A Picture of the New America

 

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  • #13135

    Marion Post Wolcott Farmer’s son making sorghum molasses, Racine, West Virginia Sep 1938 Yesterday, we saw that despite a tepid rebound in new home sa
    [See the full post at: A Picture of the New America]

    #13137
    Diogenes Shrugged
    Participant

    Two interesting charts, at least by appearance:

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-23/tick-tick-tick

    https://investmentwatchblog.com/sp-500-peaked-in-2000-2007-when-margin-debt-did-this/

    These charts show conclusively that happy days are here again, that interest rates have no chance of rising during Bernanke’s lifetime, and that the future forever belongs to the price riggers. Because, as the last six years’ experience shows, the future can remain irrational longer than rational people can remain solvent.

    #13138
    Diogenes Shrugged
    Participant

    Ilargi, I’ve often wondered how you and Nicole view Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies. Anything you might have to say on that topic would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

    #13139
    Diogenes Shrugged
    Participant

    “What comes next is a scary thing to ponder.”

    Ilargi, one more request. When the music stops and large numbers of people find themselves without a chair, some people will inevitably become aggressive. What do you and Nicole recommend to defend against that possibility? I know private firearms aren’t legal for self defense in some countries.

    #13140
    John Day
    Participant

    We’ve all been struggling with what comes next, and nations and multinationals have too.
    There is a lot of testing for what might be the right war, the Goldilocks war, and nothing is really measuring up. All too risky for irreversible damage, going into the time of much less.
    The US has been preparing Americans for a variety of wars, and China is doing so, and Japan, and Taiwan. Korea is still at war. The mideast looks played out. Iran looks like a bridge too far.
    The war has to be a big excuse for global economic collapse, and it has to be a transition into a steady-state or contracting global economy.
    The war has to be bad enough to justify a command economy, like the USSR had, but everywhere.
    If the US can’t go to war with Russia, China, Iran, etc. then the best scapegoat has got to be North Korea.
    North Korea has nukes, missiles, motive, means, and has even been built up as having a cyber-warfare unit. There is information out there that Japan’s atomic bomb program in WW-2 was located in North Korea, and that the Russian EMP warhead technology may have been supplied to North Korea long ago.
    The perfect nuclear attack on the US is supposedly an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) device directly above Kansas. More than half the US grid would be knocked out. (It is something like 5 grids, not counting Hawaii, as I recall.)
    This means none of the major economic powers has to be destroyed, and the risk of excess damage to “winners” is eliminated.
    The damage has to be “just right”, Goldilocks style.
    Everybody in the gated-community set gets thrown under this bus, as do all the retirements in the world.
    There will be lots of martial law, and the internet will get high levels of overt policing of thought crime.
    The resources required to keep the underclasses fed and jailed will get cut way back, and the under-the-bus gated-community set will have their hackles up for class war.
    Concentration camps?
    The economy of this country, stripped to bare essentials, really needs about 40% of the workers it has now, right? So much of it just takes flows of capital and goods from around the world to keep the burgers flipping and strip-malls from closing.
    Something big can be used to get the first 50% reduction in use of resources and fuels in the USA.
    Can anybody find a better scapegoat scenario than North Korea lobbing an EMP nuke at the continental US?
    Cuba? I don’t think the Cuba thing worked out 50 years ago, and it’s too late now.

    #13142

    Diogenes,

    Two years ago, when Nicole and I were lecture-touring Australia, the tour organizers set up a meeting for us in Melbourne with Michael Reynolds from New Mexico, the father of the earthship and a very interesting man, who was also doing lectures. Michael noted that often when he and his team are asked to build an earthship for someone, they want basement space of some kind. And when he asks them what for, the answer always has to do with guns. He thinks that’s the silliest idea: what are you going to do, shoot your neighbors? His solution is to build lots of earthships and establish a community that way, so your neighbors are your protection. I tend to agree, I’m not so sure guns are a great way to protect yourself.

    As for bitcoins, they seem to me to be nice as an experiment, but I don’t see how in a world where everything is manipulated from people’s unconscious to stocks to gold markets, bitcoins would be the exception to the rule. You already have companies that claim million worth of them go missing without a trace. I’d want to see the safety aspect tested much more vigorously, and until then I won’t put my trust in bitcoins.

    #13143
    Diogenes Shrugged
    Participant

    Ilargi, thanks for the replies to my questions. Please allow me to add some of my own thoughts as well.

    Firearms would likely be the weapon of choice for marauders, and an earthship would provide an attractive target, especially if the marauders are hungry and desperate. The odds are usually against those people wielding bats and knives when their opponents have guns. So I was thinking of firearms ownership as a defensive measure rather than a means of shooting one’s neighbor. Since a sign on the outskirts of an earthship proclaiming it to be a “gun free zone” would be ill-advised for obvious reasons, the opposite message might have greater success keeping marauders at bay:

    https://img.myconfinedspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/private-property-if-you-can-read-this-you-are-within-range-500×350.jpg

    The reason I asked the question is because I expect crime to become a much greater problem when times get tougher, and many people will lose what they can’t defend. A sign like that by itself might save you, but only insofar as it deceives marauders into thinking you’re armed. If they ignore the sign, I fear you’ll deeply wish you had more than that to deter them.

    There is a saying I’ve heard stated different ways, but the gist is something like, “God created man and woman, and Sam Colt made them equal.” This refers to the fact that only firearms are capable of leveling the playing field between huge, beefy thugs and frail old women. I’m assuming there will be frail old women on earthships. My own personal philosophy dictates that failure to stop a marauder (whether you have the means to do so or not) is tantamount to releasing that marauder on your neighbor – – or wherever else he might be headed next. In other words, you have a personal responsibility and moral obligation to stop bad guys if you find yourself facing that opportunity.

    Gold and Bitcoin are both thinly traded compared with cars or grains or textiles, and I suppose the big banks and maybe some rich private individuals might always be able to manipulate those markets without going to much expense. I don’t think the Bitcoin protocol is manipulable, but the price of Bitcoin certainly is. My research leads me to regard the Bitcoin protocol to be perhaps the greatest invention of man, as it eliminates so many of the worst aspects of other systems of exchange (e.g. barter, money & banking). But that vaunted estimation will come true only if Bitcoin can eventually be used easily and safely by everybody – – and strides are indeed being made in that direction. Nearly all of the other crypto-currencies, I suspect, will eventually disappear, never to have served any useful function, and therefore only amounting to inadvertent Ponzi schemes while they were still alive. But I do agree with you that more development and acceptance are necessary before investing heavily in Bitcoin.

    #13144
    John Day
    Participant

    @ Diogenes
    What to have in the way of firepower, varmint guns, plinkers, hand guns, hunting rifles, assault rifles, etc. is a fairly personal choice, based largely on life experience with/without guns, culture and subjective feelings.
    I don’t think we all have to feel the same, be the same, or even agree, here.
    I think there are lots of right and wrong solutions along the way.
    🙂

    #13145
    Supergravity
    Participant

    @ john day
    I have also considered your north korean scenario. NK might not be suitable to blame for a nuclear strike, by immediate counterstrike the US would win that war the same day it starts. They would need a more prolonged conflict and expansive war narrative to justify a command economy and dictatorship indefinitely.
    Knocking out the grid via EMP would provide cover for economic collapse and martial law initially, but if the war was over too soon, organised resistance against the federal regime would form despite the chaos of economic collapse, especially since many people would correctly identify the shadow government as the real perpetrator of the attack.
    Im assuming in this scenario NK or other enemy does not really strike at all, but the shadow gov does a false flag and uses one of its own nukes to knock out the grid or hit an expendable city. Blaming NK could be advantageous in that they would be annihilated before being able to officially deny their involvement.
    Otherwise a prolonged but low intensity war between NATO and Russia, via the ukraine front, allowing conventional warfare and only incidental tactical nuking, would distract people for much longer and focus attention away from the real enemies in government while the domestic purges are completed.
    There was a story last year about nuclear weapons being abducted by illegal transfer from a base in Texas. The incident was followed by suspicious political purging of military command positions.
    https://www.storyleak.com/exclusive-high-level-source-confirms-secret-us-nuclear-warhead-transfer-east-coast/
    Its possible these nukes were indeed stolen during transfer and are now directly in possession of the shadow government powers, to be used in some false flag scenario, to make a case for war against a foreign power, or to blame anti-government movements. One popular scenario involved a nuclear detonation in Chicago. Similar unauthorised transfers of nuclear weapons have undoubtedly occurred.
    This fits into a broader pattern of strategic military mobilization happening covertly in the US, along with the ever advancing construction of electronic and economic control grids, with the DHS and their infinite ammo stockpiling and the total militarization of police, the US gov preparations for martial law and military dictatorship is mostly completed, but they seem to expect much domestic resistance.

    Preparations for domestic genocide are also evident. HR 645, emergency centers establishment act, reveals that the gov has officially mandated at least six large concentration camps to be built, which may be adapted for genocidal purges during war or economic collapse scenarios. The logistical planning may allow millions to be murdered weekly in such camps. These ’emergency centers’ do not seem to have a connected food supply to feed the hundreds of thousands they are supposed to house in a legitimate emergency scenario.

    In a full wellfare collapse much of the immense underclass of economically dependent people would turn desperately violent and eventually starve, the gov might want to murder them orderly in the camps instead of allowing them to pillage and burn. There would also be targeted groups of political resistors.
    Even with millions of starving people, in some areas people armed with the 2nd and motivated by strong cultural resistance against tyranny should consolidate popular resistance against opression under martial law. Parts of the military, police and enforcement agencies loyal to the republic could force a civil war before the purges can be completed, then the federal regime might be quickly overthrown.

    This is all very depressing. For the US, if it were possible, it might be best to overthrow the evil parts of government before economic collapse happened, so causing fewer casualties, but this would also destroy the dollar, triggering economic collapse anyway and thus cause many to starve who would otherwise have been purged or murdered.
    I do believe it is better to starve than to be murdered by goverment, especially by one’s own goverment.
    Also, have you considered the biowarfare and synthetic pandemic scenario’s which may cover your criteria?

    #13148
    Variable81
    Participant

    I believe Diogenes raises very valid questions in regards to firearms. Unfortunately, one of the few areas I don’t totally see eye-to-eye with TAE is their view on self-defense and to a larger degree, the necessity and unavoidable nature of violence.


    @Ilargi
    ,

    If Michael Reynolds’ point is that violence against ones neighbors s foolish, its a very valid point. But firearms are one of the most important tools man has created, despite the fact they can be used for less than good intentions. Obviously there are clear benefits for the purpose of hunting or protection against nature, as well as against “marauders” or someone with violent intentions towards you, as pointed out by Diogenes. And as safe as a community is, an unarmed community may potentially just be the illusion of safety when a group of armed individuals shows up on that community’s doorstep.

    I appreciate that TAE proposes constructive and non-violent solutions, but if we really are facing resource shortages combined with a population far beyond the Earth’s carrying capacity then I can’t help but point out that the same “musical chairs” scenario TAE has pointed out with regards to financial assets may also take place with the necessities of life (e.g. food, water, medicine).


    @John
    Day,

    You’re correct to suggest everyone can have their own thoughts on self-defense, violence and gun ownership. But then again, people are free to think that our current system is sustainable and that debt can grow forever. That doesn’t necessarily mean those thoughts/beliefs are correct or will have positive results.

    There are some who suggest that being able to defend oneself is a moral obligation – by not being able to defend yourself, you place that responsibility on others. I find this line of thinking interesting when you also consider all of the instances of mass murders / shootings as of late… notice that violent individuals never walk into a police station and start shooting up police officers; they choose soft and defenseless targets (e.g. schools, movie theaters, malls) where carnage can be maximized. I would suspect that a small rural community that espouses peaceful gun-free solutions may also be viewed as soft / defenseless target, regardless if that is the case or not.

    I’m certainly not advocating violence or suggesting anyone obsess over it, but I think that there are some dangers in relation to the future predicted by TAE that need to be realistically addressed.

    While learning about permaculture and growing one’s own food, learning firearm safety may also be a wise decision for the future.

    Cheers,
    -Variable

    #13159
    Ken Barrows
    Participant

    Variable81,

    One minor quibble with your post: people not only believe debt can grow forever, they believe it can grow faster than output forever.

    #13161
    Diogenes Shrugged
    Participant

    Supergravity – – An enjoyable and imaginative post. Five stars for use of the term “command economy.” You must have seen “The Commanding Heights” years ago.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9ms2WOZi74

    Variable81 – – Very nicely done. I have a feeling that next time we see a photo of Ilargi, he’ll be sporting a six-shooter on his hip. He has to defend himself against the two of us somehow.

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