Actually, Chris, money does earn interest at the bank. The situation may be bad around the world but not all countries are in exactly the same state as the US. In New Zealand, my country, I can get nearly 6% interest on a 5 year term deposit and not far off 5% on a 2 year term deposit. Even a 6 month period can get me 4.5%. So that’s also a way to preserve wealth, at least for as long as inflation doesn’t go hyper and for as long as the bank you have your money in remains solvent.
But wealth preservation is not as important as skill acquisition. In the end, having some notional funds stored away somewhere doesn’t necessarily equal survival or happiness.
And, yes, the birds still sing, but the environment is another big, big, risk factor. I know it doesn’t concern you as much as the other factors but we’re already in the next extinction event, with species dying off at 100-1000 times the usual rate.
Concerning money, a thought struck me that the whole sorry mess could continue for years or decades (in the absence of the other factors that affect future collapse). I haven’t really thought this through but ultimately, isn’t money just a means to exchange labour? I realise that debt servicing can eventually overwhelm the budget but, until then, provided people are happy to accept money in exchange for their labour, can’t society keep chugging along for quite some time? Just a thought.
I always like it when someone takes the gist of what I say and improve it.Basically it comes down to abundance vs. scarcity, entropy vs. synergy … it seems most of us live more or less in one perspective or another. For me, it changes over time. And of course I am more or less in sync with what is really going on.
I have a hand pumped shallow well at my very remote retreat, plus a cistern buried in front of the cabin, also with a hand pump. This is because the well, sadly, is more than a quarter of a mile downhill from the cabin. And while I do have buried pipe from the well to the cistern, it takes considerable electrical power via a pump and a compatible generator to raise that water. So, my homely experience with hand pumps is as follows: get spare parts, especially extra leathers; keep the hand pump covered when you are not using it; and when visitors come, make sure they understand that every drop of water they are using is hand pumped and carried into the cabin by actual people. Finally, I agree that skills are critical and so are good relationships with your country neighbors. But a deep pantry of supplies can be a real matter of survival.
While I agree with Mr. Martenson about many things, in this case he is utterly confused. First, there is zero chance we’ll have a default on the U.S.’ sovereign debt. The dollar is fiat currency, if nothing else, the government can print enough dollars to pay every nickel of the debt. The famed IMF and “bond vigilantes” are a) incompetent, and b) non-existent. S&P’s threatened downgrade of U.S. government obligations is about as accurate as their ratings of the securitized mortgages that led to the “Great Recession.” If you believe the IMF is a competent arbiter of economics, then all you have to do is look at the Asian economies that followed their advice vs. those that didn’t (hint: the former tanked, the latter recovered). Ditto for Iceland v. Ireland, for another example. Note that the bond markets responded to S&P’s threatened downgrade by bidding up the price of the subject bonds. Again: the “bond vigilantes” are non-existent. Read Paul Krugman’s blog and editorials about this.Unfortunately Mr. Martenson has bought the baloney that “big government debt” is a problem. It’s not. Period.
…and yes, there are many other problems about which he is correct. This gives me doubts about those others, though.