prepare – Pursuit of Liberty

Ensuring Personal Independence

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Last week Charles D. left a short but challenging comment stating:

I will be interested to read what steps you believe one can take to insure personal independence in the event of an economic collapse.

Today I will attempt to specifically describe what we can and must do to ensure that we are not utterly dependent on society. As I said before, I am not advocating that people should become hermits or dissociate themselves from society – in fact I advocate the cultivation of connections within society. On the other hand, when push comes to shove I am ultimately responsible to provide the necessities of life for me and my family and it is up to me to make sure that I do not fail due to a failure by someone else.

Since feeling the challenge of accurately addressing Charles’ question I ran into a reference to the book How to Sew a Button: And Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew. I think the title alone is descriptive of what I had in mind – being able to do for yourself or do without in as many things as possible. Basically, you should go through the following flowchart for everything you use and find a way to end up on the right side of the chart.

This gets down to some very basic things, like electricity and the foods you eat. If you are dependent on electricity you should be figuring out how much you need and looking for ways to produce it. For food production you need to have the skills and the resources necessary to produce a minimum supply for your needs

Thankfully you don’t have to be entirely alone. One of the things that you can do is cultivate a community of people you know who are willing to pool their skills and resources to produce their combined needs. For the most basic things you should find ways to produce, or actively contribute to the production of the things you are dependent on. For other things that you could live without but would prefer not to, it might be acceptable to be dependent on a member of your personal community to produce that particular thing, but you must be prepared to offer something of value in return for their production.

One Thing Is Sure

I have enjoyed a number of discussions about politics and our current economic crisis over this Thanksgiving break. During those discussions my father-in-law made the observation that those who advocate for allowing this crisis to run its course without government intervention need to consider the implications of that course and ask themselves if they are prepared for the extremes of lawlessness and social breakdown that could accompany a deep depression.

Call me a fatalist, but I am among those who does not believe that our current approach of large and poorly applied bailouts is going to save us from such a depression. It might delay it slightly but I see us falling into the same (or worse) deep depression with these bailouts as I would expect without them. The proper solution to this crisis is to identify and return to solid financial ground. We have to abandon the practices of excessive risk and inattention to the rules of sound business that we have been ignoring for so long. Paul Krigman has a few thoughts in this direction that we should consider.

Whether we we pursue our present bailout course or not, whether we experience a deep depression wihtint he next two years or not (I just invented that timeframe up off the top of my head), there is one thing that is absolutely sure – we all should ask ourselves if we are ready for the social breakdown and lawlessness that can always potentially occur. Whether we ever face such a situation or not it is always smart to be prepared for it.