Posted under Distributism & Globalism
Prepare to have your illusions of security shattered. This is the most jarring, as well as the most important, article I’ve seen in years, and readers of this blog will know I don’t toss such claims lightly.
Here’s the thesis: All empires fail. The Soviet Union was better positioned to fail than the United States, which has almost zero resources to rely on when systemic failure hits.
Why? The Soviet Union’s economic system didn’t work that well even in the best of times. As a result, the people had to build close relations within their communities to assist each other and barter for food and services. On the other hand, our money-based system depends absolutely on the Federal Reserve. Most Soviets kept “kitchen gardens” to supplement their food supply during lean times, which saved millions after the teetering Soviet economy finally collapsed. We, however, are totally dependent on a centralized food distribution system. The Soviet people knew how to fix things, something this disposable society not only lacks, but scoffs at. People were fitter, both mentally and physically, and thus, better able to adapt.
The Soviet Union was organized in ethnically based republics, and the Soviet Constitution recognized the right of secession — something our people believe was “settled” by Lincoln’s brutal invasion. Therefore, an orderly method of re-organizing already existed in the Soviet Union.
This quote on the difference between how each regime handled dissent is priceless:
It is certainly more fun to watch two Capitalist parties go at each other than just having the one Communist party to vote for. The things they fight over in public are generally symbolic little tokens of social policy, chosen for ease of public posturing. The Communist party offered just one bitter pill. The two Capitalist parties offer a choice of two placebos. The latest innovation is the photo finish election, where each party buys 50% of the vote, and the result is pulled out of statistical noise, like a rabbit out of a hat.
The American way of dealing with dissent and with protest is certainly more advanced: why imprison dissidents when you can just let them shout into the wind to their heart’s content?
My favorite quote, in a section recommending what individuals can do to free themselves from the harmful control of national politicians:
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (who won the Nobel Prize in Literature) developed a handy saying that helped him survive the Gulag. It may help you too: “Don’t believe them, don’t fear them, don’t ask anything of them.”
Read this article. And get to work. Now.
roho on 24 Apr 2008 at 1:44 pm #
Living in the “Styrafoam Culture” of throw away instead of washing dishes will be intresting. During the first Depression, we were a God fearing nation with zero intitlement mentalities. Hobos ate in the soup lines and kept moving from city to city any way they could looking for work.
Now we have a secular culture of intitlement that thinks the “checks” will keep magicaly appearing in the mailbox.[sic]…….A bloated Government will have no choice but to dump millions of employees back into the private sector looking for work as well, and driving up unemployment.
The Russians are certainly more prepared for a world wide depression, and the Chi-coms as well…………………….It will be ugly.