Flutterby™! : Cry for Me - 2002-04-28 21:56:36+00

Cry for Me -

2002-04-28 21:56:36+00 by ziffle 11 comments

Argentina is melting - I am suprised there are no armed rebellions.

This could happen here, easily. Another reason to keep a lot of cash on hand, and lots of ammo around (I guess I'll need to buy a gun then too) - the most valuable thing to have in times like that are bottled water and a gun. Look at it this way: you can't get money to buy food, your family is hungry, and you can't get paid. What do you do?

And the lies continue: "The government continues to release statistics indicating that inflation has risen by 3%... 4%... a trip down the grocery store aisles tells a different story. Everything has risen in price. Most items by around 35 percent, others by much more..."

Time to re-read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand http://aynrand.org/ - Who is John Galt?

Ziffle

Yup, I wuz warned bout yer Randian bent. So in the interest of of an "Objective" look at objectivisum here is the Ayn Rand Mockery Page by my curmudgeon Mark.

FYI -- keeping a lot of cash on hand may not be as good an idea as you'd think. The Federal Reserve has a huge potential for causing a hyperinflation, and while I doubt such would happen while the Fed was being administered by its current governors, there's no guarantee they'll be under control in the future. I've been worried about the US's financial condition and the amount of debt held by every family, and it could very well precipitate a crisis like Argentina's. But if the government's solution is to open the floodgates and print money, your cash will be useful for wiping your ass, and that's about it.

Shadow: I agree completely. I should buy gold I suppose. There is no easy answer. Bottled water is probably worth more than gold under those circumstances.

Items of worth is a crisis include, besides my gun and ammo collection, a large jug of iodine, plus hand pumped filtration system that removes the iodine and bugs to 3 microns. a couple extra bottles of propane, Oxy/Acetelene torch, really big bolt cutters, a real 4x4, a good set of skinning knives and a bone saw.... did I mention the sets of camo, city and woods.

When paper money becomes worthless, bartering for the essentials, and your life (or theirs) becomes interesting. Whom do you trust?

Ziffel: yeah I excel at cute and sometimes sarcasum. I like it! welcome aboard. I actually like Ayn quite a bit and personally own a number of fire arms in the range between Dan & Meuon (0-100). The url entry is for meta database stuff and will be useful in the future so keep pasting the url in there for the future if you would.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/engli...iness/newsid_1955000/1955685.stm from what I gather, the situation has been bad there for months. Unemployment is 30%. Working-class people were already stretched to the limit -- living hand to mouth -- before the latest round of inflation and bank closures. Any 'guns and bottled water' were used up or traded away long ago. The only people who aren't getting squeezed are the super-rich and the ones living a subsistence lifestyle, growing or gathering everything they need to survive.

I don't see an Argentine-style collapse happening here in the near future. The US has a much larger economy that (most anyone, including) Argentina -- that size brings with it, if not stability, at least inertia. Argentina got spanked by being a little fish in a big pond, and by being desperate and stupid enough to deal with the IMF. The US doesn't have either of those problems.

You pegged it. You have to have resources and an initiative (thinking it can be better) in order to revolt, fight or create chaos.

It seems pretty obvious to me that the net effect of the IMF, especially in Argentina, is roughly the same as the post Civil War reconstruction funds the north sent to the south: They went to the folks who were the cause of the problem, thus alienating any potential real allies in the post-war culture. Thus the U.S.'s failure to get any popular support for that coup attempt.

Finally, and I'm just rambling while I wait for builds, I think that any John Galt effect in the U.S. is going to come from the recent ridiculous ways that politicians are bending over and greasing up to the lawyers in the intellectual property debates. We're going to find a whole lot of bright technical people who will start to decide that it's too much work to pursue an idea with the company of a gazillion lawyers and "dealmakers", and instead will code for more private audiences. Galt's Gulch will be virtual, bits of network inaccessible to normal users where the real information will flow.

Oho! Dan invokes the charcoal foundry! And here I thought only my best friend the eccentric sculptor/artist/potter/glassblower/man-of-all-work knew about that.

Marc (the gent in question) actually went so far as to buy the first two of Gingery's books. Gingery's attitude, for those who haven't looked at the link, goes a little like this (in fact, I am practically quoting his introduction to book one):

"I want a working machine shop. But I can in no way afford to buy the machines. Besides, I'm a tweaker and I would prefer to make my own tools, so that I can tune them to my needs.

"So I figure, build a lathe somehow first. The lathe is the tool that's capable of self-replicating. With it I can eventually build everything else in the shop.

"But to make the lathe, I need to be able to do small metals casting without the kinds of elaborate equipment a foundry would have. Hence, the charcoal furnace."

Marc has book 1 - the furnace - and book 2 - the lathe. I'll let you know how it works out.

I just ordered the complete set, along with The Boy Mechanic series which I remember fondly from my childhood, and in the vain hope that it might distract the elder of the rat boys from Lineage.

And isn't book 2 the shaper? Here I'd just promised myself that this year was the last year I did anything big for Burning Man, that after this I'd return to my small (ie: N-scale Shay) projects.