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bokov comments on US default as a risk to mitigate - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (120)
Beans, check.
Ammo, check.
Good to have around in general principle regardless of how the economy is doing at the moment. Store well, have intrinsic value, and are small enough to barter. I think of societal collapse as happening in stages:
Market infrastructure (banks, stock exchanges) still hobbling along in the midst of deep recession. Good time to have metals, short/liquidate stocks.
Market infrastructure crumbles. People starting to use precious metals. Good time to convert surplus precious metals into portable objects that are intrinsically useful and easy to trade. Or real estate if you can swing it.
Collapse of distribution networks means that certain goods are unavailable at any price in certain areas. Good time to already be stocked up on those goods, and ready to barter them, to expand purchasing power.
Find other people sympathetic to restoration. Use their help and whatever resources you've managed to secure in the previous steps to get the civilization ball rolling again.
...have you been around (as an intertubes-reading creature) in 1999? Beans and ammo were REALLY popular then. Among a certain kind of crowd, that is.
Sure. Beans and ammo were really popular among IT dudes like me who understood the kind of shit-storm that was brewing and was narrowly averted. Silver dollars were also popular, and I still have mine stacked up somewhere.
Now it's vanished down the memory hole except for occasional cameo appearances as an example of why you shouldn't pay attention to alarmists.
I drew a different lesson from the experience: not all dire predictions are self-fulfilling. Some are self-negating, and they look exactly like that one. I fondly hope all today's doomsday alarmism also turns out to be this "unfounded".