Why prep? Ever ask yourself that? I mean really ask yourself? Why do people prep? One reason is to preserve a good way of life. What are threats to that way of life? Not having safe and clean water to drink, not having enough food to eat, not having safety from personal harm, not having sufficient wealth to provide yourself with the aforementioned and other necessities of life such as clothing, shelter, and health care. What is the ultimate outcome of not having any of these things? Well, pain and suffering for one. But even more ultimate than that, death.
So the ultimate worse case scenario, from a physical world perspective, is premature physical death. So let's look at the statistically greatest cause of premature death in the 20th century. That cause is democide. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
OK, file that away temporarily.
One of the important concepts we have drawn from this site is the concept of exponential growth. We've related that to the economy, energy, and the environment. And that exponential growth is one of the factors related to the creation and bursting of bubbles in such things as asset classes. Malcolm Gladwell's "tipping points" are another way of looking at essentially the same phenomena. But bubbles can form in other areas as well.
For example, we're seeing a bubble form in health care as an occupational area. Parents, teachers, and advisors are all recommending to young people that they go into health care, telling them that it's recession proof and they will always have a job. So I ask you, can growth in healthcare go on indefinitely? I think the answer is clear to see, especially when one considers that the one of the largest (if not, THE largest) areas of unfunded liabilities (both in terms of growth and in terms of percentage of the total) is Medicare. What can't continue, won't.
Do we perhaps see a bubble also growing in the area of ignoring and violating the rule of law, at least where the connected political and corporate elite are concerned? I don't have any hard data on this hypothesis but from an empirical point of view, I certainly think so. A simple comparison of the law enforcement resources that were brought to bear during the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s versus what has been done in the present crisis provides just one illustrative example. What happens when this bubble grows to a point of intolerance by those who are being crushed by its consequences? Nothing pretty, for sure. Historically, these situations have always had an ugly ending. And democide has historically played a major role.
So to ignore consideration of this possibility in your preps, is to ignore the most statistically likely cause of a major interruption in your plans (an understatement, if ever there was one). This thinking isn't driven by irrational fear. It's driven by cold, hard, objective numbers. Let's not be panicked by it but let's also not dismiss it out of hand as some fear driven impossibility. When governments are trapped and cornered, they tend to bite the hand that feeds them. Thomas Jefferson, a man who possessed incredible cerebral "horsepower" as recognized by JFK and many others, understood this potentiality very clearly. So did many of the other founding fathers. We ignore their wisdom at our own peril.
People live and die, fiat currencies live and die, governments and empires live and die. To think that we would be immune to such eventualities in simply naive. That being said, it's no cause for sadness and mourning. It's simply part of life. And it simply underscores the importance of living your life, now, at this moment, and every moment afterwards, to the best of your ability and to the benefit of the others. I don't care how rich or how poor you are, if you live life selfishly, you'll suffer, sooner or later. The fundamental prep is getting yourself straight psychologically and spiritually. All else is secondary and follows from that. And it's something we'll all struggle with, myself included. And when you and I stumble, as we will, the thing to do is to pick ourselves right back up and continue on.
Have a Happy New Year, folks.