Perpetual growth

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ancona

Praying Mantis
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I have been cogitating the tenets of capitalism beneath the wings of a fiat currency regime, and have spent even more time trying to calculate how long it will be before the whole thing comes apart at the seams.

A fiat regime can only work if there is always some measure of inflation and if there is perpetual growth. If the economy contracts, and growth stops or even reverses, those who control the fiat regime [central bankers] lose money. In addition to growth, there must be new debt continually added to the pile because if the debt ever gets paid off completely, the bankers die.

Today, as we teeter on the edge of a global collapse, I am wondering just how much longer it will be before the Brotherhood of Darkness all hit CTRL+P, sending all currencies simultaneously in to the dustbin of history. We have had many conversations here and on other sites which detail some of the plans and preparations folks are making/will make and yet I have to try and place in to proper context what I know is a huge disparity between those who are smart enough to recognize what we face and those who believe in "the system" and leave all preparations to the Powers That Be, FEMA and the National Guard, believing that "they" will help us if it all crashes.

The scary part of this are the rabid social justice crowd, those who believe everyone "deserves" to have the same things irrespective of effort, education and personal drive. I fear that these people will be among the first ones to form up and begin to denounce those who have food and a means to protect it. They will be the leaders of those bands of starving zombies we all talk about. I fear this group of people even more than my government because they outnumber even our own armed forces by several orders of magnitude.

Living as I do here in Florida, I am surrounded by the very young, and heavily indoctrinated and the very old and heavily government check dependent [retirees]. This alone sets my state up to be a dangerous place to be in a collapse. All of us have at some time or another contemplated our futures, calculating out to some measure of time and trying to determine what resources we must prepare ourselves with to survive from the beginning of the coming collapse until the creation of a new, stable trade mechanism and the re-establishment of some sort of justice system. I truly believe in a total collapse of fiat that society will dissolve and become more local. By local I mean areas of no more than a mile or so square being self governed in some fashion as folks grow tired of thugs, gangs and democrats pillaging and "redistributing".

While we have all prepared for physical comfort and nutritional requirements, and we have nearly all purchased and practiced with one or more survival weapons, many have not prepared for the establishment of a stable local governance.

My best friend and I were talking about it last night and had some pretty interesting discussion surrounding how to implement our ideas. We have both read and re-read the federalist papers, and we have discussed the importance of having as small a footprint as we can, allowing the greatest level of freedom possible while still providing for our own security. The difficult part of the whole thing is that it will have to be completely voluntary, since we have no real right to impose our will on anyone else.

For purposes of discussion, we talked about our initial security efforts, which we would impose on everyone coming in or out of our little cul-de-sac. At first, it will be necessary simply to secure ourselves and families, with those who don't really participate in our prepping benefiting simply by virtue of living on our street. They may not like it and they may complain, but there will be little or nothing they can do about it. We have decided that a 10 o'clock curfew would be enforceable for the most part, as it will be necessary to reduce the possibility of friendly fire and things like that.

We intend to lock our area completely down, nothing in and nothing out without we say so. We have no interest in what people are doing so long as it does not involve us or our supplies. However, we have no intention of allowing free movement in and out of our area by anyone who sees fit to walk down our street. Don't have a written, signed letter from an occupant allowing you temporary access to visit them? Pound sand buddy. We fully expect that when the balloon goes up that it gets stupid nearly overnight.

After some period of time, if the government loses control and people stop going to work because no one is getting paid, many will starve to death or succumb to illness because infrastructure falls apart. My thoughts are that it will take five to ten years to restore confidence in some sort of trade mechanism and then another decade to return to some sort of new normal, within which we will have some measure of health care and pharmaceutical supplies, however this is difficult to try and predict.

While we all decry our government and the rapid erosion of our liberties, we believe ti is a necessary evil, especially since there are so damn many sheeple out there who cannot or will not think for themselves. Food will need to be grown, requiring organization and physical labor. Raising chickens and goat for protein, ibid. As we refine our model, I will post the information here for discussion. We feel this is an important prep that has been widely overlooked, with most preppers planning on holing up and hiding out alone with their immediate families and friends. I live in a semi rural area which happens to be quite close to a moderately populated area full of unionized government workers and defense industry workers. Most of these people are not preppers and will be looking to a collapsed government for help that may never arrive, or will stop arriving when supplies run out. At that point, they will need to be guided.

I appreciate any constructive criticisms and all discussion.
 
I have seen the models for perpetual growth in investments. They depend almost exclusively on population growth and inflation. Simply put, if you have a stable population level and no inflation, perpetual growth is a nonsensical idea.

If something bad happens in the country you live in, how it affects you is going to be strongly determined by your surroundings (as opposed to your preparations). I don't care how many weapons you have, how much food you have, how much water you have; if twenty thousand other people decide you should "share", you will be sharing. The more I look into the matter, the more certain states become more attractive.

For an example, I like what is happening in New Hampshire:
http://freestateproject.org/

There are rankings for things such as states with the most freedom (Florida ranks 11th):
http://mercatus.org/freedom-50-states-2011

This guy has an interesting way to ranking the freedoms of each state:
http://www.amatecon.com/states.html
 
Very good sites, both of them. While Florida is ranked pretty high, our population is quite dense, making it very difficult to "get away" from population centers. I agree in principle that if 20k people want what I have they will come and take it, but in reality, in a collapse, and without a way to communicate with one another and organize, and without gasoline to facilitate their movement, it is unlikely to come to that. What I envision in a complete Selco type of collapse, would be smaller groups of people going from area to area like roaming dogs, consuming what they find there and moving on. If our area is hardened that will make it more difficult, as there are many easier targets.

While there may be ex-military around with organizational skills and the ability to utilize weapons, we are comparably armored and have significant ammunition supplies among our group. They may be willing to kill for food, but will be significantly less willing to die.

Take a few out and they will most likely move along.
 
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