(04-25-2024, 09:00 PM)Ninurta Wrote:(04-24-2024, 05:29 PM)NightskyeB4Dawn Wrote:
How do we get ready?
By firmly grasping the fact, and it IS a fact, that the entire "economy" is one huge con game.
They "take" your money and your "stuff" by conning you. Convincing you that you can get something for nothing, or very little. Then they take the money you give them thinking that you are going to get a huge increase on it, and they abscond with it... failing to deliver whatever miracle it is that they've promised you. They take the money and run, just like any other con man. That leaves you holding the bag... and broke.
Whenever one of these crashes comes, it only affects the people who bought into the con, whatever con they are selling. in 2008, I believe it was the housing market. They conned millions of people to buy more house than they could afford. They "over-leveraged" those folks, got them to go into debt in hopes of getting even more, and even the little they had was taken away.
Same for the "tech bubble", and even the crash of 1929. No one can lose everything if they don't bet everything on a maybe. They don't lose what they haven't bet on the con.
All good con games prey on people's greed. They promise folks something for nothing, their greed kicks in, they put everything they have into the kitty under the assurance that they are going to magically get something they didn't really pay enough for, then POOF! It's all gone. the money AND the promise of riches. The victim is then left sitting flat on their asses and broke, wondering what hit them, and seldom if ever realizing that they werre done in by a con man preying on their own greed.
Anyone with a mortgage, or a "second mortgage", or any of the other devices that con men use to part them from their money WILL lose what they gave to the con men. If they own their property free and clear, then they're relatively safe. They have a patch to grow their grub on if push comes to shove that the banks can't take away from them if they miss a payment due to an economic crash. If, on the other hand, their land, home, or security rest on a mortgage, then they'd better be figuring out a way to survive before the con crash comes.
Anything you owe money for - car, house, land, etc. - can and will be taken from you when a crash comes. They will keep what you've paid in to it, take the property, and then sell it to the next mark they can line up and do it all over again to the next guy... leaving you with nothing, not the money you already paid them, and not the property you paid it for.
That is how they get richer and you get poorer, until folks have "lost everything". They lose everything because they bet everything on the con. What they don't bet, they don't lose. Meanwhile, the con men running the con transfer the money of the marks from the marks to themselves, and then search out more marks. it's how con games have worked for centuries.
------------------------------------
One of the differences between now and the crash of 1929 is demographics. There is a much higher percentage of people living in cities now than there was then.. City people cannot fend for themselves in a crash. No matter what they have, no matter what they manage to hang on to, they won't have enough land to feed themselves. There are just too may people per square foot to have enough free land to grow food. Life in the cities will be bad. Very bad.
Out in the countryside, a great many farmers are over-leveraged, having to borrow money each year - betting against their crop - to be sustainable. When the economy crashes, their money becomes useless, and the banks foreclose on their collateral... usually that means the farm land. So then they have nothing to farm on, either. They cannot feed themselves even, much less produce excess to feed the cities with.
Small freeholders, folks that own their land free and clear, will still be able to feed themselves if they have the seed and stuff to plant, and the critters to raise for meat.
But all those hungry folks are going to be eyeballing the freeholders land and crops.
Things are gonna be tough all over. The bad thing about small freeholds is that the crops won't be able to run from raiders. The next best thing is to be prepared to use those raiders to fertilize the next year's crop.
Yeah, that might sound cold, but survival is a cold business some times. You do what you gotta do to make sure your kids get to eat.
Never put yourself in a position to have to be one of the raiders. You might be next year's fertilizer. Never put yourself in the position to have to be a refugee. they get it from all sides, and never win. If you don't believe me, take a trip to the Mexican border some time and have a gander at the "rape trees". That's not just a cartel thing. Wherever refugees are found, predators will also be found, preying on them. NEVER be a refugee.
Evil walks this world. You don't have to be evil, but you do sometimes have to be cold. That's not evil, it's survival.
.
.
Exactly! I'm so glad everything (and I do mean everything) I have is paid for. And I have two acres of uncleared land, and an acre of cleared land. I've got hundreds of trees and all matter of resources on the property.
And I don't gamble. Ever.
I'm honing and practicing and continuing to learn those primitive survival skills mentioned in the thread. That's the wisest thing we can do.
I minimized and learned to be ready to walk away from everything if I have to. If things got real bad, and a bomb dropped on all my stuff, I am mentally and physically prepared to walk away from it all, and go my own way.
As well as the basic survival skills, not being attached to "stuff" is a wise discipline to learn.
I learned a long time ago how to be happy with very little.
That's the worst case scenario. But, I am ready. There are too many signs that we are about to fall (hard) not to start getting ready now.