safe place part 3

SAFE PLACE 3

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note: I'm going to start publishing seven days a week.  Alas, Sunday will NOT be an original article but a reprint.  I have diabolical reasons for this, explained later.  Tune in Sunday.
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As evidenced by ANY large city largely sucking ass to survive ( sunny burgs in California imploded economically and don’t look as bad as Detroit because of perpetual sunshine and newer buildings, but the tax income and crime are comparable nonetheless ), you do NOT want to be in a high population urban area now, let alone as the collapse gets worse.  Big cities are dysfunctional as they are Oil Age one-off experiments ( big cities of yore were in the low hundreds of thousands, not in the tens of millions ).  Since the Petroleum Economy derailed near fifty years ago and we have been the lucky generation given front row tickets to the show, large urban areas have, even as they’ve grown uncontrollably as big corporations consolidated everything squeezing all the jobs into centralized locations, just gotten to be worse and worse places to live.  And the problem with failed cities such as Detroit and most areas of New Orleans is that both police and gangs fight for governance with civilians paying protection money to both.  Infrastructure continues to collapse in the meanwhile, giving doubt that your public and private taxes are for anything other than straight up bribery.

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The issue with a city is that they are so dependent on transportation.  In a rural area, individuals can low tech transportation, feeding a donkey from a backyard pasture.  In a city, you are at the mercy of official transportation networks which it should obviously go without saying are corrupt and inefficient.  What should be an improved service due to consolidation and centralization instead is hindered by bureaucracy and corruption.  They ruin their advantage from personal gain and the taxpayers then receive both poor service and in a lot of cases, no service.  If you live in a city, you live within the trap of transportation.  It isn’t that the rural dweller can grow all that much more food-usually the kitchen garden is the extent of food production ( salad, potatoes and eggs.  Calorie foods in grains are usually still lacking.  Until population falls a LOT, there are too many people around for everyone to have their own farm.  Those poster boys of surplus, the German immigrants to Pennsylvania, settled an area cleared of indigs ), but more the fact informal small governance is practical and much more efficient out there.

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As far as a small town that has already been through its own collapse?  Good crap, take your pick.  The majority of smaller towns took a dump decades ago, victims of national centralization in all industries ( or, complete exportation of an industry ).  Try finding a non-city that has any economic base to speak of.  If they do, it is tenuous at best, and far from very rewarding outside a few “lucky” lottery winners given minimum wage jobs which are forever in danger of being automated or exported ( who says America doesn’t make things anymore?  We make more unemployment all the time, shipping jobs overseas ).  In fact, most built up areas outside of Washington D.C.’s orbit of approval are on federal welfare payments, the sole income provider ( with the beneficiaries being not the recipients but the medical industry and the fake food service industry ).  Take Florida for instance.  One of the states with a decent economy.  What drives it besides Disney, cocaine and Cuban expat money?  Social Security.  Without it, the economy outside Orlando would rival New Mexico.

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California used to live off of the defense industry.  Rural Nevada used to be dependent on free public land grazing ( the West might make a big show of wanting their land back from the Feds, but a lot of the industries there did/are benefiting from low lease rates of public land ).  Whole areas in the Appalachians and similar are living off of medical disability welfare payments-the only recourse for poor hillbillies dying from the toxic leavings from coal mining.  Midwest farms are profit centers for banks alone and survive from farm subsidies.  And etcetera.  This is of course a huge vulnerability but it also forms a sort of set in stone social dynamic that will last until the feds perish.  Then, if the area has little enough population, the new ruling class which is already established and known will have less issues settling into power.  When you know everyone, you have a pulse on the politics and culture of the place.  There are no faceless unknowns to surprise you upon joining the race to rule once federal monies dry up and leave your community to both starve and freeze.

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When federal money is your economy, only the feds folding is a danger.  The great thing about this dependency is that you are in the one area the feds can’t control due to its remoteness and they ALMOST ( I capitalize as warning against complacency ) have to continue subsidizing you to forestall rebellion.  Hey, it’s just printing press money, right?  And there are THOUSANDS of these areas.  As long as it is cheaper to pay welfare than it is to occupy and pacify, your checks will keep clearing.  Granted, the petro-dollar demise is the wild card in all of this, as is the EROI decline.  Without energy to grow and transport, all the money in the world is useless.  And inflation of the hyper variety is of course a consideration.   So, while living in a rural area already has drug problems and property crime issues, low population, partial food growing potential and an industry far more reliable than a private corporation racing to move over to China all make it the preferred already collapsed area to reside.

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Which brings us to whether you should settle in the best collapsed area or stay in a relatively prosperous area you are in now.  Should you hunker down and ride it out?  For purposes of discussion we assume you are the average suburbanite communing from a bedroom community to a job some distance away.  This is the default arrangement for most preppers.  But does it make sense compared to immigrating to a collapsed area?  That comparison tomorrow, the final in the series. 

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