreme Court ruled that the government was not compelled to pay you SS. They never replaced that ruling and they certainly don't advertise it. But once the Feds start to seriously get squeezed between a much worse economy and increased difficulty in keeping the global peace ( i.e., anywhere our bankers or corporates have a stake in financially becoming harder to pacify ) the last thing they are going to care about is if Grandma Gertrude can pay to keep her air conditioning turned on the lowest setting ( I don't understand why Florida retirees blast the air conditioning and then wear sweaters ). As has been amply demonstrated recently, the little people are scum and unwanted. The shrinking pie will continue to go to the bankers, corporates and politicians. Just because the Seniors were once a great voting block won't mean spit in our currently unfolding energy shrinking economy. Welfare was a product of energy excess. Period. It had nothing to do with need or want or generosity. It was a placebo and pacifier and payoff. The ending of energy surplus means welfare of all stripes is going to end.
*
Even if the Seniors are still paid, it will be in inflated dollars. I wouldn't count on even that spit in the eye, but for a time you will be paid in official inflation rate dollars rather than in actual inflation rate dollars. That is already being done and might even account in some measure for the system holding on as long s it has. As Ms. Carpenter could tell you, air is an acceptable substitute for food. Soon, that will be the official government policy. Well, sure, milk is $50 a gallon. But you can find a substitute so food inflation isn't factored into the COLA. And, sure, a bus ride is $10 ( senior discount rate ), but oil will be coming down any second now so energy isn't counted in your COLA. And that is best case scenario, if they don't start doing means testing or just simply deny new applicants or some other form of denial. One fine Florida morning I waited in line at the Food Stamp office, surrounded by nicely dressed cell phone talking minorities. I had just had my child support payments jacked up and was left with $500 a month to live on. A bit hard with rent and trailer payments at $500. I didn't qualify because my gross was too high. That is the kind of thing you can look forward to.
*
Less immigrants are coming into the country, for lack of jobs. You can be sure that their past contributions made the budget numbers look pretty good. Now add in the high unemployment rates, the local and state governments going broke and the first huge wave of Boomers retiring this year. The system is far less viable than you want to believe. If the Feds were playing with COLA numbers at the very beginning of the economic contraction, how much worse off do you think it is now? Now, all that is pretty old hat. Let's introduce the latest and greatest. Health care reform. How much would you like to wager that the root cause behind its push ( besides creating another hopefully effective bubble ) is to replace Medicare and Medicaid and the Prescription Drug plan with something a heck of a lot cheaper? Again, we will see means testing. And, unlike with SS which requires a monthly check even if the amount is reduced, medical care can be postponed and pushed back and denied on first request, etc. You can save a butt load of money denying care until the recipient dies off and saves you a lot of trouble. And, this is a backdoor euthanasia policy. See most other nations national medical care for examples.
*
Just scratching the surface here on how the old ones will be abused and killed off. It's all about population reduction and an overwhelmed welfare system facing a shrinking budget. Not at first, but eventually you will be abandoned. So enjoy the check while you can.
END
Friday, July 17, 2009
luxury kills
LUXURY KILLS
Before we start today, a few words from me. They won't be from our sponsor, since there are none. I can't imagine why companies aren't clamoring to advertise on a blog that advocates an immediate world economic collapse rather than business as usual. Hey, I'm helping to push product faster. Buy it before it is all smoldering ashes. Ah, well. My reader numbers have climbed back up to a thousand a day from a bit under 900. I would like to think that is because of my renewed brilliance in my articles, but that might be too optimistic. Also, my www.dirtcheapdirt.blogspot.com is really showing signs of life. Those numbers have tripled. I like to think people are waking up. One loyal minion wrote to thank me and tell me where he had bought a piece of junk land. It is nice to be loved. And, finally, Creekmore did a survey on readers food storage. Basically, people still suck. So here is just a reminder to get off your butt. A months supply of corn is under ten bucks. Even if you won't buy about the best tool bargain in all of prepdom, a $25 cast iron grain grinder, you can still buy a months supply of white flour for $9. You don't want to eat that exclusively, but it really bulks up your food on hand. I don't care if the old lady popped out triplets three times and you adopted an entire Cambodian village, anyone can afford $9 per person per month for food insurance.
*
I usually read one book at a time but lately I have a dozen going on. So I keep going from empire building to El Nino to human evolution to Steven Hunter and back again. I think I've mentioned the Arab dude back over a thousand years that questioned the role of luxury in the fall of an empire. If I didn't, I apologize. It is mentioned in "War & Peace & War" ( I might be reading too many different books and they are all muddling together ). Basically, tribal cohesiveness and a challenging life that built aggressiveness helped to build an empire, and then after conquest luxury and the pursuit of wealth undid all that and empire fell. To simplify. Anyway, the author of the above mentioned book didn't totally agree with that theory. My problem with it is that even if people become soft and weak, you would think that enough of them could change their ways before a total collapse of their power happened. Humans can adapt. If they can't except over multiple generations that really spells trouble for us, now doesn't it? If only your son or grandson can fundamentally change how they live that means all of us SUV driving, air conditioning living softies will die off.
*
I like to think that anyone can change if sufficiently motivated. Yes, prior training helps. If you are fat and winded from walking from the garage to the sofa then you will end up in the stew pot pretty quick. But surely a sufficient number of us can go from luxury to a Super Ninja if our lives depended on it? I don't know if I could, honestly. I'm introspective, not aggressive. Of course, there is also the suppressed anger. Perhaps modern living has forced us to bury enough anger that when the time comes we could go postal with a fury. It is a comforting thought, even if it is a delusion. Anyway, I lean toward the view that it isn't humans who are incapable of change but their environment. Let's say that tomorrow Obammy was overthrown in a violent coup by Hillary and she invaded Saudi Arabia and the Chinese nuked us and the whole world entered a dark age ( other than the radioactive cities glowing in the dark ). I'm sure most of us could adjust to no meat or cars or oil or three bedroom tract houses. But what happens when a empire nears its end from resource depletion? It isn't that people can't change but that there is nothing left to keep them alive.
*
The normal picture of the end of the Roman Empire is that of the masses on welfare eating free bread at the coliseum and watching gladiators fighting lions. All those fat and lazy welfare bitches couldn't make it on their own. They were worthless and weak. True, but I think a likelier picture is that of unproductive farmland failing to feed them, regardless if they worked the fields or not. The available resources to sustain the population had been used up by over planting. There are many factors involved in empire decline, but I don't think living in luxury prevents change. Rather, more and more people trying to live in luxury strips the available resources much faster than normal. It is not people refusing to work, but the workers wanting a higher standard of living.
*
It isn't necessary for the bulk of the population to live on the edge of starvation for a society to survive. Despite what The Powers That Be want to believe. They think they are a higher class of intellectual and are smarter and are thus worthy whereas we are not. If population is kept in check and the resource base is husbanded rather than mined, a society can live comfortably. The problems start when those in power want more wealth than necessary or a growing number of people are bribed from revolting with extra resources. As life becomes easier and a food supply seems more certain, more children come along to help deplete the resource base even faster. Another factor is inflation and taxation. As resources reach their plateau and start to decline, the government grows in order to centralize the infrastructure in a last ditch effort to squeeze more resources out of production. In example, the centralized reservoir and irrigation replacing individual ponds. Once grown, when resources diminish, they turn to taxation excesses to survive. When that fails inflation pays the bills for a time. It was no accident that the later days of the Roman or American empire see more inflation. It is the only way left to pay the bills in the face of declining acreage back then and declining oil now. When you work harder to keep up with inflation but keep falling further behind, you are a mirror to society and available resources.
*
We are past the point of using up all the resources. We are seeing 6% total less energy use a year. That number is increasing. With all the pain experienced so far, that only reflects a 15% energy cut. It gets worse geometrically. Our generation and others before it lived in the lap of luxury and used up all the cheap and abundant energy. Luxury is ending, but more importantly the resources that supported it on a reduced population level have been used up. Welcome to the end of the oil age, you will live to see PODA ( Post Oil Dark Ages ). How's that food supply?
END
Before we start today, a few words from me. They won't be from our sponsor, since there are none. I can't imagine why companies aren't clamoring to advertise on a blog that advocates an immediate world economic collapse rather than business as usual. Hey, I'm helping to push product faster. Buy it before it is all smoldering ashes. Ah, well. My reader numbers have climbed back up to a thousand a day from a bit under 900. I would like to think that is because of my renewed brilliance in my articles, but that might be too optimistic. Also, my www.dirtcheapdirt.blogspot.com is really showing signs of life. Those numbers have tripled. I like to think people are waking up. One loyal minion wrote to thank me and tell me where he had bought a piece of junk land. It is nice to be loved. And, finally, Creekmore did a survey on readers food storage. Basically, people still suck. So here is just a reminder to get off your butt. A months supply of corn is under ten bucks. Even if you won't buy about the best tool bargain in all of prepdom, a $25 cast iron grain grinder, you can still buy a months supply of white flour for $9. You don't want to eat that exclusively, but it really bulks up your food on hand. I don't care if the old lady popped out triplets three times and you adopted an entire Cambodian village, anyone can afford $9 per person per month for food insurance.
*
I usually read one book at a time but lately I have a dozen going on. So I keep going from empire building to El Nino to human evolution to Steven Hunter and back again. I think I've mentioned the Arab dude back over a thousand years that questioned the role of luxury in the fall of an empire. If I didn't, I apologize. It is mentioned in "War & Peace & War" ( I might be reading too many different books and they are all muddling together ). Basically, tribal cohesiveness and a challenging life that built aggressiveness helped to build an empire, and then after conquest luxury and the pursuit of wealth undid all that and empire fell. To simplify. Anyway, the author of the above mentioned book didn't totally agree with that theory. My problem with it is that even if people become soft and weak, you would think that enough of them could change their ways before a total collapse of their power happened. Humans can adapt. If they can't except over multiple generations that really spells trouble for us, now doesn't it? If only your son or grandson can fundamentally change how they live that means all of us SUV driving, air conditioning living softies will die off.
*
I like to think that anyone can change if sufficiently motivated. Yes, prior training helps. If you are fat and winded from walking from the garage to the sofa then you will end up in the stew pot pretty quick. But surely a sufficient number of us can go from luxury to a Super Ninja if our lives depended on it? I don't know if I could, honestly. I'm introspective, not aggressive. Of course, there is also the suppressed anger. Perhaps modern living has forced us to bury enough anger that when the time comes we could go postal with a fury. It is a comforting thought, even if it is a delusion. Anyway, I lean toward the view that it isn't humans who are incapable of change but their environment. Let's say that tomorrow Obammy was overthrown in a violent coup by Hillary and she invaded Saudi Arabia and the Chinese nuked us and the whole world entered a dark age ( other than the radioactive cities glowing in the dark ). I'm sure most of us could adjust to no meat or cars or oil or three bedroom tract houses. But what happens when a empire nears its end from resource depletion? It isn't that people can't change but that there is nothing left to keep them alive.
*
The normal picture of the end of the Roman Empire is that of the masses on welfare eating free bread at the coliseum and watching gladiators fighting lions. All those fat and lazy welfare bitches couldn't make it on their own. They were worthless and weak. True, but I think a likelier picture is that of unproductive farmland failing to feed them, regardless if they worked the fields or not. The available resources to sustain the population had been used up by over planting. There are many factors involved in empire decline, but I don't think living in luxury prevents change. Rather, more and more people trying to live in luxury strips the available resources much faster than normal. It is not people refusing to work, but the workers wanting a higher standard of living.
*
It isn't necessary for the bulk of the population to live on the edge of starvation for a society to survive. Despite what The Powers That Be want to believe. They think they are a higher class of intellectual and are smarter and are thus worthy whereas we are not. If population is kept in check and the resource base is husbanded rather than mined, a society can live comfortably. The problems start when those in power want more wealth than necessary or a growing number of people are bribed from revolting with extra resources. As life becomes easier and a food supply seems more certain, more children come along to help deplete the resource base even faster. Another factor is inflation and taxation. As resources reach their plateau and start to decline, the government grows in order to centralize the infrastructure in a last ditch effort to squeeze more resources out of production. In example, the centralized reservoir and irrigation replacing individual ponds. Once grown, when resources diminish, they turn to taxation excesses to survive. When that fails inflation pays the bills for a time. It was no accident that the later days of the Roman or American empire see more inflation. It is the only way left to pay the bills in the face of declining acreage back then and declining oil now. When you work harder to keep up with inflation but keep falling further behind, you are a mirror to society and available resources.
*
We are past the point of using up all the resources. We are seeing 6% total less energy use a year. That number is increasing. With all the pain experienced so far, that only reflects a 15% energy cut. It gets worse geometrically. Our generation and others before it lived in the lap of luxury and used up all the cheap and abundant energy. Luxury is ending, but more importantly the resources that supported it on a reduced population level have been used up. Welcome to the end of the oil age, you will live to see PODA ( Post Oil Dark Ages ). How's that food supply?
END
Thursday, July 16, 2009
junk sale
JUNK SALE
Food container question from yesterday was answered in the same comments section, FYI.
Yesterday over at http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html there was an article on the future value of antiques falling significantly. As in, too much money creation sent extra dollars into collectibles and as the crash furthers everyone beats you to the punch and sells their collectibles before you can and you sell for nickels on the dollar, if you can find a buyer. This gives us poor types a smug sense of satisfaction that we bought wheat and ammo which is rising in value as well as cost. Look, you sneer in a twisted and ugly veneer of class hatred, that stupid craphole bought a late Victorian writing desk for ten thousand bucks and now he can't sell it for two hundred bucks since there is a glut on the market and the Japanese won't even buy them. HaHaHa. Well, maybe you wouldn't do that, but I would. When people have too much money that they have to buy collectibles than nature intended that they lose it. Because dollars to donuts they have a morally questionable job anyway. Or are outright crooks. I'm feeling so caring and delighted today I won't even start a discussion about civil servants and their pay. Ain't I swell?
*
Now, collectibles are an easy target for falling value. But let's move a bit past that. What else should you sell now before everyone else does? Plenty of things that have value now will become worthless or inoperable or will become a glut on the market soon. You need to strike while the iron is hot. Beat the rest of the desperate. I think the first target is your vehicle. Okay, if not that than any extra vehicles. Look, I know that you all love your cars. You got your first feel-up in the back seat of mommies Pinto or Gremlin and the toxic scent of formaldehyde still arouses you. And plenty of unnamed survival sites seem to think you can only drive out of the other side of the apocalypse. To me the infatuation with cars by most people in this country is as irrational as me plucking and saving my first pubic hair. Get over it already. Your car will be a fond memory soon. Oh, you can leave it in the front yard after it runs out of gas but that would seem as painful as keeping pictures of the ex-wife around. They were useful tools at one time ( although they never would have been necessary if we hadn't spread out into the suburbs ) but without cheap fuel they are worthless except for fashioning primitive weapons out of. Right now, as the cost of used vehicles is artificially high due to credit contraction and unemployment fears, sell that turd and turn the cash into ammo and grain. Soon, they will have no resale value at all.
*
You were already ripped off if you bought any fancy furniture. I never bought more than used couches and new mattresses. Or a few you-screw-it-in-and-screw-it-up particle board monstrosities before I started dumpster diving for furniture or settled for living in pre-furnished travel trailers. If someone told me they had spend $899 on sale for a five piece bedroom set I would tell them they were an idiot. If I liked them I would be a little more diplomatic telling them that they were idiots. Sell it for what the market will bear. Get some cash flow from it. You can forget recouping any of the retail price but get something from it. A bed frame should be plastic buckets full of wheat topped with a mattress. Put that frilly crap around the bottom and no one knows.
*
We are all addicted to TV. I wouldn't dream of telling you to give it up. We need a mind numbing at the end of working all day. I laugh at the suggestions that one should unplug the glass teet and learn all those nifty skills like expert shooting, nursing, etc. I might even have mentioned getting rid of the TV. I did without one for a half year while we first moved to Bisonia, but once more solar panels were installed I started watching again. As with everything, moderation. If you don't want to give it up, fine. Just get rid of the bigger ones in the house for some cash. Prep supply cash. And think about the DVD collection. You can't get much selling them, but do you really need them at all? Redbox is a buck a night. Netflix is about $1.50 a rental. Do you need to buy even $15 movies? How many times are you going to watch it? And before you think entertainment will be a post-collapse business, think about the over supply plus the need for powering the equipment. There are millions of movies out there, you won't have the only coveted copies. Cheap escapism entertainment did well in the Great Depression, but they had no brownouts and could walk to the theatre.
*
Video game systems are even worse as far as retail versus resale cost. You way over paid. But if you expect to get any cash at all for it you had better sell soon. Before long everyone will be trying to hawk the junk. Get something out of it while you can. Video games and movies might seem like a good investment. In the future you have no employment and lots of free time between going down to the Soylent Distribution Center. And, sorry, but all grain will go to people food- no more meat or beer except on the black market. But two things work against that. A faltering power grid and the need soon to sell everything in order to survive. You sell the X-Box now and get a hundred bucks and buy 500 pounds of corn. Or, you wait until everyone is selling them, get $20 and get five pounds of corn. Inflation will be increasing, but the demand will be falling. So the falling sale price buys way less. Another worthless item will be any kitchen gadget that is totally unnecessary. Especially power equipment. A knife will chop veggies, you can do without a food processor. You won't be able to afford bacon once the Feds introduce Virus2 of Swine Flu and all herds are killed off to panic. Sell the microwave bacon cooker. Those kinds of things don't even sell well now, beware after the grid starts failing.
*
I can't think of a whole of that will increase in value. Obviously guns and ammo, but I can't imagine you wanting to part with those. Perhaps you can still pick up pot metal crap and sell them at vast markups during a panic. Mopeds should do nicely. But that is a lot to invest on a bet that people will pay anything to keep motorized. Grain grinders will be a huge profit item, but I don't think until after the collapse. Which is a whole other topic. Here we are just telling you to sell your crap before they lose all resale value. And invest the cash into prep supplies.
END
Food container question from yesterday was answered in the same comments section, FYI.
Yesterday over at http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html there was an article on the future value of antiques falling significantly. As in, too much money creation sent extra dollars into collectibles and as the crash furthers everyone beats you to the punch and sells their collectibles before you can and you sell for nickels on the dollar, if you can find a buyer. This gives us poor types a smug sense of satisfaction that we bought wheat and ammo which is rising in value as well as cost. Look, you sneer in a twisted and ugly veneer of class hatred, that stupid craphole bought a late Victorian writing desk for ten thousand bucks and now he can't sell it for two hundred bucks since there is a glut on the market and the Japanese won't even buy them. HaHaHa. Well, maybe you wouldn't do that, but I would. When people have too much money that they have to buy collectibles than nature intended that they lose it. Because dollars to donuts they have a morally questionable job anyway. Or are outright crooks. I'm feeling so caring and delighted today I won't even start a discussion about civil servants and their pay. Ain't I swell?
*
Now, collectibles are an easy target for falling value. But let's move a bit past that. What else should you sell now before everyone else does? Plenty of things that have value now will become worthless or inoperable or will become a glut on the market soon. You need to strike while the iron is hot. Beat the rest of the desperate. I think the first target is your vehicle. Okay, if not that than any extra vehicles. Look, I know that you all love your cars. You got your first feel-up in the back seat of mommies Pinto or Gremlin and the toxic scent of formaldehyde still arouses you. And plenty of unnamed survival sites seem to think you can only drive out of the other side of the apocalypse. To me the infatuation with cars by most people in this country is as irrational as me plucking and saving my first pubic hair. Get over it already. Your car will be a fond memory soon. Oh, you can leave it in the front yard after it runs out of gas but that would seem as painful as keeping pictures of the ex-wife around. They were useful tools at one time ( although they never would have been necessary if we hadn't spread out into the suburbs ) but without cheap fuel they are worthless except for fashioning primitive weapons out of. Right now, as the cost of used vehicles is artificially high due to credit contraction and unemployment fears, sell that turd and turn the cash into ammo and grain. Soon, they will have no resale value at all.
*
You were already ripped off if you bought any fancy furniture. I never bought more than used couches and new mattresses. Or a few you-screw-it-in-and-screw-it-up particle board monstrosities before I started dumpster diving for furniture or settled for living in pre-furnished travel trailers. If someone told me they had spend $899 on sale for a five piece bedroom set I would tell them they were an idiot. If I liked them I would be a little more diplomatic telling them that they were idiots. Sell it for what the market will bear. Get some cash flow from it. You can forget recouping any of the retail price but get something from it. A bed frame should be plastic buckets full of wheat topped with a mattress. Put that frilly crap around the bottom and no one knows.
*
We are all addicted to TV. I wouldn't dream of telling you to give it up. We need a mind numbing at the end of working all day. I laugh at the suggestions that one should unplug the glass teet and learn all those nifty skills like expert shooting, nursing, etc. I might even have mentioned getting rid of the TV. I did without one for a half year while we first moved to Bisonia, but once more solar panels were installed I started watching again. As with everything, moderation. If you don't want to give it up, fine. Just get rid of the bigger ones in the house for some cash. Prep supply cash. And think about the DVD collection. You can't get much selling them, but do you really need them at all? Redbox is a buck a night. Netflix is about $1.50 a rental. Do you need to buy even $15 movies? How many times are you going to watch it? And before you think entertainment will be a post-collapse business, think about the over supply plus the need for powering the equipment. There are millions of movies out there, you won't have the only coveted copies. Cheap escapism entertainment did well in the Great Depression, but they had no brownouts and could walk to the theatre.
*
Video game systems are even worse as far as retail versus resale cost. You way over paid. But if you expect to get any cash at all for it you had better sell soon. Before long everyone will be trying to hawk the junk. Get something out of it while you can. Video games and movies might seem like a good investment. In the future you have no employment and lots of free time between going down to the Soylent Distribution Center. And, sorry, but all grain will go to people food- no more meat or beer except on the black market. But two things work against that. A faltering power grid and the need soon to sell everything in order to survive. You sell the X-Box now and get a hundred bucks and buy 500 pounds of corn. Or, you wait until everyone is selling them, get $20 and get five pounds of corn. Inflation will be increasing, but the demand will be falling. So the falling sale price buys way less. Another worthless item will be any kitchen gadget that is totally unnecessary. Especially power equipment. A knife will chop veggies, you can do without a food processor. You won't be able to afford bacon once the Feds introduce Virus2 of Swine Flu and all herds are killed off to panic. Sell the microwave bacon cooker. Those kinds of things don't even sell well now, beware after the grid starts failing.
*
I can't think of a whole of that will increase in value. Obviously guns and ammo, but I can't imagine you wanting to part with those. Perhaps you can still pick up pot metal crap and sell them at vast markups during a panic. Mopeds should do nicely. But that is a lot to invest on a bet that people will pay anything to keep motorized. Grain grinders will be a huge profit item, but I don't think until after the collapse. Which is a whole other topic. Here we are just telling you to sell your crap before they lose all resale value. And invest the cash into prep supplies.
END
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
depopulation
DEPOPULATION
Now, I realize everyone is entitled to their view. As long as it agrees with mine. Okay, relax, I'm joking. It wasn't so long ago that I wasn't so gloomy. I was the "a year of food and a gun and water filter and you can survive a short term disruption" kind of guy. Yes, I grew up during the Evil Empire looming over us and had a fear of nuclear war like all red blooded Americans who were trained to support the military industrial complex by hating the mythical monster from the east. But I didn't worry so much about it. I didn't have a fallout shelter and what not. It was a real enough threat, but it was a low probability worry. Just like an asteroid hitting the planet or Yellowstone erupting. I would have left Florida with or without sea level worries just because of the population ( an asteroid has a higher probability of hitting the Pacific anyway ). And Yellowstone is about as much of a worry as the poles suddenly flipping ( in other words, not enough to worry about even though I wouldn't live in Wyoming just in case ).
*
What pretty much changed my mind was continued study into eco-systems, carry capacity, resources and energy. Here we faced not a low probability event but a slam dunk sure thing, with only the timing in question. So, once again proving that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing and indeed ignorance is bliss, I researched myself into a much greater sense of worry and despair. Thanks a lot for subsidizing my book purchases, damn you all. Whenever anyone comes up with the magic bullet that is going to save us, from vats of algae to thousands of nuclear power plants that assume we'll never run out of uranium ( for awhile now the big part of the nuke power supply has been from decommissioned Soviet missiles ) to further centralizing government ( you still need resources for that ), I feel bad that I can't share in your misguided hope. I want to believe, but my glass has been half empty for a long time now. We are, indeed, going to die. A horrible and elongated death. If you want to continue the fantasy of eternal middle class leisure existence, almost every other survival/prep site is eagerly awaiting you as a new reader. All this to say, yes, a die off will happen. Now let's see about a few more details.
*
It has been estimated that the maximum number of hunter/gatherers before the widespread adaptation of agriculture was three to four million. It has also been estimated that the maximum number of people a post-oil planet can support is a billion. That is ONE billion, not the current almost seven billion we are supporting almost exclusively through petroleum. Even a sensible organic run system is not a closed loop. You still need to import some soil inputs. It isn't a huge amount, but entropy always rules. There is nothing to replace oil. You gathering the neighbors leaves for your garden only works because the three hundred thousand people surrounding you get there food from oil instead of fallen leaves compost. And the one billion number assumes the soil hasn't been degraded feeding six billion, which it has, and an existing low tech agriculture infrastructure, which we don't have in the First World nations by and large ( although I'm sure there are exceptions to prove the rule ). The hunter/gatherer numbers are even more optimistic because there is no more game and plants to feed that many. As humans expanded, they had existing huge land areas that were unexploited. We no longer have that.
*
Being a hunter picking berries is a pretty cool gig. You work an average of a few hours a day, then sit around scratching your lice and checking out the bra less boobs swinging low, clicking your tongue is a weird speech pattern. Talk about slackers! That is elevating leisure to an art form. So, there is no way people decided to start farming, which is quite a step down. Instead of moving to a new area when food gets low, you are stuck in one area and there is no back up to a crop failure. Plus, you work eighteen hours a day. And not at a fun job like going to kill something for a tasty BBQ but raising grains and beans which fall through the grill and aren't too suitable for a backyard picnic. No, after tens or hundreds of thousands of years slowly moving into new areas, that three million population one day found that there was no more wilderness unclaimed. So a slow increase in domesticating wild grains and animals began to increase what food was available in a fixed area. It was a slow but insidious process, unnoticed because it was merely a series of survival strategies slowly unfolding. But the end result was being farmers under the yoke of a king, subject to starving during bad weather.
*
If the earth could once again only support hunter/gatherers, we would be in for a huge die off, due to the low numbers of surviving wild game. Something like 99% plus a lot of numbers following the decimal point. That wouldn't be too much fun. It would be like the novel "The Road" ( and you think I'm gloomy ) where the population that is left turns to cannibalism until no one is left ( okay, the book didn't end like that, but it was pretty plain that was the end result in a endless winter type of aftermath ). And the one billion is too high because we don't have the soil or infrastructure. So figure a number in between the two somewhere. We will still be able to farm unless close to 100% are killed off. Then it would be easier to resume the traditional living arrangement of our ancestors. But if enough people survive the Post Oil Dark Ages, farming will be necessary. At least in the fertile wet regions. The arid west will revert to hundreds of miles per person population as herding will be the only option. Regardless of where you live and what you plan on afterwards, you need several years of food per person. To survive the die off, of around 99%, and to cushion during the rebuilding, I would recommend at least two or three years of grains ( and hopefully legumes ) per person. Cheap enough. Cheap enough that if we never see a die off it is not money wasted ( it will be if you try to afford freeze dried and MRE's ).
*
A mass die off might seem like a low probability event. It might be. But running short of resources for six billion is a sure thing. Only the timing and how it unfolds are up to conjecture. Do yourself a favor and assume the worse.
END
Now, I realize everyone is entitled to their view. As long as it agrees with mine. Okay, relax, I'm joking. It wasn't so long ago that I wasn't so gloomy. I was the "a year of food and a gun and water filter and you can survive a short term disruption" kind of guy. Yes, I grew up during the Evil Empire looming over us and had a fear of nuclear war like all red blooded Americans who were trained to support the military industrial complex by hating the mythical monster from the east. But I didn't worry so much about it. I didn't have a fallout shelter and what not. It was a real enough threat, but it was a low probability worry. Just like an asteroid hitting the planet or Yellowstone erupting. I would have left Florida with or without sea level worries just because of the population ( an asteroid has a higher probability of hitting the Pacific anyway ). And Yellowstone is about as much of a worry as the poles suddenly flipping ( in other words, not enough to worry about even though I wouldn't live in Wyoming just in case ).
*
What pretty much changed my mind was continued study into eco-systems, carry capacity, resources and energy. Here we faced not a low probability event but a slam dunk sure thing, with only the timing in question. So, once again proving that too much knowledge is a dangerous thing and indeed ignorance is bliss, I researched myself into a much greater sense of worry and despair. Thanks a lot for subsidizing my book purchases, damn you all. Whenever anyone comes up with the magic bullet that is going to save us, from vats of algae to thousands of nuclear power plants that assume we'll never run out of uranium ( for awhile now the big part of the nuke power supply has been from decommissioned Soviet missiles ) to further centralizing government ( you still need resources for that ), I feel bad that I can't share in your misguided hope. I want to believe, but my glass has been half empty for a long time now. We are, indeed, going to die. A horrible and elongated death. If you want to continue the fantasy of eternal middle class leisure existence, almost every other survival/prep site is eagerly awaiting you as a new reader. All this to say, yes, a die off will happen. Now let's see about a few more details.
*
It has been estimated that the maximum number of hunter/gatherers before the widespread adaptation of agriculture was three to four million. It has also been estimated that the maximum number of people a post-oil planet can support is a billion. That is ONE billion, not the current almost seven billion we are supporting almost exclusively through petroleum. Even a sensible organic run system is not a closed loop. You still need to import some soil inputs. It isn't a huge amount, but entropy always rules. There is nothing to replace oil. You gathering the neighbors leaves for your garden only works because the three hundred thousand people surrounding you get there food from oil instead of fallen leaves compost. And the one billion number assumes the soil hasn't been degraded feeding six billion, which it has, and an existing low tech agriculture infrastructure, which we don't have in the First World nations by and large ( although I'm sure there are exceptions to prove the rule ). The hunter/gatherer numbers are even more optimistic because there is no more game and plants to feed that many. As humans expanded, they had existing huge land areas that were unexploited. We no longer have that.
*
Being a hunter picking berries is a pretty cool gig. You work an average of a few hours a day, then sit around scratching your lice and checking out the bra less boobs swinging low, clicking your tongue is a weird speech pattern. Talk about slackers! That is elevating leisure to an art form. So, there is no way people decided to start farming, which is quite a step down. Instead of moving to a new area when food gets low, you are stuck in one area and there is no back up to a crop failure. Plus, you work eighteen hours a day. And not at a fun job like going to kill something for a tasty BBQ but raising grains and beans which fall through the grill and aren't too suitable for a backyard picnic. No, after tens or hundreds of thousands of years slowly moving into new areas, that three million population one day found that there was no more wilderness unclaimed. So a slow increase in domesticating wild grains and animals began to increase what food was available in a fixed area. It was a slow but insidious process, unnoticed because it was merely a series of survival strategies slowly unfolding. But the end result was being farmers under the yoke of a king, subject to starving during bad weather.
*
If the earth could once again only support hunter/gatherers, we would be in for a huge die off, due to the low numbers of surviving wild game. Something like 99% plus a lot of numbers following the decimal point. That wouldn't be too much fun. It would be like the novel "The Road" ( and you think I'm gloomy ) where the population that is left turns to cannibalism until no one is left ( okay, the book didn't end like that, but it was pretty plain that was the end result in a endless winter type of aftermath ). And the one billion is too high because we don't have the soil or infrastructure. So figure a number in between the two somewhere. We will still be able to farm unless close to 100% are killed off. Then it would be easier to resume the traditional living arrangement of our ancestors. But if enough people survive the Post Oil Dark Ages, farming will be necessary. At least in the fertile wet regions. The arid west will revert to hundreds of miles per person population as herding will be the only option. Regardless of where you live and what you plan on afterwards, you need several years of food per person. To survive the die off, of around 99%, and to cushion during the rebuilding, I would recommend at least two or three years of grains ( and hopefully legumes ) per person. Cheap enough. Cheap enough that if we never see a die off it is not money wasted ( it will be if you try to afford freeze dried and MRE's ).
*
A mass die off might seem like a low probability event. It might be. But running short of resources for six billion is a sure thing. Only the timing and how it unfolds are up to conjecture. Do yourself a favor and assume the worse.
END
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
apocalypse cocooning
APOCALYPSE COCOONING
Lately it seems that most of the media is ignoring the meltdown. At first it was all fun and games and everyone had a real fun time. Oh, look, a minor recession. Nothing to see here, move along. Not as bad as the 70's because we've given the Federal Reserve Bank all the taxpayers money, the tax revenue for the next 347 years and just in case that isn't enough stimulus all the global revenue until the sun goes super nova. Then, as the economy kept contracting it suddenly got a lot harder to make up happy news for the great unwashed masses. How do you make it sound good that Obamma doubled our debt that took two hundred years to accumulate in a mere six months? He spent more than a couple of world wars, a civil war, a depression and the New Deal combined and the only thing to show for it is more executive bonuses. Anyway, not to get bogged down or anything. I wanted to veer off on another tract today. My point was that the media is now 100% celebrity news ( new national hero molested boys! ) and the only economic news to be squeezed out of their tight asses ( the CEO's that run the media ) is 100% spin. As in, the decrease in the rate of collapse is treated as a recovery.
*
So, I only expected spin as I was listening to National Pravda Radio this morning. And I wasn't disappointed. The latest and greatest news is that fat people are going online to lose weight rather than going to face to face meetings. Well, you would think I would just make a snide comment about rolly pollies or heifers and complain about the media and move on to other topics. But my brain has a mind of its own. I'll hear the most insignificant piece of trivia and build a complex and unnecessary tangled web out of it. So here goes, the cocooning trend during the collapse.
*
Faith Popcorn was around in the early 90's if I'm not mistaken ( go ahead and Wiki it, I'm on a roll here and can't be bothered ). Her book, The Popcorn Report, was a favorite of mine. I must have read that three times or so. Your basic Ten Trends In The Future book. One was Cocooning, where people increasingly stayed home. Retreating into the safety of their cocoon. I don't remember why. The nineties were a pretty happy time. Unless that was during the recession at the beginning of the decade when folks thought we were headed back into an early eighties hell. Anyway, I think the trend was forecast a bit early. Starbucks and granite counter tops lured out people for a time. Now we are all set to embrace the trend to its fullest. We are dead broke and Starbucks are closing faster than California state facilities. There are no more manufacturing jobs. I love how Michigan is just now panicking within the last few weeks as GM was bailed out ( read: reorganize to screw the retirees and Union workers so the CEO's can get a few last bloated bonuses ). You couldn't see this coming years ago? What a bunch of stupid pukes.
*
Without jobs making stuff, there is the fall back of creating financial paper out of thin air. Oops, the rest of the globe is broke from the last batch of derivatives we suckered them into buying. Forget about the financial sector. Well, we can all go to work selling each other retail goods from big box stores. Oops! We ran out of credit from China to buy any retail goods. And businesses are closing faster than houses are being shuttered. That leaves...government jobs and welfare. Paid for by printing money. We all make noises about sheeple and government oppression, but the simple fact is that 99% of the population will vote for a Hitler/Obammy ticket as long as the cable keeps broadcasting Big Brother and there is enough corn syrup food shapes on the table to eat. Why even worry about revolt when those idiots will turn you in to the thought police? The government knows this. The government is good at a few things, one is staying in power. They will keep nationalizing and creating new welfare as long as possible. The total collapse will be preceded by a massive welfare state. Central to that will be government make work jobs from home. From your cocoon. You can compile worthless data from the Internet part time in return for food stamps and a government subsidized home. Then you can slowly adapt to the degradation of services in comfort. Brownouts, food shortages, soylent replacing meat, Internet outages ( don't worry, you'll still get "paid" ), gas rationing, etc.
*
I don't think the news report on online dieting is a government plant or trial run. It is a genuine report just documenting the gullibility of idiots that were indoctrinated in the public schools ( look, documenting calories will help you lose weight, no need for exercise or peer pressure ). And, no, I really don't have issues with overweight people. I actually like curves on women ( I just draw the line at Pear People ). And carrying weight around is a sound survival strategy ( as long as it isn't heart attack weight ). I have issues with stupid ( even though I'm one to talk ) and lack of discipline. The basic point here is that people are eagerly, voluntarily embracing cocooning. They want to stay at home and relate to others on the Internet. You can forget about redesigning communities, living in walking distance to work. Condos surrounded by organic gardens. That is all tree hugging wet dreams. We don't have the energy or the materials to rebuild ( or the finances ). What you see, from the soon to be torched Detroit downtown to the soon to be flooded Sacramento delta suburbs, is what you get. The best strategy for prolonging our society is to restrict travel and keep people home.
*
But wait, what about tent cities, you ask. What about the shuttered homes? What about the Hillaryvilles? This won't be that pretty, everyone safely cocooned, waiting for their government tit chit. There is still going to be plenty of casualties. Crime will explode, homelessness will explode. Unemployment has only just started to get bad ( remember, declining energy inputs means total system breakdown ). I'm just talking about the lucky ones that somehow remain in main stream economic society a little while longer. This is just a short phase of treading water before we all drown. Enjoy it while you can.
END
Lately it seems that most of the media is ignoring the meltdown. At first it was all fun and games and everyone had a real fun time. Oh, look, a minor recession. Nothing to see here, move along. Not as bad as the 70's because we've given the Federal Reserve Bank all the taxpayers money, the tax revenue for the next 347 years and just in case that isn't enough stimulus all the global revenue until the sun goes super nova. Then, as the economy kept contracting it suddenly got a lot harder to make up happy news for the great unwashed masses. How do you make it sound good that Obamma doubled our debt that took two hundred years to accumulate in a mere six months? He spent more than a couple of world wars, a civil war, a depression and the New Deal combined and the only thing to show for it is more executive bonuses. Anyway, not to get bogged down or anything. I wanted to veer off on another tract today. My point was that the media is now 100% celebrity news ( new national hero molested boys! ) and the only economic news to be squeezed out of their tight asses ( the CEO's that run the media ) is 100% spin. As in, the decrease in the rate of collapse is treated as a recovery.
*
So, I only expected spin as I was listening to National Pravda Radio this morning. And I wasn't disappointed. The latest and greatest news is that fat people are going online to lose weight rather than going to face to face meetings. Well, you would think I would just make a snide comment about rolly pollies or heifers and complain about the media and move on to other topics. But my brain has a mind of its own. I'll hear the most insignificant piece of trivia and build a complex and unnecessary tangled web out of it. So here goes, the cocooning trend during the collapse.
*
Faith Popcorn was around in the early 90's if I'm not mistaken ( go ahead and Wiki it, I'm on a roll here and can't be bothered ). Her book, The Popcorn Report, was a favorite of mine. I must have read that three times or so. Your basic Ten Trends In The Future book. One was Cocooning, where people increasingly stayed home. Retreating into the safety of their cocoon. I don't remember why. The nineties were a pretty happy time. Unless that was during the recession at the beginning of the decade when folks thought we were headed back into an early eighties hell. Anyway, I think the trend was forecast a bit early. Starbucks and granite counter tops lured out people for a time. Now we are all set to embrace the trend to its fullest. We are dead broke and Starbucks are closing faster than California state facilities. There are no more manufacturing jobs. I love how Michigan is just now panicking within the last few weeks as GM was bailed out ( read: reorganize to screw the retirees and Union workers so the CEO's can get a few last bloated bonuses ). You couldn't see this coming years ago? What a bunch of stupid pukes.
*
Without jobs making stuff, there is the fall back of creating financial paper out of thin air. Oops, the rest of the globe is broke from the last batch of derivatives we suckered them into buying. Forget about the financial sector. Well, we can all go to work selling each other retail goods from big box stores. Oops! We ran out of credit from China to buy any retail goods. And businesses are closing faster than houses are being shuttered. That leaves...government jobs and welfare. Paid for by printing money. We all make noises about sheeple and government oppression, but the simple fact is that 99% of the population will vote for a Hitler/Obammy ticket as long as the cable keeps broadcasting Big Brother and there is enough corn syrup food shapes on the table to eat. Why even worry about revolt when those idiots will turn you in to the thought police? The government knows this. The government is good at a few things, one is staying in power. They will keep nationalizing and creating new welfare as long as possible. The total collapse will be preceded by a massive welfare state. Central to that will be government make work jobs from home. From your cocoon. You can compile worthless data from the Internet part time in return for food stamps and a government subsidized home. Then you can slowly adapt to the degradation of services in comfort. Brownouts, food shortages, soylent replacing meat, Internet outages ( don't worry, you'll still get "paid" ), gas rationing, etc.
*
I don't think the news report on online dieting is a government plant or trial run. It is a genuine report just documenting the gullibility of idiots that were indoctrinated in the public schools ( look, documenting calories will help you lose weight, no need for exercise or peer pressure ). And, no, I really don't have issues with overweight people. I actually like curves on women ( I just draw the line at Pear People ). And carrying weight around is a sound survival strategy ( as long as it isn't heart attack weight ). I have issues with stupid ( even though I'm one to talk ) and lack of discipline. The basic point here is that people are eagerly, voluntarily embracing cocooning. They want to stay at home and relate to others on the Internet. You can forget about redesigning communities, living in walking distance to work. Condos surrounded by organic gardens. That is all tree hugging wet dreams. We don't have the energy or the materials to rebuild ( or the finances ). What you see, from the soon to be torched Detroit downtown to the soon to be flooded Sacramento delta suburbs, is what you get. The best strategy for prolonging our society is to restrict travel and keep people home.
*
But wait, what about tent cities, you ask. What about the shuttered homes? What about the Hillaryvilles? This won't be that pretty, everyone safely cocooned, waiting for their government tit chit. There is still going to be plenty of casualties. Crime will explode, homelessness will explode. Unemployment has only just started to get bad ( remember, declining energy inputs means total system breakdown ). I'm just talking about the lucky ones that somehow remain in main stream economic society a little while longer. This is just a short phase of treading water before we all drown. Enjoy it while you can.
END
Monday, July 13, 2009
new agri empire
NEW AGRI EMPIRE
China, through rise and fall of empire after empire ( or perhaps it is dynasty after dynasty ) always faces the same foe. The nomads from over the mountains ( or, in some spots, over the wall ). The herders from the plains constantly try to pillage the farmland and its riches, and the Chinese resist whichever flavor of the year is trying to steal from them. There is a reason the players always change but the fight is always the same. The two systems are incompatible due to the climate and geography. Climate determines how your livelihood is secured. This might seem obvious to anyone throughout history, but our Oil Age has allowed us to confuse this issue. There is no way that half of the US is ever going to stay welded to the other half. One part is good only for nomads and grazing and the other half will support farming. The only reason the two coexist now is cheap energy to pump water and cheap transportation to send the goods of both to one another. Come the collapse, the Great Basin desert and southern desert ( either extending into Old Mexico or extending up from that country, it is hard to say where the new boundaries will be in the wasteland ) will be the new Mongolia and the East will be the new China.
*
There is a perfectly good reason that the two different systems don't merge. The Chinese invaders can't grow anything, and the nomad invaders are absorbed into the farming society. The cultures are different, because culture grows up around the climate to help secure survival. This is something we've covered before. You can't expect different economic/survival systems to work in another environment. In time, I expect that the Yankees will drift back towards agriculture. They might have the small local hydro sites, but they have little to no coal or iron ore deposits left that are suitable for primitive mining. There should be small industries using that power, perhaps recycling metal. But the locals should be pretty much growing most of their own food. The East is well suited for water transport and industrial areas can be supported from some distance away, but first you must assume a lack of warfare and a stable society. The eastern US will not go from peaceful information/oil economy to peaceful agriculture/small scale industry. There will be war and conflict in between. Before a new agri empire emerges, there must be conflict for the spoils. One assumes transforming the plains into the bread basket has allowed a lot of coastal area soils to rest and refurbish themselves ( otherwise all bets are off about the areas survivability ).
*
The overseas importation of cotton growing should also have given the Souths soils a time to recover. That, and the eventual tearing down of suburbia will allow a lot of farmland to go into production. Not soon enough to prevent famine as the oil runs out, but in time the east will again regain some of their population with most soil in production. I think that the long periods of time after the collapse when the area is fought over should establish a tradition of local agricultural self reliance, despite the ability of crops to be cheaply transported in by water. The ore and coal factor is a big question mark in the north's ability to engage in anything other than farming. On the other hand, it will be vital if the east will rise as a empire. You need a arms manufacturing ability to conquer and stay in power. But even manufacturing areas will grow their own food by new tradition. The water transport will enable manufactured goods to be shipped out, rather than crops to be brought in. The area is too rich is rainfall to be neglected for food. Granted, some areas have poor soil, such as New England which had turned to fishing to compensate. But, the oceans having been depleted, it seems more likely that with new French Intensive methods that the area could produce. Perhaps there will need to be soil building materials imported in, but the manufacturing income could pay for that ( plus leave a tidy profit-without coal, hydro power is going to be it and be a valuable resource ).
*
From the Sierra mountains to the Rockies, a vast stretch of land is pretty much useless for anything but grazing once oil inputs cease. Even then, vast stretches won't even be useful for that. The few sources of water will be where all life clusters. Depending on how Gore Warming unfolds, the plains areas might also be closed to farming. If the natural rainfall isn't enough for dry farming the whole area will perhaps revert to a buffer zone between the farmers and the herders. Southern California is naturally a desert, and the irrigation is petroleum power dependant. That will revert to wasteland. Up close to Sacramento farming is possible, and then north up along the coast. Perhaps up in Canada and then down into Idaho. It is easy to map the new countries, according to rainfall. The only question is how far the buffer zones extend. And, no, I don't see just two countries, or empires. It will be several waring factions in each zone. Even after villages and towns fight each other during the collapse and powerful warlords emerge to control vast holdings, I'm sure the borders will always fluctuate. More like several states in Europe instead of one holding like China.
*
To see in what general direction your area will lean, just trace the water source. The Mississippi delta, for instance, can become one large empire because of the single water source. Mountain chains will be natural borders. Cultures will closely follow climate. You need to strip away what oil makes possible to see where your future is. Perhaps not ours. Our future is war, famine and death. But perhaps your grandchildren will have that future. The best stockpiled hoarder will eventually run out of supplies, and the two choices will be farming or nomadism. And don't think you can maintain an island of one surrounded by the other. You will be assimilated into your areas Borg.
END
China, through rise and fall of empire after empire ( or perhaps it is dynasty after dynasty ) always faces the same foe. The nomads from over the mountains ( or, in some spots, over the wall ). The herders from the plains constantly try to pillage the farmland and its riches, and the Chinese resist whichever flavor of the year is trying to steal from them. There is a reason the players always change but the fight is always the same. The two systems are incompatible due to the climate and geography. Climate determines how your livelihood is secured. This might seem obvious to anyone throughout history, but our Oil Age has allowed us to confuse this issue. There is no way that half of the US is ever going to stay welded to the other half. One part is good only for nomads and grazing and the other half will support farming. The only reason the two coexist now is cheap energy to pump water and cheap transportation to send the goods of both to one another. Come the collapse, the Great Basin desert and southern desert ( either extending into Old Mexico or extending up from that country, it is hard to say where the new boundaries will be in the wasteland ) will be the new Mongolia and the East will be the new China.
*
There is a perfectly good reason that the two different systems don't merge. The Chinese invaders can't grow anything, and the nomad invaders are absorbed into the farming society. The cultures are different, because culture grows up around the climate to help secure survival. This is something we've covered before. You can't expect different economic/survival systems to work in another environment. In time, I expect that the Yankees will drift back towards agriculture. They might have the small local hydro sites, but they have little to no coal or iron ore deposits left that are suitable for primitive mining. There should be small industries using that power, perhaps recycling metal. But the locals should be pretty much growing most of their own food. The East is well suited for water transport and industrial areas can be supported from some distance away, but first you must assume a lack of warfare and a stable society. The eastern US will not go from peaceful information/oil economy to peaceful agriculture/small scale industry. There will be war and conflict in between. Before a new agri empire emerges, there must be conflict for the spoils. One assumes transforming the plains into the bread basket has allowed a lot of coastal area soils to rest and refurbish themselves ( otherwise all bets are off about the areas survivability ).
*
The overseas importation of cotton growing should also have given the Souths soils a time to recover. That, and the eventual tearing down of suburbia will allow a lot of farmland to go into production. Not soon enough to prevent famine as the oil runs out, but in time the east will again regain some of their population with most soil in production. I think that the long periods of time after the collapse when the area is fought over should establish a tradition of local agricultural self reliance, despite the ability of crops to be cheaply transported in by water. The ore and coal factor is a big question mark in the north's ability to engage in anything other than farming. On the other hand, it will be vital if the east will rise as a empire. You need a arms manufacturing ability to conquer and stay in power. But even manufacturing areas will grow their own food by new tradition. The water transport will enable manufactured goods to be shipped out, rather than crops to be brought in. The area is too rich is rainfall to be neglected for food. Granted, some areas have poor soil, such as New England which had turned to fishing to compensate. But, the oceans having been depleted, it seems more likely that with new French Intensive methods that the area could produce. Perhaps there will need to be soil building materials imported in, but the manufacturing income could pay for that ( plus leave a tidy profit-without coal, hydro power is going to be it and be a valuable resource ).
*
From the Sierra mountains to the Rockies, a vast stretch of land is pretty much useless for anything but grazing once oil inputs cease. Even then, vast stretches won't even be useful for that. The few sources of water will be where all life clusters. Depending on how Gore Warming unfolds, the plains areas might also be closed to farming. If the natural rainfall isn't enough for dry farming the whole area will perhaps revert to a buffer zone between the farmers and the herders. Southern California is naturally a desert, and the irrigation is petroleum power dependant. That will revert to wasteland. Up close to Sacramento farming is possible, and then north up along the coast. Perhaps up in Canada and then down into Idaho. It is easy to map the new countries, according to rainfall. The only question is how far the buffer zones extend. And, no, I don't see just two countries, or empires. It will be several waring factions in each zone. Even after villages and towns fight each other during the collapse and powerful warlords emerge to control vast holdings, I'm sure the borders will always fluctuate. More like several states in Europe instead of one holding like China.
*
To see in what general direction your area will lean, just trace the water source. The Mississippi delta, for instance, can become one large empire because of the single water source. Mountain chains will be natural borders. Cultures will closely follow climate. You need to strip away what oil makes possible to see where your future is. Perhaps not ours. Our future is war, famine and death. But perhaps your grandchildren will have that future. The best stockpiled hoarder will eventually run out of supplies, and the two choices will be farming or nomadism. And don't think you can maintain an island of one surrounded by the other. You will be assimilated into your areas Borg.
END
Friday, July 10, 2009
religious fanaticism
RELIGIOUS FANATICISM
I hope I was somewhat coherent yesterday. I was working on about four hours of sleep and pretty much was in a zombie vegetative state, kind of kind Bush Jr. on a good day. Or Obammy, when the Mothership beams down his instructions. Anyway, I reread it this morning on six hours of sleep and muddled my way through it. But then, I'm a bit biased on the greatness of my writing. Plus, I usually sleep pretty sound so what was my excuse the other times? I'm going to mumble some drivel about native cannibal religion and then call it good today.
*
I was almost done at work yesterday, driving to the last food pick-up. In front of me is a little gas sipper car with a licence plate holder that says "Mormon Assault Vehicle". Okay, that was a little cute. But then, I see the bumper sticker above it, something to the effect that this country was founded by men of religion and if you didn't like it then you should leave. I had several thoughts. First, in general the Mormons seem to be a little more polite than that. Second, now I know how the tree hugging Birkenstock wearing Volvo driving Commies feel about gun owners and Cold Dead Fingers bumper stickers. Third, I wouldn't be bragging about how religious the Indian genocide practitioners were. And finally, this is the kind of person that is going to be trying to kill me after the Collapse because I am judged to be a non-believer. I might have covered religious fanatics before. I can't remember. You're not doing anything else anyway.
*
I'm not very religious. Over the decades I've gone from a card carrying atheist to a trial member agnostic, but I won't much progress beyond that. Parochial school didn't stick ( I went there for the education ), my mother remarrying a Baptist and converting and trying to recruit me didn't stick ( and by the way, I was given the original box set game of Dungeons and Dragons, before the controversy about paganism etc. by Mom, bless her heart ). I was never a big believer in faith, always wanting to question how things work, why they work. Now, having said that, I live by the Golden Rule. If that isn't enough for people ( or deities ), piss on them ( and I'm thinking of a less polite term ). You can talk all the trash you want, it is actions that speak loudly. I think I live and act kindly to others. Despite my biting humor and sarcasm, I try to do right by others. Yet, I am going to be a target of Mormon Assault Vehicles after law and order break down. Because religion is a tribal marker. Religious wars through the ages have been about resource theft, the religion part is the rationale.
*
I'm not dogging on anyone's faith. I almost envy the strength and guidance it provides many. But religion does provide an excuse to treat others badly. As does race and other things. What irritates me is the blind faith used by the card carrying members. I understand tribal behavior, but that doesn't excuse irrational thinking. If you are going to steal someone else's food, okay. But don't lie to me or yourself doing it. Remember, if you can't even be honest with yourself you will lie yourself into trouble one day. Intellectual honesty promotes a sharper thinking process. You are doing yourself a favor. That is why I am so damn good, I don't call a wart a beauty mark. And part of the reason I'm one of Baby Jesus' favorites, despite my lack of religious faith. I know, I've asked him.
*
Now, besides sticking voodoo dolls full of holes in a vain attempt to punish me for my blasphemy, you are also asking yourself why you should give two craps. Most likely because you think you belong to The One True Faith ( even those faiths that profess a tolerance for other beliefs give their own brand preferential treatment and extra large portions of food at supper ). But, since others also believe that, you are both targets. This is simply a "heads up" on yet another thing to worry about after the Oil Age ends. We were all kept so fat and marshmellowy eating Taco Bell and KFC and swilling Coke and watching endless reruns of Gilligan's Island that we had no need to worry about religion. Even the Great Hue And Cry Warning Of The Evil Muslim Hoards Descending On Us in a vain effort to resurrect the military industrial complex to take the place of the housing bubble failed to elicit much of a response. I mean, hell, we just elected one of them to the White House. How much more couldn't you care? Once the welfare state ends and hunger begins, start to watch for those shifty polygamists ( and all other true believers out to smite your evil ass ). And, by the way, don't bother wasting a trip to Elko to wipe me out for the good of your god. I'm positive I've offended plenty of people here who will beat you to it.
END
I hope I was somewhat coherent yesterday. I was working on about four hours of sleep and pretty much was in a zombie vegetative state, kind of kind Bush Jr. on a good day. Or Obammy, when the Mothership beams down his instructions. Anyway, I reread it this morning on six hours of sleep and muddled my way through it. But then, I'm a bit biased on the greatness of my writing. Plus, I usually sleep pretty sound so what was my excuse the other times? I'm going to mumble some drivel about native cannibal religion and then call it good today.
*
I was almost done at work yesterday, driving to the last food pick-up. In front of me is a little gas sipper car with a licence plate holder that says "Mormon Assault Vehicle". Okay, that was a little cute. But then, I see the bumper sticker above it, something to the effect that this country was founded by men of religion and if you didn't like it then you should leave. I had several thoughts. First, in general the Mormons seem to be a little more polite than that. Second, now I know how the tree hugging Birkenstock wearing Volvo driving Commies feel about gun owners and Cold Dead Fingers bumper stickers. Third, I wouldn't be bragging about how religious the Indian genocide practitioners were. And finally, this is the kind of person that is going to be trying to kill me after the Collapse because I am judged to be a non-believer. I might have covered religious fanatics before. I can't remember. You're not doing anything else anyway.
*
I'm not very religious. Over the decades I've gone from a card carrying atheist to a trial member agnostic, but I won't much progress beyond that. Parochial school didn't stick ( I went there for the education ), my mother remarrying a Baptist and converting and trying to recruit me didn't stick ( and by the way, I was given the original box set game of Dungeons and Dragons, before the controversy about paganism etc. by Mom, bless her heart ). I was never a big believer in faith, always wanting to question how things work, why they work. Now, having said that, I live by the Golden Rule. If that isn't enough for people ( or deities ), piss on them ( and I'm thinking of a less polite term ). You can talk all the trash you want, it is actions that speak loudly. I think I live and act kindly to others. Despite my biting humor and sarcasm, I try to do right by others. Yet, I am going to be a target of Mormon Assault Vehicles after law and order break down. Because religion is a tribal marker. Religious wars through the ages have been about resource theft, the religion part is the rationale.
*
I'm not dogging on anyone's faith. I almost envy the strength and guidance it provides many. But religion does provide an excuse to treat others badly. As does race and other things. What irritates me is the blind faith used by the card carrying members. I understand tribal behavior, but that doesn't excuse irrational thinking. If you are going to steal someone else's food, okay. But don't lie to me or yourself doing it. Remember, if you can't even be honest with yourself you will lie yourself into trouble one day. Intellectual honesty promotes a sharper thinking process. You are doing yourself a favor. That is why I am so damn good, I don't call a wart a beauty mark. And part of the reason I'm one of Baby Jesus' favorites, despite my lack of religious faith. I know, I've asked him.
*
Now, besides sticking voodoo dolls full of holes in a vain attempt to punish me for my blasphemy, you are also asking yourself why you should give two craps. Most likely because you think you belong to The One True Faith ( even those faiths that profess a tolerance for other beliefs give their own brand preferential treatment and extra large portions of food at supper ). But, since others also believe that, you are both targets. This is simply a "heads up" on yet another thing to worry about after the Oil Age ends. We were all kept so fat and marshmellowy eating Taco Bell and KFC and swilling Coke and watching endless reruns of Gilligan's Island that we had no need to worry about religion. Even the Great Hue And Cry Warning Of The Evil Muslim Hoards Descending On Us in a vain effort to resurrect the military industrial complex to take the place of the housing bubble failed to elicit much of a response. I mean, hell, we just elected one of them to the White House. How much more couldn't you care? Once the welfare state ends and hunger begins, start to watch for those shifty polygamists ( and all other true believers out to smite your evil ass ). And, by the way, don't bother wasting a trip to Elko to wipe me out for the good of your god. I'm positive I've offended plenty of people here who will beat you to it.
END
Thursday, July 09, 2009
long slow infrastructure
LONG SLOW INFRASTRUCTURE
I'd like to officially register my disappointment that I didn't make the list of all time favorite survival books over at Rawles site from his recent survey. That said, a pretty good article on silver today. Before you get too excited about the increased purchasing power in silver terms however, you need to keep two things in mind. First, as he acknowledges as a topic for another day, the silver market has been manipulated recently. That means the metal should be selling a lot higher than it is. Secondly, two things are artificially keeping food prices down. Well, perhaps three if you factor in cheaper food imports. But, the basic two are factory farms and subsidized oil. Centralizing food production has artificially kept prices lower. If we had kept production decentralized our future would not be so bleak. A family farm takes care of the soil, as family future generations are handed down a legacy. Corporate farms rape the land as if it were a mine. Short term since the eighties is cheap food. Long term we all starve. And since oil made those corporate farms work, the corporations used militarily subsidized cheap oil.
*
We are still on track for a smidge over eight percent oil import declines for this year. That is three years in a row, as I recently covered in my article "8%". The 70's oil shock recovery was easily solved by a flood of oil imports, from the Alaskan oil fields, the North Sea field, Russian, eventually Saudi, etc. There are no new super fields now as there were then. No new ones in forty years, and not for lack of trying. Those were the last of the clean and abundant fields. Canadian tar sands are nothing more than using natural gas to create liquid fuel for the last of Detroit's SUV's. Okay, I'll stop now with the Peak Oil. But my point is that real prices continue up because fuel supply is falling. At this moment, it isn't as bad as it could be because of centralized food and stolen oil. But that will not last much longer. Everybody wants a long slow collapse, myself included. That is actually the best possible news. But you need to plan on a quicker collapse, even as you hope for a slow one. Infrastructure will continue to suffer, and regardless of long or short collapse, localized effects could hurt you.
*
Oil imports fall. Fuel prices rise. Transportation costs rise. Oil prices rising raise asphalt prices. Local governments seeing revenue free falls ( Nevada, even with gambling and mining-hindered by precious metals being held down, granted- saw tax revenue fall by 45% in a year ) can't buy as much of that more expensive asphalt and roads fall apart more. Insurance companies, already suffering from policy cancellations from vacated homes and having lost money from derivatives ( those bad boys will raise Cain until the bitter end ), now see increased claims from cars vibrating apart on poorly maintained roads. The companies use that as last straw excuse to go bankrupt and screw you out of premiums. Insurance cost rise, putting more pressure on private companies such as ambulance services ( do municipal companies have insurance? I don't know ). They jack up prices or go out of business. The city ambulance would have been on the way but they hit a rather large pothole and suffered a mechanical failure.
*
Oil imports fall. Artificial fertilizer prices rise. Food goes up much faster than the twenty percent we've seen the last few years. When you only spend 10% of your budget on food, those kinds of increases are easily absorbed. Twelve percent one year, fourteen the next. You bitch, but can carry on easy enough. But after a certain period, it starts to become very noticeable. You have to start cutting back quite a bit. In time ( and remember, it starts at 20% food inflation and just gets worse ), we become Third World peasants with the real prospect of malnutrition and starvation. This is all directly traced back to oil, but remember all the other inputs also effected and thus compounding the problem. Increased inflation due to skyrocketing government costs. Credit contraction due to decades of financial bubbles tearing the system apart. Business closing because of inflation jacking up wages, no operating capital due to no credit, and all costs rising because of energy and inflation. Less jobs is less tax revenue is increased local government failure is that ambulance driver laid off even if the vehicle doesn't crash into a pothole. Or, police laid off ( Oakland, CA, recently hired a private firm at half the cost per person, but even they won't last long ), so the ambulance driver is mugged after the vehicle crashed in the pothole.
*
Even before the Super Duper Depression started, emergency rooms were closing their doors due to finances. Unstated in these politically correct times, a large part of the cause was undocumented workers sucking free services. Not that I blame them. Pop a kid for free and it's a citizen! What a deal. If Mexico had been offering that, I would have been down there with a prego in one hand and a sombrero in the other. And, if you think either health care reform or global warming solutions are anything other than smoke up your ass and an increased cost to you personally, you are a zombie. A shrinking pie doesn't expand. Inflation and increased energy costs effect health care also. There will be even more uninsured, as prices skyrocket.
*
Retirement? I laugh uproariously. Ha! You and your pipe dreams. Home equity? I laugh harder. Twenty million vacant houses equal falling values even as inflation takes off. And, as public services are cut back, your suburban castle is no longer tied to its life lines of fire protection, clean water, reliable sewer, grid power, etc. Your thirty grand SUV remaining on the road? Stop it, I'm splitting a side here. See the insurance companies and road repair and oil imports above. I'm not making up anything new here. I have preached to you for years to consult the bible of the future, The Great Reckoning. They only focused on finances and didn't factor in oil, but their social disintegration thesis was right on ( even if they were twenty years early ). A long slow collapse, even as it is the best case scenario, still leaves a lot to be desired.
END
I'd like to officially register my disappointment that I didn't make the list of all time favorite survival books over at Rawles site from his recent survey. That said, a pretty good article on silver today. Before you get too excited about the increased purchasing power in silver terms however, you need to keep two things in mind. First, as he acknowledges as a topic for another day, the silver market has been manipulated recently. That means the metal should be selling a lot higher than it is. Secondly, two things are artificially keeping food prices down. Well, perhaps three if you factor in cheaper food imports. But, the basic two are factory farms and subsidized oil. Centralizing food production has artificially kept prices lower. If we had kept production decentralized our future would not be so bleak. A family farm takes care of the soil, as family future generations are handed down a legacy. Corporate farms rape the land as if it were a mine. Short term since the eighties is cheap food. Long term we all starve. And since oil made those corporate farms work, the corporations used militarily subsidized cheap oil.
*
We are still on track for a smidge over eight percent oil import declines for this year. That is three years in a row, as I recently covered in my article "8%". The 70's oil shock recovery was easily solved by a flood of oil imports, from the Alaskan oil fields, the North Sea field, Russian, eventually Saudi, etc. There are no new super fields now as there were then. No new ones in forty years, and not for lack of trying. Those were the last of the clean and abundant fields. Canadian tar sands are nothing more than using natural gas to create liquid fuel for the last of Detroit's SUV's. Okay, I'll stop now with the Peak Oil. But my point is that real prices continue up because fuel supply is falling. At this moment, it isn't as bad as it could be because of centralized food and stolen oil. But that will not last much longer. Everybody wants a long slow collapse, myself included. That is actually the best possible news. But you need to plan on a quicker collapse, even as you hope for a slow one. Infrastructure will continue to suffer, and regardless of long or short collapse, localized effects could hurt you.
*
Oil imports fall. Fuel prices rise. Transportation costs rise. Oil prices rising raise asphalt prices. Local governments seeing revenue free falls ( Nevada, even with gambling and mining-hindered by precious metals being held down, granted- saw tax revenue fall by 45% in a year ) can't buy as much of that more expensive asphalt and roads fall apart more. Insurance companies, already suffering from policy cancellations from vacated homes and having lost money from derivatives ( those bad boys will raise Cain until the bitter end ), now see increased claims from cars vibrating apart on poorly maintained roads. The companies use that as last straw excuse to go bankrupt and screw you out of premiums. Insurance cost rise, putting more pressure on private companies such as ambulance services ( do municipal companies have insurance? I don't know ). They jack up prices or go out of business. The city ambulance would have been on the way but they hit a rather large pothole and suffered a mechanical failure.
*
Oil imports fall. Artificial fertilizer prices rise. Food goes up much faster than the twenty percent we've seen the last few years. When you only spend 10% of your budget on food, those kinds of increases are easily absorbed. Twelve percent one year, fourteen the next. You bitch, but can carry on easy enough. But after a certain period, it starts to become very noticeable. You have to start cutting back quite a bit. In time ( and remember, it starts at 20% food inflation and just gets worse ), we become Third World peasants with the real prospect of malnutrition and starvation. This is all directly traced back to oil, but remember all the other inputs also effected and thus compounding the problem. Increased inflation due to skyrocketing government costs. Credit contraction due to decades of financial bubbles tearing the system apart. Business closing because of inflation jacking up wages, no operating capital due to no credit, and all costs rising because of energy and inflation. Less jobs is less tax revenue is increased local government failure is that ambulance driver laid off even if the vehicle doesn't crash into a pothole. Or, police laid off ( Oakland, CA, recently hired a private firm at half the cost per person, but even they won't last long ), so the ambulance driver is mugged after the vehicle crashed in the pothole.
*
Even before the Super Duper Depression started, emergency rooms were closing their doors due to finances. Unstated in these politically correct times, a large part of the cause was undocumented workers sucking free services. Not that I blame them. Pop a kid for free and it's a citizen! What a deal. If Mexico had been offering that, I would have been down there with a prego in one hand and a sombrero in the other. And, if you think either health care reform or global warming solutions are anything other than smoke up your ass and an increased cost to you personally, you are a zombie. A shrinking pie doesn't expand. Inflation and increased energy costs effect health care also. There will be even more uninsured, as prices skyrocket.
*
Retirement? I laugh uproariously. Ha! You and your pipe dreams. Home equity? I laugh harder. Twenty million vacant houses equal falling values even as inflation takes off. And, as public services are cut back, your suburban castle is no longer tied to its life lines of fire protection, clean water, reliable sewer, grid power, etc. Your thirty grand SUV remaining on the road? Stop it, I'm splitting a side here. See the insurance companies and road repair and oil imports above. I'm not making up anything new here. I have preached to you for years to consult the bible of the future, The Great Reckoning. They only focused on finances and didn't factor in oil, but their social disintegration thesis was right on ( even if they were twenty years early ). A long slow collapse, even as it is the best case scenario, still leaves a lot to be desired.
END
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