Preparing for the Coming US Economic Collapse
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Preparing for the Coming US Economic Collapse
ByRon Chapman
October29,2007, 16:48
Taken from: http://abundanthope.net/pages/article_834.shtml. Published in this website on December 1st, 2007.
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G’day cobbers,
I get the impression that some forum posters think nothing is more important than being negative about AH and its goals. If I were in their situation I would be packin’ death about what the future holds – especially for those living in the good old US of A. IF one truly believes that US-style 3D life is all there is one needs to get into ECONOMIC COLLAPSE mode FKN quickly. There ain’t much time left.
Currently the U.S. economy is poised to perform a magical disappearing act.
Many of the problems that sank the Soviet Union now endanger the US. For instance, like the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, it has a huge, well-equipped and very expensive military bogged down fighting Muslim freedom fighters in foreign lands. Also, energy shortfalls linked to peaking oil production and horrendously unfavorable capital account and trade balances is resulting in runaway foreign debt. Add to that a delusional self-image, an inflexible ideology, and unresponsive, totally corrupt authoritarian judicial and political systems.
When supported by corrupt judicial and political systems economic arrangements can continue through sheer inertia well after they become untenable. But eventually the tide of fraudulent practices, broken promises and failed corporate activities flushes it down the drain. The US economy and society currently floats on the false assumption that it is possible to perpetually borrow increasing sums of money from the rest of the world, to pay for ever-increasing manufacturing and energy imports, while the price of those imports steadily escalates. In particular the US economy and polity floats on the notion that free money (fiat petro-dollars and US Treasury notes) will always be able to buy energy imports from foreign lands. This use of free money equates to FREE energy. But good things don’t last forever and so the US’s free petro-dollar scam is a transient condition. Once the US dollar loses its world reserve currency status based on its role as the petro-dollar (as is now happening) the flow of FREE energy to the US will cease and much of the US economy will be forced to shut down.
Fuel shortages will precipitate shortages of food, medicine, and countless consumer items, outages of electricity, gas, and water, breakdowns in transportation systems and other infrastructure, hyperinflation, widespread shutdowns and mass layoffs, along with a lot of despair, confusion, violence, and lawlessness. Moreover, there is no evidence that the US governing elite has any grand rescue plans or innovative technology programs with which to prevent the coming socio-economic catastrophe, nor does US society evince any signs of manifesting any miracles of social cohesion during the impending economic implosion.
US society is based on money. In the coming economic collapse the governing elite is already fuelling that collapse by pumping excessive quantities of virtual (credit) money into the banking system. The result will be hyperinflation, which wipes out savings. As oil and other import prices escalate they will be accompanied by rampant unemployment, which wipes out incomes. The result is a population that is largely penniless.
As most employment in the US is in the private sector, the transition to permanent unemployment of much of the workforce is likely to be sudden as businesses rapidly shed workers in an effort to stay viable, or go into liquidation.
In the US very few people own their place of residence free and clear, and even if they do they need an income to pay real estate and other taxes. So, people without an income face homelessness. When the economy collapses, very few people will continue to have an income, so homelessness will become rampant. Add to that the motor vehicle (mv) dependent lifestyle in most US cities and the countryside, and the result of mass unemployment can only be mass migrations of homeless people, mostly towards city centers.
The US population is almost entirely mv-dependent, and relies on markets that control oil importation, refining, and distribution. They also rely on continuous public investment in road construction and repair. Also motor vehicles require a steady stream of imports of both parts and whole vehicles neither of which are designed to last very long. When these intricately inter-dependent systems stop functioning the bulk of the US population will be virtually immobilized as public transport systems are negligible.
US families generally tend to be atomized, geographically dispersed and unused to sharing. Families unused to sharing in good times are likely to find it very difficult to co-operate in bad times. Competitiveness and personal isolation tend to be endemic already and economic collapse is unlikely to cure these attitudes and situations.
Economic collapse tends to shut down both local production and imports, and so it is vitally important that anything you own wears out slowly, and that you or someone in your family or community (if you have one to call on) can fix it if it breaks. This is another reason why AH is exhorting people to develop their community relationships.
In the US most people get their food from a supermarket, which is supplied from far away using refrigerated diesel trucks. Many people also eat fast food. When people do cook, they rarely cook from scratch. Apart from being unhealthy, these habits will cease to be viable if super markets and fast food sellers are unable to get food supplies from distant places. On the positive side, obesity will cease to be a problem for most people.
US health care is for profit. Once the economy collapses, the profit ceases, as will most of the services it motivates.
This article is based on the information in the article "Closing the ‘Collapse Gap’: the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US" by Dmitry Orlov Published on 4 Dec 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 4 Dec 2006. Seehttp://www.energybulletin.net/23259.html
Orlov’s article compares and contrasts the situation of the Soviet Union when it collapsed at the beginning of the 1990s with the situation in the US at the end of 2006. In my opinion this article is a MUST READ for anyone seriously concerned about surviving the impending economic difficulties facing the population of the US in the near future.
Orlov says, rightly in my view, that a new subsistence/barter economy emerges almost immediately in the aftermath of an economic collapse, whatever its cause.
The scenario discussed by Orlov is predicated upon the current 3D economic situation, absent ANY Earth changes or other physical catastrophes that could create or exacerbate it.
Namaste
Ron
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