Survival__ Structuring Prosperity for Yourself and the Nation - Charles George Smith [133]
Unfortunately, storm clouds have been scudding across the darkening sky for some time, and just as the ship drifts to a halt and wallows heavily as it takes on water, a "100-year storm" rises up to batter the sinking ship.
That ship is the U.S. economy.
Perhaps I am wrong and the current raft of status quo "solutions" is not simulacra but real. Perhaps borrowing $2 trillion a year in an exponential continuation of borrow-and-spend credit expansion will magically re-set the clock to 1999 or 2005. Perhaps the critical FEW resources (food, energy and water) are actually abundant and shortages are so far in the future that they're equivalent to time travel.
Maybe the consumerist mindset and a State/ Elite partnership which redistributes the nation's wealth to itself is the best of all possible worlds.
As I write this in September 2009, I know the answer as to which is correct--this analysis or the mainstream media/status quo--lies just ahead. If the global economy continues to devolve as this analysis suggests is inevitable, then you will know it by 2011; you won't need anyone to interpret that reality for you.
If on the other hand, abundance in resources, credit, wealth creation, equity, collateral and income suddenly blossom in full flower and continue to do so year after year, then my prediction will be clearly revealed as wrong.
There will be no ambiguity; we will know soon enough if the ship has run out of fuel and sprung leaks just as a typhoon is rising to gale force.
While we await the judgment of reality--devolution or re-set of exponential-credit "prosperity" --I offer an integrated response drawn from the preceding integrated understanding for your consideration.
The key principles of this response apply to all levels in all time frames.
That is, the principles that form the foundation of solutions apply equally to households, communities, enterprises and nations, and just as equally to all time-frames from short-term to very long-term. They are thus scale-invariant.
I want to be very clear from the start that I will be presenting principles rather than a set menu of solutions for the ontological reason that "one size will not fit all." While the principles are scale-invariant, the specific solutions that arise from those principles must respond to (feed back into) specific situations and contexts.
There are no easy out-of-the-box answers for households, communities or nations in dynamic times. It would be easy if we could state as an investment truth that "gold is the best investment." But while that may be true in certain time-frames, it is not true in all time-frames and all places.
Even as the primary sources of the world's oil slip into depletion, there will undoubtedly be periods of oversupply and low energy prices--what I term head-fakes. We must resist the temptation to extrapolate past trends into the future just as we must resist the siren songs of complacency and fatalism.
As a result, we must remain flexible and alert to feedback. If our solutions aren't working them we will have to modify them. This is the essence of adaptation.
On an individual/household level, what works for some other household may not work for ours. As a result, we must all fashion our own solutions. The Internet provides us with unprecedented opportunities to exchange solutions and adaptations, but the choices and the work fall to each individual and household, each community and each nation.
It is human nature to seek a simple solution and hold it dear, but that is not always a successful strategy. Developing a "Plan B" alternative strategy is thus of paramount importance. Ultimately, Survival+ is all about constructing a "Plan B" prosperity which is independent of the Savior State and rentier/financial Elite.
As a general rule, the larger the obligations and debt, the more likely default becomes. This too is scale-invariant