Out of my control

I try not to worry too much about the things out of my control. However, there are many things out of my control that could mess me up big time. Most of the time I try to have at least some response for those things.

Sometimes the screw ups are so freaking big that there's very little an individual can do. In particular, are the politicians messing around with WWIII on purpose or are they total incompetents? I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe their behavior is explained by knowledge of classified information. History, on the other hand, favors the incompetence explanation. It's all fun and games to sponsor little rebellions, move tanks and ships around, and rattle sabers. Then some bozo takes their own rhetoric seriously and it's a for real shooting war.

Just to pick a disaster out of hat, how about currency collapse? They happen. Frankly, I've been expecting one for years, but underestimated the number of financial tricks the money people had at their disposal. Americans don't have a living memory of a total currency collapse. It has happened in the past. Even though our financial system was much less sophisticated, suffering was widespread. That's back when most of us still lived on the farm and grew most of our own food. Everything is so capital intensive these days that I wonder if any sort of formal system will survive.

I could go on and on: environmental degradation, plague, famine, and so on. All big things that can run us little guys over. All pretty much out of our control. We prepare as much as possible, but I've no illusion that my efforts will make a difference.


So why even bother? Two reasons. My efforts, humble as they, are better than nothing. Maybe even enough of an edge to make a difference. The second reason is that I'm living better right now because of the way I live.

Maybe the powers-that-be aren't total incompetents . . . just mostly.

-Sixbears