Preparing for Uncertainty and Self Reliance

[boethius]

All the good apocolyptic stories have been done already; the Cold War was a much more fertile environment for them. What's coming, what I call "The Collapse," is more of a clamp on credit, loss of jobs, and people forced to live within their means. There will still be Internet, automobiles, food, healthcare & cellphones, but predatory businesses, like Comcast & pharmaceuticals, will be nationalized.

We are in a race between the development of post-scarcity technology vs. the parasites (government, banksters, globalists, MIC, and Health Care Industrial Complex) consuming so much that there is no surplus remaining to advance our technology.

If post-scarcity wins, then we either branch off to some kind of trillionaires vs. peasants Eleysium-style world or a Distributist paradise where everyone has 5 acres and a Star-Trek Replicator (or jacked into the VR matrix).

If the parasites win, we do the slow Collapse. Slow Collapse might turn fast if some faction gets a hold of nukes and blows up the wrong city, setting off WWIII Duke Ferdinand assassination-style.

[SuburbanFarmer]

All the good apocolyptic stories have been done already; the Cold War was a much more fertile environment for them. What's coming, what I call "The Collapse," is more of a clamp on credit, loss of jobs, and people forced to live within their means. There will still be Internet, automobiles, food, healthcare & cellphones, but predatory businesses, like Comcast & pharmaceuticals, will be nationalized.

We are in a race between the development of post-scarcity technology vs. the parasites (government, banksters, globalists, MIC, and Health Care Industrial Complex) consuming so much that there is no surplus remaining to advance our technology.

If post-scarcity wins, then we either branch off to some kind of trillionaires vs. peasants Eleysium-style world or a Distributist paradise where everyone has 5 acres and a Star-Trek Replicator (or jacked into the VR matrix).

If the parasites win, we do the slow Collapse. Slow Collapse might turn fast if some faction gets a hold of nukes and blows up the wrong city, setting off WWIII Duke Ferdinand assassination-style.

I actually find the last scenario to be the most likely end of our current civilization.. Aside from economic collapse, due to unchecked profit-motive. That could easily feed into any of the 3 though..

[C-Mag]

All the good apocolyptic stories have been done already; the Cold War was a much more fertile environment for them. What's coming, what I call "The Collapse," is more of a clamp on credit, loss of jobs, and people forced to live within their means. There will still be Internet, automobiles, food, healthcare & cellphones, but predatory businesses, like Comcast & pharmaceuticals, will be nationalized.

We are in a race between the development of post-scarcity technology vs. the parasites (government, banksters, globalists, MIC, and Health Care Industrial Complex) consuming so much that there is no surplus remaining to advance our technology.

If post-scarcity wins, then we either branch off to some kind of trillionaires vs. peasants Eleysium-style world or a Distributist paradise where everyone has 5 acres and a Star-Trek Replicator (or jacked into the VR matrix).

If the parasites win, we do the slow Collapse. Slow Collapse might turn fast if some faction gets a hold of nukes and blows up the wrong city, setting off WWIII Duke Ferdinand assassination-style.

+1

Parasites are a good way to put it. SOP for economic arguments in the country are the 'left' griping about the fat cat 1% and the 'right' griping about the welfare queens. I would submit that the problem has to be turned on it's side. Where income and wealth are not the determining factors, but lack of personal production and living off government largesse. Be it on $15k a year in handouts of $15M a year in government subsidies. These are the same people. One rides a bus, the other the back seat of the limo. But neither one of these people aid to the real improvement to the country.

I could easily argue we are already in the slow strangulations. Doc and GCF talked about food prices. The gov and press have been hiding the inflation in food and living costs for a decade at least.

[Speaker to Animals]

[heydaralon]

Commodity speculation scares me. A big cause of the Arab spring was rising grain prices. People in some of those countries were spending over half their income buying staple foods. There was a time when Westerners lived that way. It makes people desperate and people will only eat cake for so long before they start looking at new forms of government. I hope our society has turned a corner in that regard.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Commodity speculation scares me. A big cause of the Arab spring was rising grain prices. People in some of those countries were spending over half their income buying staple foods. There was a time when Westerners lived that way. It makes people desperate and people will only eat cake for so long before they start looking at new forms of government. I hope our society has turned a corner in that regard.

"Speculation" is the excuse used by a totalitarian government that just instituted price controls and destroyed their own food supply, in some autistic populist rage. See: Venezuela, Brazil, any failed African state...

[Speaker to Animals]

It wasn't speculation that drove up grain prices. It was deliberate US policy to enforce a high ethanol percentage in our various fuel formulations. That meant more grain was going to ethanol production. It drives up corn prices.

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2 ... -security/

Democrat woo woo caused it.

Well, democrat woo woo and fucking Ted Cruz (again).

[C-Mag]

Commodity speculation scares me. A big cause of the Arab spring was rising grain prices. People in some of those countries were spending over half their income buying staple foods. There was a time when Westerners lived that way. It makes people desperate and people will only eat cake for so long before they start looking at new forms of government. I hope our society has turned a corner in that regard.

Yep, studies show a direct correlation between revolt and food prices. Who was it said any society is 9 meals away from anarchy?

Doc, love the meme............... I need to make some bread.
I'm weak on the bread baking folks. I'm fair at biscuits, that's about it.

[boethius]

The problem with the "Capitalist" breadline isn't that it's a machine making the bread...it's the concentration of production in the hands of a single person (or small group of persons).

If every family had a 5 acre homestead and a Star Trek replicator in the garage, they would be more "free" in every sense of the word--economically, socially, politically, and spiritually--than our agrarian ancestors.

Lets not romanticize old tech. Homemade bread isn't better because it was made slowly with difficulty...it's better because it was made at home. If I have a personally owned Star Trek replicator making me bread in my home, that is better than handmade.

The economic and social problems with machines aren't that they remove work from our hands, but because machines are expensive and heavily regulated and thus under the control of small groups of oligarchs and their patsies in the government.

[Speaker to Animals]

Commodity speculation scares me. A big cause of the Arab spring was rising grain prices. People in some of those countries were spending over half their income buying staple foods. There was a time when Westerners lived that way. It makes people desperate and people will only eat cake for so long before they start looking at new forms of government. I hope our society has turned a corner in that regard.

Yep, studies show a direct correlation between revolt and food prices. Who was it said any society is 9 meals away from anarchy?

Doc, love the meme............... I need to make some bread.
I'm weak on the bread baking folks. I'm fair at biscuits, that's about it.

Bread is pretty easy to make.