machine gun marc

[marvenger]

Re: machine gun marc

subsidies to US farmers are massive, I woder how effective the high tech farming is without these subsidies.

[bobola]

Re: machine gun marc

I disagree with the 'self sufficient and on a farm with a machine gun' idea. It’s relatively easy to take the gun and farm away from the owner.

A better idea is to be on a self sufficient go-anywhere sailboat. Catch rainwater for the water tank; catch fish for the next meal; wind generators and solar panels keep the batteries happy..etc…

If you don’t like your neighbor in a marina – move to a different slip. Don’t like the marina where you are staying – move. If you don’t like your host country – move to a better one.

You can’t do that hunkered down on a piece of ground.

[GRG55]

Re: machine gun marc

subsidies to US farmers are massive, I woder how effective the high tech farming is without these subsidies.

Surely this is problem that can be "easily fixed", like some of the others noted on this thread, and elsewhere on this site...

That is a current condition but could be rectified pretty quickly. If we quit wasting energy living...

We can change the shape and distribution of our cities very easily. It just takes and economic collapse ...

Frankly, I can't tell if sunskyfan's relentless "positivism" is the result of a traumatic childhood, an old football injury, recreational drugs, or if he/she is just pulling our leg...;)

[sunskyfan]

Re: machine gun marc

Well ... it wasn't a traumatic childhood.

You can be a optimistic pessimist or you can be a pessimistic optimist. I guess I am the former.

I just think we are living too much in our heads these days and the dream has turned to nightmare. Our problems are solvable and our challenges are meetable.

Once you give up the idea of a free lunch the anxiety goes away and you fix a pb&j and get with being productive. Sorry to you folks who bought into the Wall Street fantasy of a perpetual money machine squeezed from the fruit of free market capitalism or that you could buffer your money and your physical self from risk for you are going to get screwed.

Remember, if we stopped having babies tomorrow it will take at the most a 100 years to depopulate the Earth. We just have to let go of a few assumptions about what we can live with and what we can't and we will be okay. Until then we will ring our hands with horror like a debutant having to wash dishes.

[mcgurme]

Re: machine gun marc

Until then we will ring our hands with horror like a debutant having to wash dishes.

This is one of my favorite statements seen here in recent times.

It is so true.

I co-own a bike shop, and we try to promote transportation bikes to get people out of their cars.

All the time we encounter people with exactly the attitude problem this reveals. They would not "lower" themselves to getting out of their car and riding the bike - even if it is for an errand only a few blocks away. The car is the status symbol, and just the appearance of giving it up causes hissy fits for some. Just like the hissy fit of the debutant who realizes she will have no clean dishes if she doesn't wash them herself.

But when gas goes to > $10/gallon (and is perhaps hard to acquire even at that price), an attitude adjustment will be forced.

Some people will cling to the old ideal like the debutante. And some will wake up and realize that they have to change, though it may be too late (e.g. all bikes are produced now in Taiwan and China, so if the dollar collapses, bikes won't be available until/if/when local industries emerge).

The "socialist" Europeans have already started forcing that change ahead of time, with their high gas taxes. It remains to be seen how we'll deal with it when it is forced upon us quite suddenly by a combination of dollar devaluation and peak cheap oil. Hopefully you're right that people can change and adapt, even on a short timescale. But I've been trying to formulate a plan B in case they don't.

[cjppjc]

Re: machine gun marc

I just think we are living too much in our heads

Yes it seems to me this is very true. Can I find a way to live in my body as well? When I spend too much time in my mind energy is wasted. It is unhealthy for my mind body and spirit.

[*T*]

Re: machine gun marc

Can I find a way to live in my body as well?

Martial arts / yoga etc.

[cjppjc]

Re: machine gun marc

Martial arts / yoga etc.

Yes good ways. But I also I need a way to remember how to have that feeling in my daily life. It is true we spend too much time in our heads. When that happens I find myself more tired and irritable.

At the very least I can engage in hard physical activity. It certainly helps to remove myself from my head.

[nitroglycol]

Re: machine gun marc

Our agriculture is heavily dependent on cheap energy (read: cheap oil). With out that our production would drop precipitously and/or become much to expensive to sell effectively. Also many of the aquifers are being used up rapidly. We probably have a decade or 2 at least before it becomes a major problem though.

Not just aquifers, but surface water as well, and more like one decade than two in some cases, I think:

Changes in climate and strong demand for Colorado River water could drain Lake Mead by 2021, triggering severe shortages across the region, scientists said in an unusually bleak water-supply outlook. Scientists working at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Tuesday the West's largest storage reservoir faces increasing threats from a combination of factors including human-induced climate change, growing populations and natural forces like drought and evaporation.
A dried up Lake Mead would be a disaster for Arizona and Nevada.
When water levels dropped below 1,000 feet in elevation, Nevada would lose access to all its river allocation. Arizona would lose much of the water that flows through the Central Arizona Project canal. Power production also would cease before the lake level reached bottom, researchers said.
There is a 50% chance Lake Mead will run dry by 2021 and a 10% chance it will run out of usable water by 2014, if the drought deepens and water use climbs, researchers said.

Source. And I don't think Dr. Faber should be so confident about Australia either:

New analysis shows that the water scarcity being experienced in southeast Australia started up to 15 years ago.


While the results from the work by senior CSIRO researcher, Dr Albert van Dijk, may not surprise many people, it provides scientific evidence of the shift.
The finding follows the first ever national and comprehensive analysis of 30 years of on-ground and satellite observations of Australia’s water resources.
Dr Albert van Dijk told the the Sixth International Scientific Conference on the Global Energy and Water Cycle in Melbourne on August 27 that the analysis provides a valuable, new insight into the country’s water balance.
”The data shows the first signs of diminishing water availability in Australia appeared somewhere between 1993 and 1996 when the rate of water resource capture and use started to exceed the rate of streamflow supply,” Dr van Dijk said.

Source.

[sunskyfan]

Re: machine gun marc

Yes, the "Cadillac Desert" of the Southwest is in for some issues but not the bread basket where it counts.

[dummass]

Re: machine gun marc

I disagree with the 'self sufficient and on a farm with a machine gun' idea. It’s relatively easy to take the gun and farm away from the owner.

A better idea is to be on a self sufficient go-anywhere sailboat. Catch rainwater for the water tank; catch fish for the next meal; wind generators and solar panels keep the batteries happy..etc…

If you don’t like your neighbor in a marina – move to a different slip. Don’t like the marina where you are staying – move. If you don’t like your host country – move to a better one.

You can’t do that hunkered down on a piece of ground.

My wife and I left the U.S. on our sailboat over 8 years ago; it's equiped as you described. There were many months at anchor in the Sea of Cortez, eating mostly from the bounty of the sea. The days get very long and time slows down. I would recommend the adventure to anyone.

That said, we bought a farm in Panama. Still have the boat and enjoy taking trips out to the islands, but when the shit hits the fan, we will be on the farm. You can never be totally independent on a boat. For short periods of time, perhaps, but you need supplies and boat parts and fuel (even if it is a sailboat). In order to buy provisions, you will need money; there is no room on a typical sailboat for trade goods. During a crises, money would likely be the problem, so, how would you provision the boat? :eek:

[FRED]

Doomer's Room

I think we need a new subforum of Rant and Rave called Doomer's Room where these threads can go so we don't scare the crap out of casual visitors to the News forums.

[jimmygu3]

Re: Doomer's Room

I think we need a new subforum of Rant and Rave called Doomer's Room where these threads can go so we don't scare the crap out of casual visitors to the News forums.

That's a good idea. I have told a few select friends and colleagues about iTulip but I always have to caution them to look for EJ's articles before being scared off by the 'gold, guns and MREs crowd'. Not saying they're wrong, just that doomer talk is a big turnoff to some newbies. It undermines the site's other highly intellectual content and EJ's positive (eventual) outlook for the US and world economies.

-Jimmy

[Tybee Island]

Re: machine gun marc

Bought my new machine gun today.

[sunskyfan]

Re: machine gun marc

I think, as typical in this crisis, that China represents something else than a financial threat of some kind. What is interesting about China is watching the hybridization of a "communistic" political system with free markets. If they continue to be as successful as they have been then the world might look to China as a model more than a trading partner. That may be a greater existential challenge to the "idea" of the United States than the usual bad guy or evil ideology.