Horace Heffner wrote:
The lesson to be taken from this is to prepare as best as possible for all contingencies. This is always good advice, but more so than ever in a time of instability. Prepare to take care of yourself and family, and beyond that your extended family and even neighbors if possible, in the event of major disruptions.
I see no point preparing for such drastic disruptions. I think a person should prepare for likely disruptions that an ordinary person can hope to deal with, such as being fired from work. In other words if I were living close to the edge financially, I would put more money in the bank, renegotiate the mortgage before I get into trouble, and cancel unnecessary luxuries. If you do lose your job, it would be a good idea to buy a large sack of rice. But there is no way to protect against a situation in which rice becomes unavailable in the US, and that is extremely unlikely to happen.
If the situation becomes so drastic that there are food shortages, an ordinary urban American would be helpless. People living in the countryside could plant vegetable gardens. That might not be a bad idea, even now.
Along the same lines, a prudent person with family responsibilities should be prepared to be killed at any time, in an auto accident, for example. You should buy life insurance. But if there is an outbreak of bird influenza that kills millions of people, obviously the life insurance companies will all go bankrupt. In that case you will probably die and if anyone in your family survives, they will be destitute. But so will millions of other survivors. Society will surely reorganize and take care of them. So there is no point to trying to find an individual solution to this potential catastrophe.
Frankly, I think it is better to plan for success and to work toward success rather than toward failure, or to plan with the assumption that we will fail. That's why I favor trying to make cold fusion work, rather than trying to narrow our horizons and make people live with 18th century levels of energy consumption. I favor "direct, vigorous action" that fixes problems, rather than living with problems, working around them, or merely surviving them. I refer to FDR's words:
"We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership."
No one should distrust the future of essential democracy, or doubt the will, skill and bravery of the U.S. population. People who have done that in the past, such as the Confederate Army and the Imperial Japanese Navy, lost decisively. That is something that Obama and I agree on 100%. I am very pleased to hear it from an American politician. "No you can't" is the wrong message, to the wrong people, as history has shown time after time over the last 400 years. McCain lost the election with his negativity, such as when he famously said: "Now, my friends, I'll offer anybody here fifty dollars an hour if you'll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So, ok, sign up! Ok, when you sign up, you sign up, and you'll be there for the whole season, the whole season, ok, not just one day. Because you can't do it, my friend." Anyone who bets against us -- or against science, technology and progress, as the Luddites and anti-evolutionists are wont to do -- is betting on the wrong horse.
- Jed
