If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

[cjppjc]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

Bam! A nail hit squarely on the head! The truth is, during this decline, some of us will barely notice, and some of us will be hit hard. Much easier on the psyche if it all goes to hell and we are in the same boat.

I agree 100% with flintlock. Ash you are correct. The real problem is today everyone has their ego invested in their monetary situation. It is no longer enough to be a good parent or good person. To be happy seems impossible for many if there is no monetary reward. Can I find a way to satisfy my ego without money?

[ljaycox]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

I plan on being part of the "social unrest"
I think some riotous looting might be cathartic after watching this slow motion train wreck.

[housingcrashsurvivor]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

...They are in their 50's and are not likely employable at anything other than a minimum wage....

I was once in debt when I was a teenager. Some company sent me a credit card. But for my first house later in life, I've never been in debt since. I'd fallen behind on payments so that first card totally scared me. I had it up to $80. Yikes. Never again. Here at age 53, I'm back in school to start my third career. With life expectancies increasing and people remaining healthier longer, I don't know why working a good job is only for younger cohorts. One of my favorite people was in his mid 80s and still going to the office when he passed. He had four careers during his life.

I'm reminded that my grandfather lost everything in the Great Depression, including his three story home and auto dealership in Seattle. When I was a boy, my father liked to drive me around Manchester, WA, pointing to all of the homes he lived in when he was my age ---- over 20 homes in 3 years. We all laughed at the story, but it wasn't until I became a bankruptcy attorney that we realized his parents had been moving to keep ahead of the eviction notices.

Great story about you and your dad. Reminds me of my step-father. Whenever we drove just about anywhere he'd always go through the most economically depressed parts of town. Didn't matter if there was a faster or more direct route. So after years of that I finally asked him why. He pointed to a bum on the street and simply said: "there but for the grace of God go I."

There's a depression era song you might have heard. Though written and performed as a bit of romanticism, legend has that it was inspired by Annie who with her husband lived in a place only for the first month rent free, then they'd move on to the next flat advertising first month rent free. Annie doesn't live here anymore....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uVtIKXA3ec

[Mn_Mark]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

Sometimes I think the Mad Max scenario is emotionally easier to contemplate than personal failure in a world that hasn't quite failed itself....You'd know that you had the old standard of "success" in your grasp, but let it slip; you'd think about all your former peers pitying you, and wondering how you'd mismanaged your affairs.

One of the things I've come to realize as I've aged is that protecting one's ego is very expensive. Maintaining social status is very expensive and you never seem to get to where you have finally achieved a level of status that doesn't continue to require constant spending. That nice car doesn't look nice enough a few years down the line. The nice house needs redecorating. The nice clothes go out of date.

It's really never-ending unless you become aware of how you can become a financial slave to the need to have a certain level of social status.

I'm fascinated by the idea of finding a way to live life that gives me tremendous satisfactions but costs practically nothing because I'm not pursuing social status. Vibrant health doesn't have to cost much of anything and it feels phenomenal. Family who love you for you shouldn't cost much of anything. Real friends that are interesting to be with and care about you and you can have good laughs with shouldn't cost much of anything either. Sunshine and blue skies and nature can be very cheap. But so often we worry ourselves to death or work ourselves to death in jobs we hate so that we can maintain a certain level of social status...why? Are we afraid no one will care about us if we don't? Or perhaps that we aren't "somebody" and thus are nothing important if we don't have a certain level of social status? It's so freeing not to care about that. You realize how very little you actually need to feel really happy.

Maybe all this financial trouble will lead a lot of people to that realization. (Though I imagine quite a few others will simply be emotionally scarred by it.)

[BillBoard]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

Does anyone know anything about Chia seeds? So far they seem too good to be true.

[flintlock]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

Bam! A nail hit squarely on the head! The truth is, during this decline, some of us will barely notice, and some of us will be hit hard. Much easier on the psyche if it all goes to hell and we are in the same boat.

I agree 100% with flintlock. Ash you are correct. The real problem is today everyone has their ego invested in their monetary situation. It is no longer enough to be a good parent or good person. To be happy seems impossible for many if there is no monetary reward. Can I find a way to satisfy my ego without money?

I was just discussing the "ego investment" people have in all this yesterday with a friend. A lot of mutual friends are buried deep in debt in their attempt to keep up with the Joneses. I'm always amazed at how many Americans worry more about what strangers think about their level of "success" than with taking care of their family. Americans are addicted to materialism. It's sick.

[BillBoard]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

Sometimes I think the Mad Max scenario is emotionally easier to contemplate than personal failure in a world that hasn't quite failed itself. If you drop a rung or two on the economic ladder, but society is still functioning, and there are still people out there who are enjoying economic success and the odd latte -- only you can't get as good of a job as you had before -- then it's easy to frame that as personal failure. You'd know that you had the old standard of "success" in your grasp, but let it slip; you'd think about all your former peers pitying you, and wondering how you'd mismanaged your affairs. Although the practical consequences and attendant hardships are in no way commensurate, it might be more pleasant to conceive of apocalyptic economic failure, rather than personal economic failure: the Mad Max scenario lets one turn over in one's mind the fear of economic catastrophe, but framed in a scenario that is more protective of one's ego.

(Note: The above is pure psycho-babble BS. Not sure why I posted it, but sometimes I get strange ideas.)

You really got something there.

For example, spending one's retirement funds maintaining an unsustainable credit card debt is one of the stupidest moves a debtor can make, yet it happens more frequently among the upper middle class. Perhaps they are confident that they can avoid BK and re-build, but all too often they end up pissing away exempt assets (the type you get to keep after a BK discharge) AND triggering non-dischargeable tax liability in the process (because of early withdrawal penalties and the pre-tax nature of many IRA accounts at that former income level).

It seems that while you are taking action to protect your ego, you are in effect destroying your self even further. Good grief!

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

Does anyone know anything about Chia seeds? So far they seem too good to be true.

They are similar to flax seeds, except that chia seeds are smaller with a more delicate husk. Flax seeds are strong enough to pass through the human digestion system entirely without being broken down, so have to be ground to have any nutritional value for humans. Chia seeds can be eaten whole and will be partially digested. Soaking them in water first to form a gel, or grinding them first, will increase the amount of nutrition the body gets from them. I keep a few bags of them in my pantry, as backup food, and I use them, ground coarsely in a re-purposed coffee burr grinder, in my smoothie. Both flax and chia seeds are a rich source of EFA's, proteins, minerals, and phyto-nutrients. One could live for a while with just these seeds and water, though it would be a pretty boring diet, and short of or lacking in most vitamins. There are more anti-oxidants in chia seeds than in flax seeds, so chia seeds have a longer shelf life (several years or more at room temperature.) One downside -- they stick between your teeth easily; I find a Water Pik oral irrigator quite useful to rinse them out.

[c1ue]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

If we are to believe Toffler, progress may well be accellerating fasther than our over-leveraged economy is declining. As just one example, imagine a google-inspired network of instant messaging that allows everybody in a neighborhood to broadcast in real time their desired destinations. So if I need to go to the grocery store, the system immediately identifies my starting location and destination, and and the network matches me with a nearby driver who is heading in that general direction. When he arrives at my house, we exchange PIN's that allow my bank to transfer payment to his bank for a fair cost of the ride, and when I reach my destination a second message is automatically sent into the ether to locate a return ride home or to yet another destination.

I am fairly certain that this idea is feasible now and that all it needs is a sufficient number of users, such as ZipCar. If oil prices were to really skyrocket, there would be a huge demand for such a service and, I believe, a huge demand for the law to protect such a system from legal attacks (i.e., you would be barred from suing any driver for an accident under a form of "good sameritan" exception). Suddenly, 40% of gasoline use (the short, local trips) could be cut in half with a corresponding rise in human interaction, something which almost always spurs other economic growth (think of the economic growth that arose from the invention of modern sanitation that allowed people to live much more closely than they could when separated by leech fields and cesspools).

This is already possible - in fact is a small offshoot of the work I'm doing now.

The problem with this technotopian scenario is that it raises all sorts of cracks by which the unscrupulous, plus the unscrupulous government, can exploit.

For example: if the GPS system is based on your car, then someone who steals your car can also buy stuff with your car. Similarly if the location system is based on your phone, ditto.

Only by implanting a RFID chip in your a** will these above be avoided.

But who out there wants the government to plant a 24 hour locater chip in your a**?

Please raise your hand and the men in the black suits will be there within the hour.

Similarly a significant part of human interaction is based on white lies.

"Sure, I'll meet you after work if I'm not too busy/in the area" - but no meeting occurs because you just don't want to meet the guy/girl.

"I have to go to the bank" - and then you head for the golf course

"I have to pick up my kid from a field trip" - and watch his soccer game for 3 hours

This is the fundamental problem of all those FourSquare/Facebook location type applications - they are either too sparse in their usage (i.e. only for people on days they go out), or they are too invasive of privacy (i.e. anyone including crooks can tell when you're not home)

As for the social use of resources like cars, the problem there is quite simple: most people buy their own cars primarily for convenience. The entire structure of America outside a handful of cities is predicated on the level of mobility conferred by a private car.

In San Francisco - the density is enough that 2 to 5 cars can be shared in a given 3 block radius, though all those car sharing companies are losing money. Yet even then all these car sharers have at least a portion of the problem associated with driving in SF: finding parking

Yet if SF is not dense enough to support car sharing, how exactly would that work in San Jose where you'd have to walk/bike 5 miles to reproduce the same people density?

[FRED]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

Only by implanting a RFID chip in your a** will these above be avoided.

But who out there wants the government to plant a 24 hour locater chip in your a**?

No need for a GPS chip in your butt to let the government track you. Most of us make one available for that purpose today unwittingly.

Defend Yourself Against Cell Phone Tracking

As described earlier, the government can use information transmitted by your cellular telephone to track its location in real-time, whether based on what cell phone towers your cell phone is communicating with, or by using the GPS chip included in most cell phones.

Many courts have required the government to obtain a warrant before conducting this type of surveillance, often thanks to briefing by EFF. (For more information on our work in this area, visit EFF's cell tracking page.) However, many other courts have been happy to routinely authorize cell phone tracking without probable cause.

Even more worrisome, the government has the capability to track cell phones without the cell phone provider's assistance using a mobile tracking technology code-named "triggerfish". This technology raises the possibility that the government might bypass the courts altogether. Even if the government does seek a court order before using "triggerfish," though, it will only need to get an easy-to-get pen-trap order rather than a wiretap order based on probable cause.

Put simply, cell phone location tracking is an incredibly powerful surveillance technology that is currently subject to weak technical and legal protections.

Unfortunately, if you want to use your cell phone at all, avoiding the threat of this kind of real-time tracking is nearly impossible. That's because the government can track your cell phone whenever it's on, even if you aren't making a call. The government can even track some cell phones when they are powered down, unless you have also removed the battery. So, once again, there is a security trade-off: the only way to eliminate the risk of location tracking is to leave the cell phone at home, or remove the battery.

For more information about the privacy risks posed by cell phones, take a look at our article on mobile devices. You may also want to take a look at the advice offered by MobileActive.org in its Primer on Mobile Surveillance.

[c1ue]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

No need for a GPS chip in your butt to let the government track you. Most of us make one available for that purpose today unwittingly.

triggerfish is unnecessary - there are already commercial services I can tap into which provide a cell phone number location.

This of course predicates attaching a cell phone number to a person - hence the crackdown on prepaid cell phones in many places around the world.

Second note: the services I use employ cell phone tower triangulation to determine location - different than GPS. Not nearly so accurate, though more than enough for vectoring the black helicopters and/or the Predators...

Third note: between credit cards, cell phones, toll tags, and various security badge systems/social networking - all the parts necessary already exist for near continuous tracking of people at least in urban environments. The satellites can handle the rural areas.

All that is needed is to suck all that info into a central analysis repository - assuming this already doesn't exist. The taps into these various systems for their component information DO already exist.

[shiny!]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

So glad I don't have a cell phone!

Regarding the carpooling apps:

I don't think I would ever want to announce to the Internet that I am leaving my house at a certain time, invite a stranger who reads that to come to my home, i.e., check it out, then get in the car with him!

Not only do I not get into cars with strangers or let strangers in my car, but I don't think it wise to announce to all the thieves in my area that my home will be empty. Use a carpool app, save a few dollars in gas money, return home to find it robbed. Or get thrown in the trunk of the car (or worse) so they can use my debit card to clear out my bank account. Or both. No, I don't think so.

I wish I had more trust in people, but I don't.

[sunskyfan]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

I am a firm believer that the trick with people is managing their expectations. It doesn't matter whether it is software consulting, dating, or coaching a little league baseball team. So let's think about the people who had or have high expectations: boomers just retiring, 401k devotees, Obama voters (soon to be joined by angry Rep voters), hi health insurance premium payers who are sick (more retiring boomers), soccer moms who thought suburbia is a good place to live and own a house, state/city pension fund recipients, students with a new degree and high student loan debt. This is not a Great Depression it is a Great Disappointment. But these were pipe dreams anyway. All can be and could have been easily deconstructed but no one had and interest in doing so. Let's abbreviate "the mad max collapse with MMC" ... so ...

The MMC for retiring boomers is they have to actually work for a living for the first time in their lives.
The MMC for 401k devotees is that they will only have what they put in to their retirement fund and not a return that allows them to live high on the hog their whole lives after 62.
The MMC for Obama voters is they realize that doing the right think does not return a monetary reward and he is just as lost as we all are.
The MMC for hi health insurance premium payers is that they don't get that pointless MRI nor do they get their soccer kids knee surgery for free.
The MMC for soccer moms is that their house is just a house, their kids are average, their lives are boring and they may have to move into an apartment if they divorce their boring suburban husbands.
The MMC for state/city pensioners is the realization that 20 year retirements and double dipping is not sustainable.
The MMC for student loan victims is that they should have gotten an education with that money not laid.

Perhaps these folks will riot and bring down the world but it has not been in their nature so far to take real risks. They will be poster children for the Great Disappointment. They will revel in their victim status.

The great era for exporting risk to other people's lives has come to an end. It's a good thing. It's time to start "living" again.

[housingcrashsurvivor]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

Does anyone know anything about Chia seeds? So far they seem too good to be true.

I'd never heard of this so thanx for sharing. Being mostly vegetarian, only eating some fish, I supplement my Omega 3 intake but do not like supporting floating fish factories. I tried flax but hate the taste. Just googled chia and pet was not the first entry. I like a lot of what I'm reading and will give it a try in my morning protein shake. As long as I don't start singing that holiday song "Chichichichia" when I turn on the blender, I'll be okay.

[Master Shake]

Re: If there is a collapse, civil unrest, or anything that stops commerce, how will you fare?

I highly recommend ferfal's blog about surviving the hyperinflation in Argentina:

http://ferfal.blogspot.com/

He gives detailed descriptions about every aspect of life there as their economy, then their society, went through upheaval. How people suffered then adapted.

Odd things, such as people no longer stopping at red lights for fear of carjackers. The organization of the black markets that sprung up. He gives lots of information about the preps that helped, the ones that didn't, and the little things that made life so much easier and safer but we don't think about getting them until it's too late.

One thing he pointed out was that people who lived in isolated, rural areas fared worse than the people in the cities. Roaming gangs combed the countryside looking for remote homes and farms. There they would do home invasions, kill the families and live in their homes until supplies ran out, then move on... Being so isolated, there were no neighbors or nearby law enforcement to call. And no matter how many guns people have, thinking it's enough to protect their home, sooner or later they will fall asleep, or be in the wrong place when the gang strikes, or be outnumbered...

Ever since I read that, I stopped fretting on the fact that I don't have enough money to buy land and be totally self-sufficient.

I've read Ferfal's blog, and while he has lots of good information about survival, his tales of life in Argentina sound like pure bs. My wife is Argentine and all her family still lives there, most in Bariloche, a resort town in northern Patagonia, and the rest in and around BsAs. They never experienced anything like he describes.