old time trade 2 of 2

OLD TIME TRADE 2

From this two part article, take away this.  Do not practice less modern skills because you will earn much of anything before or after you need them, but because besides the familiarization you begin to divorce yourself from consumerism and idleness.  What has been sold to survivalists is the idea that because they heeded the On High Advice Pontificated By The Gurus and studied and practiced an old time skill/trade ( I’ve been guilty of this myself, although in my defense I believe I was more concerned with investing money before it became worthless than the reward in the post-apocalypse.  Or not.  Who remembers these pesky details? ) their future security is assured in one way or another.  Here I am saying that local trade won’t be reestablished, not for quite awhile.  Everyone will be so poor that tasks will be tribal and equitable rather than hierarchical and wealth generating.  So don’t go learning a skill because it is supposed to be lucrative in a Dark Age future.  Without trade, most skills however desirable will be hobbyist rather than a monopoly that generates wealth.

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Let’s start with an obvious duet.  Gun making and a cobbler.  These are not skills one associates with the home cottage industry.  Well, as for cobbler, there were homemade moccasins and the Low Countries disposable wooden lower clogs that should have been easily home crafted.  So perhaps that isn’t a great example even if we currently don’t associate making shoes as something just anyone can do.  But guns, while easily compiled from parts ( the home owner crafted the stock, the barrel had to be store bought ), isn’t a cottage industry per se.  Yet I have grave doubts that will ever arise as an issue.  Kurt Saxon, the only survival guru NOT spoiled by affluence as a lifestyle until after his writing was done ( not that he was ever very prolific ), and even then I’m sure he was never drifting far from his roots, was fixated on a return to the 19^th century as the post-apocalypse future.  At the time this was quite feasible, the country far from overcrowded, the family farm still a viable concern, the founding culture still vibrant even if fraying.  Soil was still fertile, the aquifers still full.  Metals were still abundant, as was energy of all types even if insufficient to continue ‘60‘s economic growth levels.  Yes, you could have recreated the coal and railroad economy with what was available. 

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Not now, not by a long shot.  I would go so far as to stipulate that rather than stepping down a century, we have more like a millennium to go.  When the last thirty years resources extraction has been strip mining microscopic ores with Texas size machinery and energy application, and those are running out ( fracking/tar sand is the oil equivalent of this kind of ore extraction ), the only logical conclusion is that the globe has used up its resources for good.  If that is indeed the case, ipso facto, what could possibly be left for manual labor with a lack of energy to procure?  Lack of fertile soil means a nitrogen shortage, hence a propellant supply issue, and lack of low tech mining ores means no gun making.  I would imagine it is gun components salvage only, then down to salvage for archery ( crossbows being the higher tech [metal] but easier to use version of bowery ) followed by a return to natural organic archery only.  The question isn’t how we will make guns, the question will be how long can you stay better armed than your opponents during the devolution away from chemically propelled weapons.

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As salvage only is the only feasible answer to a energy-less resource depletion future, rather than extraction and manufacture, then all men are equal in cottage industry fabrication and trades become as scarce as hens teeth.  No tradable currency ( how many people do you know that have actual precious metals?  The stuff is rare by choice now rather than scarcity and we share return to a historical norm of the peasant class having zero coinage ), no trade into the future.  Forget money for the post-collapse.  Don’t learn a ( old timey ) skill on the expectation of a paying job.  Rather, embrace whatever hobby interests you and learn it for its own sake.  For instance, with a food scarce future, I know that my skills as a writer are worthless.  Even a secondary position of librarian is not worth the wheat needed to keep me alive.  Leather working is an every-man occupation ( I’m slowly collecting the tools, going minimalist at first, as discretionary funds permit.  Past sheaths and pouches for my kit, I only foresee Christmas gifts as any of my output.  This is so minimalist of a hobby it would make other leather workers embarrassed for me.  I’m doing it mainly to get out of my head, where I live all day thinking on this prepper crap.  I need a diverse hobby ).

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So, I’m definitely not worrying about acquiring old timey skills.  Defense and offense will be a quick and brutal on the job training I either graduate or not.  Not being because I’m dead.  Past that, any of the skills I envision being needed will take on the old school method of car repair.  The guys get together and teach each other.  It isn’t a trade, it is mutual survival and training for such.  A true group effort, not a mercenary activity.  Are 19^th century skills and trades a worthless endeavor?  Of course not.  Heck, nobody can assure the future we have.  Reference books and tools and practice are not wasted, even if the skill is never needed.  I’ll never own a swamp cooler, but my last job where I learned to work on them was a good learning experience.  It got me started pursuing mechanical tasks I had previously been completely ignorant of.  It was surprising how transferable it was ( RV and car repair ).  It gave me the confidence and training to try new skills.  It is never a waste to learn something new.  The guys who used to repair TV’s and vacuum tube using machines easily went to other fields of repair with that starting foundation, even if the specific skill is obsolete.  Just look at it as a training hobby, and not as a paying trade.  And it beats sitting in front of the TV for too long, or paying someone else to perform basic tasks for you.  It isn’t your fault-society rewired all of us and how we get through life.

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