Bison Prepper

Saturday, May 13, 2017

blog warriors

BLOG WARRIORS

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note: Kunstler has a new book out. Pay back a great blogger/author.
Amazon Kindle,click here
sample chapter, click here
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Who will win the blog wars, or will it be a mere Pyrrhic victory, the corpses littering the ground in equal numbers as the Internet powers down along with civilization? Look, we all know everything is doomed. Our cities, which rely on trade and/or imperial power ( both reliant on surplus energy ), our imported oil which depends on the PetroDollar which is already breaking apart and has been and will continue to until it doesn’t because It‘s Done. Our population numbers, which need oil inputs to be fed. Our economies, which is really just our central bank inflating to weakly simulate activity, are already subsidizing fracking oil production which is both a money loser and a net energy loser, who cannot indefinitely extend and pretend. You know that crap always ends badly, else why aren’t Zimbabwe Dollars still viable? The day is not too far away when Greenbacks will join Confederate currency as spendable currency. You think gold will save you? How is retail consumer gold going to keep up overseas trade when the dollar is only backed by DC promises?

We all know it is going to end badly, and some of us actually don’t pretend it isn’t going to happen in our lifetime. Not just an economic collapse but a civilization one. Ah, but the journey getting there is going to be interesting. Today I focus on the prepper/survivalist community verses me, and who will win. Short answer, me. Hump all of you Yuppie Scum asswhores all double dog piling on to the Ponzi scheme of catering to the rich who don’t mind buying their way to all solutions. Yuppie Scum survivalist guru’s, of which there are a half dozen contenders to the title with dozens more hopeful wanna-be’s riding their coattails, are rather easy to find. Every survival blog out there copy’s Rawles, who copied Ruff and others from that era. The mantra goes as such, with minor variations to differentiate: I love God so he loves me and so money comes my way to buy semi-automatic weapons, freeze dried foods and bug-out vehicles. If God doesn’t love you, you are poor and don’t deserve to live and why don’t you do us all a favor prior to the collapse and die already since the poor suck. If we want someone to serve us fries we’ll get some more Mexicans up here. Oh, and you must support Israel for no other reason than it proves we are an imperial power because God loves the US.

So, money matters and you, poor prepper, do not. They ALL teach the same crap of buying your way to surviving. They all worship the imperial carbine, the better to not hit anyone due to jamming and if you do it won’t kill them due to it being a rimfire round. Since imperial troopers carry them, they must be neato ( never mind the troops are there to recon for artillery strikes, which causes most casualties, nor that their using a submachinegun is dangerous for them )! Since freeze dried foods cost a lot in part due to advertising costs, they MUST be the food choice of all imperial carbine toting Christian Militia members since they pay off the guru. Nobody teaches Redneck Survival, poor peasant prepping. It is all about money. Nobody survives without money, granted, but when you need enough to pay the property tax on an Idaho McMansion and the SUV you take to Costco and the Bulk Bullet Gun Store, money becomes the driving force in philosophy. God doesn’t protect you against avarice and gluttony. That is your devil talking, whispering sweet nothings in your ear about Owning The Night, Suppressive Fire, Store What You Eat, Thrive Not Survive and other homilies.

But forget screwing over the poor. Far worse, you are looking at a flawed business model. If you target the rich, and the rich are getting thin on the ground due to economic contraction, and despite all your focus on fracking oil extending our imperial power another century, which is just a fantasy denying reality ( and which fools folks into thinking no real collapse will occur ), then you have no more customers left to keep you in the lifestyle you deserve. Hence the Ponzi scheme reference. Dude, it is all demographics. I target the poor, everyone else targets the rich. The rich are becoming less and less of the population while the number of poor are growing like weeds. Who is the better group to sell to? Note of course that I never “targeted” a group but just wrote as I lived and attracted a following. But from a solely business viewpoint you speak of targeted audiences. And Yuppie Scum Survival Guru’s are a business. They talk a good game, and quote the bible like it was Buffet’s quarterly stockholders report, but actions speak louder than blog entries. Not all businesses are equally benign. Selling cigarettes provides a need, as does selling FLIR scopes, but neither of which are very good for the end user in the long term ( the cost of a FLIR, a device too expensive regardless of its supposed benefits, is far better spent on far better and useful gear that actually keeps you alive ).

So, my customer base grows as everyone else’s shrinks. I’m the winner, bitches, eventually. I can hold my head high as I cheat nobody, not in actual practice hawking dangerous advice, nor in spirit as I give away far better advice and ask recompense only as the reader is able. And your money doesn’t buy my preps, just my continued efforts at spreading the word. Today, you find churches paying preachers a salary rather than just room and board as it used to be. Your donations are not helping the poor then, are they? And today survival guru’s just preach that only the rich are worthy and only the worthy can support them. What church would you rather join? The one where the man spreading the word of God lives in a nice house and drives a nice car and clothes a trophy wife, or one whose preacher lives a vow of poverty and helps the community? Did he just compare himself to a holy worker? Oh No He Didn’t! Sorry, I can’t hear you over my celebration of myself.

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Friday, May 12, 2017

analytical/reactive

ANALYTICAL/REACTIVE

In many ways I’m quite happy I never stayed in the military. If the anthrax or depleted uranium didn’t kill me in Desert Storm or Iraqi Freedom, let alone friendly fire or leadership incompetence, I’m sure alcoholism would have ( after the military I only kept drinking to wean myself-the stress of the occupation was alcohol necessary ). On the other hand, I would have been retired long ago with a pension and would never have met The Most Evil Wife Of Them All. But what pisses me off was I really wasn’t given the option to stay in, even if it was better I didn’t. Everyone up and down the chain of command giving contrary orders, the laws of physics being rescinded being demanded upon pain of discipline, and the even worse “one size fits all” institutionalized training, all precluded a rational decision. It was assumed everyone wanted to be or could be an NCO and so the Specialist grades were eliminated. In effect, doing away with occupational training and reward and replacing with leadership training.

In One Size Fits All training, it is assumed that anyone can be trained to do anything. Morons to leaders, uncoordinated to mechanics. And if you were taught a skill you would forever retain it, no repetitious training needed. And no repetitious training even possible because of mission creep. Every MOS was forever being assigned new tasks and missions ( the civilian equivalent would be corporations halving the workforce and getting the other half to do twice as much ), both for job security for officers and for declining personnel numbers ( don’t save money on tanks, just the people to drive them ). So, as a military policeman I wasn’t a law enforcement officer. I was a rear area security quasi-infantryman, and I was a security guard, and only incidentally was I ever a LEO. I had so little LEO exposure ( or training, initial or otherwise ) that is was very late in my first tour that I even realized I had no aptitude for the profession I had settled on. I was completely analytical and had no reactive abilities ( I didn‘t realize until later this was the issue. At the time, I was just terrorized I had made a terrible mistake ). You would kind of have thought that would be something the military would like to know and test for beforehand ( as civilian departments routinely and easily accomplished at the time. Now the college course requirements get in the way of that ), but since One Size Fits All and Mission Creep held sway as the dominant philosophy, no one paid it any mind. Thanks for wasting my time there, retards.

And it isn’t even really a hard thing to compensate for, other than slotting people with natural talent into the fields they did well. The reason security is so easy is because you have an easy mission statement. Observe and report. That is all ( granted, in the military it was Observe And Stop, with deadly force if necessary ). You don’t need to stop and decide on any course of action. It is black or white. A yes/no decision tree only, not a multi-branched tree of decisions. Analytical people over think everything. It was what we do and why we can appear so smart. We think through every permutation of every possible action. The leaders responsibility, if it isn’t keeping analytics away from split second decision making response situations, is to remove all need to analyze. And if he can’t do that, he needs to minimize those situations. AND train responsiveness into people. The reason a rookie is assigned to a veteran is so that he can continue training in a real world environment under easier conditions than Sink Or Swim. The military did not think this was necessary ( remember, once you are taught, you are expected to retain forever. Plus, military personnel or expected to die as a result of quick incomplete training. It is all about quantity, never quality ).

On your own, if you are not in a job that requires Responsiveness, if you are analytical, how can you train yourself? You are expected to respond to death threats at an unspecified date, with no training, and you are an analytic to boot. What can you do? Easy. You must simplify all possible threats down to a simple yes/no decision tree. Say you are a security guard. There is never any need to think about all the different things you could do to an armed robbery. Even if armed, there is no need to think offensively because your mission is Observe And Report. The gun is self defense only. So you don’t freeze and think if you should shoot the guy or not. If he doesn’t threaten your life, you let him take the money. The gun is mainly there to keep the company paying off on your death, and for elimination of minor threats even materializing. Their money is insured. As a potential survivor to the coming social chaos and high death rates, you need to duplicate being a security guard.

Are other people being killed? So what? If they aren’t your family/tribe, you don’t fight back. If you do and die, you placed your family in danger ( this is as opposed to offensive defense, a different situation ). Are you stopping to think when a grandma, a tiny woman or a kid points a gun at you? Why? This is defensive. Defensive is allowed regardless of opponent. If they aren’t your tribe, they die. Remember, you need to keep your decision time down to nothing. You need to react instantly. Non-tribe? Die! If you are on an offensive mission, everyone you don’t know dies. Yes/no. Not, maybe. This all sucks, compared to training and role/scenario playing. But it is far better to give yourself near fool proof rules on engagement that are butt simple, rather than think you can find the time to think each unique situation through as they occur. Why do you think a military unit is so important? It is a duplication of the rookie/veteran system. When someone better at reaction times than you responds to a threat, the others follow through without thought. Instant reaction from those not yet proficient at responsiveness ( this assumes an idiot officer doesn‘t do something to screw even that up ). At the start of your collapse, you have no training and no unit with a veteran. You’ll need that inadequate but necessary black/white, yes/no decision making guideline already formatted for survival.

END

Thursday, May 11, 2017

stupid peak

STUPID PEAK

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note: one customer review a companies reputation does not make, HOWEVER, if you are thinking of buying the brand "Fenix", keep in mind this tale. Our fellow loyal minion had a model he desperately loved, which had a bulb failure. Upon contacting the company he was told that part was no longer made. I don't know about you, but if I'm spending $30-$65 for a tiny flashlight, it better be a lifetime guaranteed item. Just a word to the wise.
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I know, you know and Ross Perot knows that every swinging cheese dingus reader here gets awful tired of hearing about Peak Oil. I just covered that previously, stating that since oil is food and food dictates all human social actions it really IS all about the oil. But I feel I should elaborate, as while I’m writing this I have yet to actually post the above statement and I just read a great piece on me over at ‘Ol Remus who we all know and love, and he was ( politely! Of course, he was raised to a much higher standard of politeness than I for although I never did seek an undue amount of social interaction as a youngun and even less as I aged I was also never the focus of intense practices of genial discourse taught by my parents, probably because standards differ greatly on the West coast as compared to Dixie ) less than thrilled on my focus on energy even though he really couldn’t care less in the end ( as one of my best reader quotes goes, as you fall off a cliff it doesn’t matter if you tripped or were pushed ).

In the end it doesn’t matter what causes the collapse, true dat homey, but in the here and now attempting to forecast your near future-for obvious reasons-it kind of does matter a little. If you think everything is about politics, like most do ( as I did at one time but since I’m easily distracted by shiny objects then easily bored I tend to move on with my studies and politics became too tedious after a short while and so I expanded my horizons and discovered that politicians are just meat puppets unworthy of our attention or time ), then you get confused and think the collapse has been called off since Obammy was all about change and Trump is all about making America great again. Which, granted, almost had a scent of truth about it because Reagan was the last dude that kind of sorta gave a crap about the wee folk and everyone else from the Burning Bush’s to the Klinton Klowns to King Kenya certainly only cared about themselves and their handlers ( I understand Reagan, although my personal favorite, had issues aplenty himself of which one was he suited the Elites plans while a novice politician ), but I think we all know how sincere they turned out to be.

One of the reasons I take so much time and effort focusing on past injustices is because they are indicative of how today’s leaders will act. If every single President ever starting with Lincoln was a federalist whore ( actually, almost all were, starting with Washington, but once in awhile one would include the serfs in a bit of profit sharing ), it kind of stands to reason that every one regardless of label will also be a federal appointee that will place the wants and needs of the States and the People dead last after our colonial masters on the Potomac. If you think the government is going to allow something like an election to leave them powerless, you are NOT educated. I’m not smarter than you, just more cynical and paranoid. That is the only reason I think I might have a teachable moment in me every day. Anyway, I’m a big believer in understand root causes in systems studies. The details do make the Devil. Let’s face it, there is only so much you can talk about as far as prepping equipment, but a whole lot more on why we’ll need it.

That isn’t just an excuse on why I choose my writing subjects. Of course, yes, I need to write about what interests me otherwise we’ll both be bored, and while guns and camping are fun they are NOT life, not even for professional soldiers. Far more important to a soldier would be logistics, grand strategy, geopolitics, geographical determination. In short, the explanations and causes and future probabilities. How the system works and why. I keep harping on how you shouldn’t emulate the military, but don’t worry, the politicians and Generals don’t know any of that stuff anyway. That should be what they study, but I’m sure they stay focused on politics alone, as they are purely political creatures of a foul and horrid nature. Luckily for you, not to toot my own horn too loudly, what is important for understanding and planning is what interests me. And energy surplus is actually rather important for all that, far more so than politics. A politician may screw up farming output but you can bet they will quickly be replaced by one who won’t ( or at least minimizes otherwise uncontrollable factors ). Not quick enough to save those dying in the famine, but quick enough to delay more riots and more coups. In the end, food trumps politicians. Peacefully or not.

Peak Oil was a nice linguistic shorthand for energy surplus, supplies, and all interrelated fields such as politics and finance, but if you don’t believe in it or don’t care to study it, almost certainly to include not listen to me covering it, you miss any and all nuances and just focus on the bumper sticker version which is probably something like “everyone claims we are going to run out of oil, and has for a hundred years, and we keep finding more”. But since oil is responsible for your job, which buys your food, and oil transports farm fertilizer from afar and oil harvests your food and transports your food and refrigerates your food and cooks your food, and since oil keeps our military running and they protect up to three quarters of our oil supply which are imported, and since oil is energy and surplus energy is the economic growth that underpins our financial system and since, in short, oil is food, I think Peak Oil is important enough to NOT discard as a bumper sticker slogan like most of us do with Gore Warming or SJW Power Girls.

Peak oil isn’t important because it is going to cause our collapse ( as with ALL civilizations, overuse of the soil along with overpopulation is what causes the collapse. Everything else is details ), it is important because it dictates how you must plan your life PRIOR to the final plunge over the cliff. It is a convenient lens to view the future through, it isn’t JUST about looking in the past for the trigger ( the past is only useful as an indictor for the future anyway ). A big shout out to ‘Ol Remus, my biggest funnel for new impressionable readers. Love ya, bro!

END

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

barter town 5

BARTER TOWN 5

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note: don't have a Wal-Mart nearby? You can still get the buckets of wheat, through Amazon. You need to be a Prime member, but it pays for itself quick. Here is the page with the wheat buckets: http://amzn.to/2qW2cdX and if you want to join Prime here is that link: http://amzn.to/2qneoIa
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note: I'll be trying out BBB no.1 on Kindle Unlimited, see how things work out. Be advised.
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PRACTICAL FINANCES

Let’s take another track here and talk about how much barter is going to cost. Nobody thinks about that. It is just assumed that you pick up a little of this and a little of that and call it good. But if we are going to assume most preppers are the actual survivors ( a flawed premise as most preppers are entrenched in the big cities firmer than a tick up a bulldogs ass, but it is an equally flawed supposition that luck alone will determine your chances. Probably equal measures, but as records of civilization collapses are sparse we can sometimes only WAG ) then perhaps not as many people as you think are going to want your barter supplies. You can either stock the heck out of everything, a wet spaghetti noodle to the wall approach, hoping you adequately covered stuff most folks missed, or you can throw money at the problem like so many survivalist gurus assume you are able to and buy the big ticket items most are not able to cover. Either way, this stuff adds up quick. If you didn’t spend all that much, it isn’t barter, it is personal supplies.

Let’s say you went the high dollar amount. Few folks will stock seeds, nor locations be conducive, for tobacco growing. It is usually a safe bet, outside of places like North Carolina, that cigarettes will be in high demand. So you stock the cheapest tobacco you can, the roll your own stuff. Your local village, those who can trade, has let’s say a hundred people. Twenty are smokers, and smokers don’t handle stress well without smoking and an apocalypse is going to be stressful for anyone. But they all can only manage to barter a pack a week, rather than their preferred carton or two. That is two cartons a week you need. A pound of pipe tobacco and three cartons of empty filtered tubes is about $20. Do you have a thousand bucks you can invest in tobacco, just to keep less than two dozen customers in a pack a week demand for a year? Of course it is more than that as you should Mason jar your tobacco as the plastic envelopes fail after a time, but we assume you can resell the jars so no big deal ( other than from the point of view of up front investment ).

That is one item. Sure, you could just invest the $20 and stop, but why are you limiting yourself? If you are only stocking barter items for emergencies, like when you need an emergency dentist, what if someone else cornered that market by investing the grand? Could you get enough credit out of a limited item? If you assume you’ll need to barter more than once, a safe assumption it seems to me, $20 is worthless. You need hundreds to thousands of dollars. If you are the only one who bought a grand in tobacco rather than just the $20, you’ll set the price much higher after the first month or two. By stocking Onesies, you are almost asking to get low balled. Only bulk buys a better price since you must outlast the hobby barterists by you becoming a professional. And pro’s stock DEEP. So, you spend the grand. But that only helps you out for a year, and what if someone else did the same? You stock more or you stock different, plus more of different. It is a bit of a snowballing demand here.

Now let’s say that you just went with the Many Items strategy. I went with a random sites “top forty” list. We’ll pick the cheapest way and eliminate the easily duplicated items ( booze is too easy to make, no need to stock bottles ). And just say a half dozen of each.

Water filters $120

Metal garden tools from garage sales $100

Sewing supplies from the $ store $70

Baking soda $5

Mylar blankets $6

Matches $20

Tampons $10

Disposable razors $12

Fish hooks $6

Cheapest fixed blade knives $12

Spices $36

Paperback books, garage sale ( boxes full ) $60

Coffee, generic $30

Rechargeable batteries, in pairs $10

Battery chargers $120 ( alternative, garden LED solar lights )

Pencils, back to school sale $6

Paper, same $2

Reading glasses $ store $6

Para cord $20

Playing cards, name brand $20

Trash bags $12

Zip-Locks, generic $ store $6

Seeds $36

Flashlights $12

Plastic sheeting, heavy mil $60

Duct tape, Gorilla brand, small rolls $30

Soap, four pack $6

Toothpaste, brushes, toothpicks $15

Condoms $10

Disposable gloves $12

Hard candy $12

Knitting yarn $60

Knit needles $12

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There you go, almost a thousand bucks for variety, all the really good items, yet that is ONLY a half a dozen of each. There aren’t really vice items or life saving items. No bulk toilet paper, very few items over $10 each. Most are items that get used up quickly ( matches, toothpaste ), or broken easily ( reading glasses ). Really, all of the above is less than what you personally should have on hand for your own use. You’ll need a can of coffee a month for two, for instance. And that isn’t drinking but four cups a day each. So why don’t you figure on that list being at least double on most items, just for you. NOW add more multiples for barter. Do you see the difficulty in embracing the barter system now?

Of course, that is just illustrative of how the cost can exceed what you envisioned. You can easily cherry pick. Eliminate the high cost items like tobacco, and eliminate most of the list and just go with a lot of a few items. Sewing needles probably shouldn’t be one, as a few go a long way and last a long time. Matches are a great bet but are bulky and need to be moisture proof. Sanitary napkins can be sold by repurposing baby cloth diapers, but perhaps the practice will become just using any old clothing that isn’t mendable. Then your investment is only good for actual babies. Just beware at a buck a diaper, and the average baby needing dozens on hand, and the lack of birth control ( although countered by high birth mortality ) to get you a lot of babies might mean this becomes a LOT of money to invest if done right ( you also need replacements eventually, pins, plastic outerwear, etc ). Beware items being TOO common. I think it might be awhile before paperback books become scarce ( after being read many times, then used as TP ).

My recommendations based on consumption, cost of purchase, lack of substitutions and demand would be:

Playing cards ( $2 each brand name bulk at Amazon )

Flashlights, batteries and chargers

Reading glasses

Spices

Baking soda and toothbrushes

END SERIES

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

barter town 4

BARTER TOWN 4

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If you have Amazon Prime, a new free movie is "A Boy And His Dog", classic post-apoc.
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WHAT QUICK RECOVERY?

Very few people really devote an inordinate amount of time to thinking about the apocalypse. The guy that wrote the book on complex civilizations, he was still working at the University which takes tax money and then has the audacity to charge $35 for a small book on the subject, a book that has paid its printing cost over and over again, he had a job as a college professor. The apocalypse was a part time gig. Famous bloggers who are media darlings? A few books outdated twenty years ago were his instruction manuals and no new information is allowed to ruin that short introductory course ( I’ve talked before about Alpha Males and how they must never be wrong as it endangers their leadership-it also fossilizes their thinking ). No need for any thinking there. Novelists who specialize in the Apocalypse? Their template is the ‘80’s Post-Apocalypse pulp series that are just rehashed Men’s Adventure genre action serials. No real need to over-think the magical universe of unending MRE’s and 223 rounds ( and multi-gazillion dollar retreats ).

As a result of nobody caring enough to do their very best ( or, their very best being a sad and pathetic thing ) a problem is that we are still, to this day, operating under hideously outdated concepts first proposed during the Cold War which was both era and danger specific. Back then, everybody awaiting the fallout to settle just needed to be patient and then they would soon go about their business of being middle class Americans ( the real deal with one wage earner and almost no debt, not the sad and pathetic excuse of today’s middle class whose assets are one deteriorating underwater home ) once again. There was no civilization collapse. Fuel, food and ore merely needed to be reclaimed from fallout ( it was all rather optimistic, true, but back then optimism was actually backed with facts rather than wishful thinking. They very well COULD have pulled it off with minimal casualties, even with legions of civilians dying as they sucked in radiation along with their unfiltered Camel cigarette smoke ).

There were plenty of survivalists who actually foresaw a less than this happy scenario, who emerged in the ‘70’s. But the subconscious meme seems to have succeeded in burrowing into almost everyone’s brain. The fallout shelter norm was a few weeks to a couple of months, so when a years supply of food was urged, that WAS paranoid for the day. Several orders of magnitude more cynical than most thought. But paranoid for the time, which was prior to petroleum decline and overpopulation. A year’s supply seems to have stuck and spread its poison. If you presuppose that you only need a years emergency food, it follows that you can never have a disaster exceeding that duration. That is just common sense, but it discolors your prejudices and preconceived notions. Why, if you only need a years supply of food, there can’t be civilization collapse. There can be no way we run out of oil ( the last Rawles novel prior to his African Christian Nation Shopping List “book” had fracking oil emerge after the Blue Helmet defeat, so that middle class preppers reemerge happy and content ).

So when all your prepping activities focus on riding out a storm rather than counting on a life of storms, barter which by its very nature is a short lived solution sounds like a really super keen idea. But if you believe that civilization is indeed collapsing, if you are convinced that prior to 1492 any empire that toppled was also usually a civilization collapse ( after the New World colonization we had a 500 year hiatus from total collapse due to the surplus looted. Next stop, 500 years of a Dark Age as the surplus is long gone ), that collapse is the NORM, than barter solves no ones problems. You are getting rid of never to be duplicated again items, for short term gain ( or no gain at all if you take something like gold that can’t be efficiently used until those Dark Ages end ). Does that sound at all silly to you? All those apocalypse books you read about our super stud hero, a heroic Ninja who foolishly fights crowds for supplies but that Moron Move is never examined, how he says something to the effect that cash is soon to be worthless and so he buys commodities? What does he do next? Barters those commodities ( at the also improbable flea marker that quickly springs up ).

If you are looking ahead at five friggin centuries of no trade, no economic activity, no surplus food or fuel, do you want to give away ANYTHING from the Industrial Age? Of course you don’t! You might only use three more sewing needles in your lifetime, but what about your great grandkids? You think maybe rather than barter we should be thinking Family Heirlooms? Of course you should! Although, that said, humans are NOT wired for this kind of long term thinking ( I think the story about the Russian scientists that died rather than eating the seed was Soviet propaganda, just as the fable of the Potemkin Village efforts at painting the dead trees green was an American propaganda tool designed to smear the commies ) so of COURSE you are going to find some rationalization for spending that inheritance quickly. Or at least your children will, that being the nature of us. We exploit the low hanging fruit, run out, go kill the neighbor for his fruit and then eat all that up. I suppose the best we can hope for is that you at least THINK about the nonrenewable resource you are about to waste. If every single item is yours only, you can never stockpile enough for a ten to twenty year stash, perhaps you’ll never be tempted to barter. But having said all that, I’ll still continue as if you’ll engage in the practice anyway. Continued

END

Monday, May 8, 2017

barter town 3

BARTER TOWN 3

*note: MF in CA, got your Paypal donation, many thanks. Believe me, it far more of an amount than you think!
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SHOULD YOU BARTER?

From mutually beneficial trading, to profiting off the suffering of withdrawal pains, we then moved to life threatening conditions we can profit off of. Now it was antibiotics, anti-fever, anti-inflammatory medications, Mylar blankets for the freezing, disposable gloves to stop the transmission of deadly diseases, snares for the starving and etcetera. It is one thing to have a doctor in the village that everyone pays according to ability, a self serving mechanism as it keeps your serfs working and your own children from contracting infectious diseases so you can afford to pay more to protect your investment, it is quite another to let folks die if they can’t pay. I understand why you think it is okay. Nobody helps out anyone without some form of compensation ( even if it is only to alleviate boredom, make yourself feel absolved from owning too much wealth without much work, or trying to win brownie points towards heaven ) anymore. What I’m trying so desperately and so fruitlessly to attempt to explain to you is that you perhaps shouldn’t be thinking this way.

No one is saying, “be the only charity giver”, but rather, “don’t make money off others suffering if you can help it”. And survival barter is kind of a dingus move when you think about it. But instead of saying, yo, don’t make a buck off of a kid dying ( it is one thing to NOT help, if the resources are needed for your own, quite another to help for selfish gain only ), all we talk about is WHAT to stockpile, how to stockpile and the only thing NOT to stockpile is ammunition. No one says, “you understand you’ll kill kids this way“. No, only “don’t get yourself killed”. Now, I can already hear you getting pissed, and you’ll try to throw in my face I tell you to kill women and children of other tribes to survive. Yep, I do. And I call you a dumbass if you take any pity on them. So what is the difference? Simple. To trade, to barter, you aren’t dealing with outsiders. Only tribe members will be available. So those you want to help without anything other than future reciprocation end up getting screwed. If you are just given the stuff away, it isn’t barter. It is a gift economy which is a different kettle of fish. In that case, you just stockpile it now then turn it over to the tribal leaders tomorrow, and I KNOW that goes against the grain for most of you.

Everyone wants to believe that after a short time of confusion and chaos, we’ll all gather our Wal-Mart plastic junk and go on down to the flea market and sell our crap to each other. In a farming settlement, under the tutelage of our feudal lord, the Sunday market will prosper. And why wouldn’t it? The Baron wants more taxes and a market is a great wealth transfer. He provides his soldiers you are already taxed to train and feed, and for an entrance fee ( tax ), you buy and sell at the market. To pay the tax, you sell your goods. Just because money didn’t trade hands doesn’t mean it isn’t a market. Barter is still profit seeking. To pay the tax you’ll profit off the sales. You are still profiting off the suffering of others ( money is just a claim on goods, so more money is more goods and better goods from barter is just bypassing money as a swap mechanism ) . But in a non-agricultural setting, in a nomadic or herding society, which you WILL be establishing if you live in any area marginal for growing ( pretty much almost everywhere NOT a watered fertile valley ) because wanting to farm isn’t the same as being able to given your area of operation ( hint: most of the American Redoubt ), you had better realize that private property and profit seeking, and community living and gift economies are two different things.

If you barter, and you live in a society that is not agriculture, you are endangering yourself in future dealings. In a society that rewards greed, you’ll definitely get more of it, but in a society that thrives on greed being bad, you’ll get more social pressure to punish the greedy. And don’t say, “well, this is now and this tribe won’t transition to a gift economy any time soon“, because in tribal societies a common trait is multi-generational family feuds. What you do now is going to tarnish, or reward, family members far down the road long after you are dead and buried. You don’t think taking the last goat to get antibiotics to save little Johnny is going to be forgotten or forgiven generations later?

Without private property and without money, behavior norms change. They have to, to form a functioning society, just as inventing private property became necessary to farm the land to survive once the mega-fauna died off ( probably from climate change, but we won’t digress ). The down side of which became government, bureaucracies, slavery and other ills. The up side was that the food supply was assured. I know you think the oil will last forever and steaks will continue to grow out of Styrofoam trays, but believe me, food is historically scarce and temperamental of availability and everything we humans do is just another form of “follow the food supply”. Even now during our Oil Age, it is NOT all about the energy but about the food that delivers. That is the lens you look through to solve life’s Imponderables. Everything else is noise. If private property feeds you, the ills of that system become virtues but by the same token if communal property feeds you, you had better forsake private property “values”. Because social pressure will assure it. Live WITH that, not against it. Yet even if all the above wasn’t very important, another reason to question the very wisdom of survival barter is the nature of logistics. Barter only makes sense in a Quick Recovery scenario. Continued.

END

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