Why are more people not working their land and being self-sufficient? (converted, room)
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However, just to get you off the high horse you are on, having paper money to buy a lot of stuff and store it and then philosophize about the rest of the sheep doesn't make you self-sufficient either. Self-sufficiency ultimately implies doing things yourself, not buying the labor of others. Buying the labor of others and storing it makes you better prepared but the moment money loses value and you are through with your supplies, you are down the drain with the rest of the welfare recipients.
There will always be money. It may not be the money we use today but there will always be money, defined as an accepted standard for goods and services. Since the inception of coinage no society has returned to barter except in emergencies, and those incidents have been short-lived.
There will always be money. It may not be the money we use today but there will always be money, defined as an accepted standard for goods and services. Since the inception of coinage no society has returned to barter except in emergencies, and those incidents have been short-lived.
The world has never seen a country like United States. If its economy ever crumbled in a way that is very bad, me thinks you better have spent enough of your today's money to survive for a very long time....
There are winter vegetables like cabbage, kale, beets, etc. that will make a crop just about anywhere south of the Arctic Circle. Many species of apple tree actually require long cold periods in the winter to be disease free and make a crop.
I'm at the Arctic Circle and cool weather veg (including potatoes!), short season grains (spring/fall/winter varieties) and hardy apples and berries grow just fine here in our 100-day summer. You need a little more space to grow all your own food because you're growing it all at once rather than lots of succession planting that southern climes enjoy. You can extend a bit in the spring and fall with a minimally heated greenhouse, but there isn't enough light Nov-Feb unless you put in supplemental grow lights (expensive when you're off-grid).
Anyway, just an example that even in Zone 2a, with at least an acre per person, you can grow nearly all your own food with enough to put up for the other 9 months and maybe even a little extra to sell.
I honestly think a lot of people don't realize how much money they are spending on food. Most double-incomes in low-to-mid middle income ranges (i.e. 35-50k combined) would actually come out ahead if one of earner stayed home and tended a kitchen garden and small livestock. Essentially, they are spending more money buying food and paying for a second vehicle lien/insurance/gas/maintenance then the second income. If childcare expenses are included, they'd definitely be saving with one earner being a home-producer, while the higher wage earner works outside for $$ and insurance to pay the cash-only bills.
There are plenty of space-conserving fruits and vegetables that produce high yields, plenty to put up for several months without much extra work. It isn't that much extra work to run 3-4 batches of 25 broilers back-to-back than it is to run just one batch. It just takes some planning and time-management.
Of course, that's assuming that they live somewhere without exorbitant property taxes or obscene zoning restrictions, and they aren't carrying too much debt overhead or have expensive health problems.
So I think it's a combination of not realizing the true costs of selling your time at wholesale for cash to purchase necessities at retail and a whole bunch of rules/regs/laws that make it very difficult to navigate. And that's just food... when you get into power, water and sanitation most folks are stuck in "the pay a little forever" mindset rather than "pay a lot upfront" and be done with it. I'd venture to say that even paying interest on a loan or credit card to purchase the equipment, you'd end up spending less over the lifetime of the equipment than you would in all the charges, fees and taxes on grid. But people just aren't trained to think that way anymore.
There will always be money. It may not be the money we use today but there will always be money, defined as an accepted standard for goods and services. Since the inception of coinage no society has returned to barter except in emergencies, and those incidents have been short-lived.
I agree, my neighbor is teaching me quite a bit about bartering ones skill set.
I don't know why more folks cannot see the multiple benefits of this model.
There may be more than you think. There are a lot more than I thought as I found out a couple of years ago. As submariner mentioned, the model is proving to be a viable one. Their major challenges are the Feds and wacky environmental groups. That is what will prevent them from supplying the ever increasing demand. You know something is very wrong when environmental groups work to put small organic farmers out of business.
Forgot to also mention that cottage industries are becoming very popular too. Great for local economies.
Last edited by scarlet_ohara; 12-14-2013 at 01:20 AM..
Yes, and this is a very real danger that we all need to look out for. Do not accept subsidies! I know many organic growers - most of them in Maine, where we spent the summer building - who depend upon gov't subsidies to keep their operation going. Talk about walking into a trap! If you really want to be a "slave" just start accepting money from the gov't! The folks I met who did this, acted like it was just the way things were done, which is why I brought it up.
You can grow your own food; you can consume your own; you can sell locally to the community - these are all worthwhile goals to achieve. But use your own money; don't take any from the gov't.
I honestly think a lot of people don't realize how much money they are spending on food. Most double-incomes in low-to-mid middle income ranges (i.e. 35-50k combined) would actually come out ahead if one of earner stayed home and tended a kitchen garden and small livestock. Essentially, they are spending more money buying food and paying for a second vehicle lien/insurance/gas/maintenance then the second income. If childcare expenses are included, they'd definitely be saving with one earner being a home-producer, while the higher wage earner works outside for $$ and insurance to pay the cash-only bills.
There are plenty of space-conserving fruits and vegetables that produce high yields, plenty to put up for several months without much extra work. It isn't that much extra work to run 3-4 batches of 25 broilers back-to-back than it is to run just one batch. It just takes some planning and time-management.
Of course, that's assuming that they live somewhere without exorbitant property taxes or obscene zoning restrictions, and they aren't carrying too much debt overhead or have expensive health problems.
So I think it's a combination of not realizing the true costs of selling your time at wholesale for cash to purchase necessities at retail and a whole bunch of rules/regs/laws that make it very difficult to navigate. And that's just food... when you get into power, water and sanitation most folks are stuck in "the pay a little forever" mindset rather than "pay a lot upfront" and be done with it. I'd venture to say that even paying interest on a loan or credit card to purchase the equipment, you'd end up spending less over the lifetime of the equipment than you would in all the charges, fees and taxes on grid. But people just aren't trained to think that way anymore.
Thank you, you put succinctly what I have been trying to say in so many posts in this thread.
Problem is, a lot of folks don't have the intellectual capacity nor the attention span to sit down and calculate what you said on their own example. Instead, they rely on a "feeling" that everything is OK and whatever they are doing is right, after all, it must be - everyone else around is doing it, no?
Well, it basically boils down to this: do you consider yourself free if you have debt? I don't. I feel like I am in chains if I have debt.
The whole system is structured to create indentured servants from the beginning, since age 18. For everyone who wants to go to college (main source of specialization), college costs money. While you could get by with working your way through college (I did but that was 20 years ago, it is getting more difficult these days for the kids starting out), professional schools are impossible. My wife went to veterinary school and had to have debt, there is no way you can save for 4 years of living expenses and vet school tuition by the age of 18-20 and vet school will not let you work on the side and make enough for it all. So, we busted our arses after she graduated, took jobs that were not "my cup of tea" and paid it all off. But consider this - at the same time we were doing this, we needed to pay for shelter, transportation and all other expenses WHILE paying off primary debt. That means mortgage or rent, car payments etc. If both spouses work, both will need cars etc. etc. It is next to impossible to get out from underneath that crap.
So the whole system of specialization is great, except that it counts on debt to get you there. Except that the costs of everything down the road to specialization are inflated. The way the federal education loans are structured, the Universities basically have a guaranteed stream of income. In fact, they lobby to keep the student loan rates and student loan programs, not because of their desire to see more of the population educated but because they are businesses. Heck, even their endowments are tax free. Places like Harvard are sitting of tens of billions of dollars of tax free endowments.
I am now almost 40 and finally debt free and on my way to self-sufficiency, step by step. Chemical free house built of natural materials, independent source of energy, large garden with all the veggies, fruit trees, a plot of edible grapes, chickens, my own well and septic, all on 5 acres. These 5 acres are all maxed out and we did/are doing all the work ourselves. Being debt free is the biggest gift you can give yourself and the best way to tell anyone off. It even doesn't have anything with end of world crap, it's just pure common sense.
My choices of food today are:
1) chemical doused garbage that passes as food, grown and selected to have thick skin to sustain transport - cheap but useless and harmful
2) organic - healthy but pricey
3) my own - I know what goes into it, up front costs to set everything up (fencing, drip irrigation, screens, covers for winter etc.) are pricey but with every year it gets cheaper
I choose 3. People in this thread have whined about gardening being expensive, too much work, crops fail. A few tell us that their tomatoes didn't make it this year etc. That's NOT an argument against growing your own. You may need more education and you may need to put more thought into your setup but ANYONE can grow food. Heck, Terlingua, TX has a community garden and it is in the desert of SW Texas with 12 inches of rainfall a year.
Back to debt: if we had to do it all over again, my wife would have never been a veterinarian and we would have started out with no education debt. That alone would have accelerated our path to independence by 15 years or so. There is a book called "Mortgage free", I found it after we had gone to school and did what we did. I wish I had it when I was 18
Also note that going to college today is no guarantee of employment. The bar is being raised every day and now it takes advanced education to earn what people used to earn with Bachelors degrees a decade ago and what people used to earn with high school diplomas a few decades ago. Many jobs got exported to slaves in poor places, leaving Americans to all become service providers. Only that each service in the chain from origin to final consumer gets to raise the price of the final "service". Again, how many people can you build into a price of a product before the product price becomes so inflated that the majority of the population cannot afford it without going into debt. Oh wait, that's already happened.
My conclusion is that what we are doing today is unsustainable in the long run. I am no economist but logic and reason dictates me to conclude so. We are basically banking our future on the HOPE that we can keep all the people in this country employed to keep the system going. But, at the same time the same people are being poisoned by the food conglomerates, gauged by pharma and medical providers, taxed to death by local, state and fed governments, their jobs are being exported elsewhere, education to get a new job is more expensive every day and gives you less, real estate and land is more expensive, barriers to entry into business are higher due to corporate laws designed to kill anyone's efforts to get into a field and finally, jobs are simply being automated away to computers and robots.
This is a good post. I applaud you. Just focusing on the basics can make all the difference in the amt of control one has over their own life. The universe provides beautifully and yet a few turn this into a giant slave plantation. Truly a loss.
Let me just say that technology is only a tool. Automation really isn't a threat to income or job losses. They create jobs. Offshoring is an issue, however. It made the govt gang a great deal, which is why they did and do continue doing it.
It is the govt et al that has created a matrix of debt and control to fund themselves. They invest mightily in maintaining it. People are waking up and they should continue to be aware and conscious of their choices to participate in such a sick and unsustainable system.
This is a good post. I applaud you. Just focusing on the basics can make all the difference in the amt of control one has over their own life. The universe provides beautifully and yet a few turn this into a giant slave plantation. Truly a loss.
Let me just say that technology is only a tool. Automation really isn't a threat to income or job losses. They create jobs. Offshoring is an issue, however. It made the govt gang a great deal, which is why they did and do continue doing it.
It is the govt et al that has created a matrix of debt and control to fund themselves. They invest mightily in maintaining it. People are waking up and they should continue to be aware and conscious of their choices to participate in such a sick and unsustainable system.
Here is where I disagree slightly: it is the government in bed with corporations that has created the system we have today. It is the fact that you can be in Washington for 50 years in the legislature, taking money every year from different donors, the highest bidder and still appear to stand for something. It is the fact that corporations are persons and as persons they can contribute as much money to an election as they want. It is the fact that lobbying-for-money is legal and on top of that is a well paid profession that seems to attracts all the disgusting, spineless and slimy creatures. When all of the above come together in one place (at any level, local, state or federal), you get what you get. A mass of indentured servants who CAN'T AFFORD TO PAY FOR A VOICE in the legislature. More than that, they are too busy being squeezed for every penny and worked to death at the same time to care. What's the last thing you need to make this system complete? Knowing when there is dissent so you can prevent it. How do you get that? Invasive police apparatus....
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