When SHTF, what criteria determine the safest places to be?

in #economics8 years ago (edited)

I was just reading an email from my father, who sent me a nice list links to advertisments for small rural properties in Bulgaria and Hungary. He is very fond of Hungary, the prices for land are close to as low as they are in Bulgaria, but the quality of building of the dwellings and structures is better.

I think personally he should also look at Romania. If you have been following my posts, you can see a number of pictures of some villages in south-west Romania, and those houses, which I got to see up close, seemed to be very well constructed. I think they were overall better, at least aesthetically, than the ones in Hungary that I saw. I saw well enough from having traveled both along the Danube border region, as well as through the central route between Budapest and Bucharest, that not all of Romania is so well constructed as the south western border.

As I was discussing the matters of economics, I first started to talk about in the modern economy, the importance of internet connectivity is a very important part of the emerging future economy. Especially in an economic collapse, if there is still some degree of internet connectivity, and especially if the connectivity is good within the country, cryptocurrencies will become an important way for business to continue while the Big economy is falling like a controlled demolition (I don't mean that in any way not to be ironic ;)

It is unlikely that connectivity would drastically decline even if there was total economic collapse.

Much of the long-distance WAN connections depend on waystations through rural and mountain areas. Quite a number are even solar powered, meaning they will weather at least another 15-20 years before their power sources start to decline in output.

Internet connectivity is one feature that really stands out about Eastern Europe. Bulgaria and Romania are in hot competition with each other to be the number one internet countries of the region. About an equal share of outsourced businesses have set up shop in both countries. But while these two countries certainly win the number one status, and Bulgaria, has the distinction of its' capital city being the 4th most connected in the world...

The whole region is thick with fat fibre optic connections.

I did not move here for nothing...

So, I haven't even got to the juicy, fruity bits of what I realised as I was writing my email to my father. In fact I am elaborating upon the foregoing aspects, because more people here, due to the very nature of this platform, recognise the importance of cryptocurrencies and their distributed network system infratructure (and low bandwidth requirements) in the event of widespread economic calamity.

I was pleasantly amused when I put in three magic words into Google to explain to my father about one of the very important features of the Eastern European economies, and why they were actually quite unique in the world.

https://www.google.bg/?ion=1&espv=2&client=ubuntu#q=vladimir%20lenin%20policies

Lenin's New Economic Policy: What it was and how it Changed the Soviet Union.

By the time 1921 came around, Russia's economy had been maimed by the effects of War Communism. Socialism had not begun on a good note, and Vladimir Lenin was becoming concerned with the unfortunate state of the economy.
Lenin's New Economic Policy: What it was and how it Changed the ...
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/59/lenins-new-economic-policy-what-it-was-and-how-it-changed-the-soviet-union

Let me just make one thing clear. I am a free market anarchist. I am opposed to all systems of centralised regulation or control of markets. Most of the world is now in the former category, and these old communistic systems are in the latter. It is the critical distinction between Fascism/National Socialism and Communism. I am in fact, quite avidly excited about putting a match to the piles of benzin that lay around this subject, because I think that this was one of the most important insights of Ludwig von Mises.

But why did Lenin's New Economic Policy matter so much?

I am not familiar with the details of this system, but I know that I can just simply point at one fact that nobody can argue with. Most farm holdings in Eastern Europe are small. Southern Italy is the king of little farms, but number two is Romania. I have walked, or bicycled, through much of southern Eastern Europe, and you cannot fail to notice the relatively small scale of individual farms there. I think 5-10 acres is probably typical throughout the region. Some years ago I remember my sister telling me that most farms in Russia are also on this kind of scale.

Lenin might have been a politician like any other, a treacherous, lying sack of shit, but his NEP basically let the farmers alone. Starvation was a rapid result of communist centralised control of production. Revolution is easiest to stave off if you can feed the poor people. Nothing makes a peasant into a revolutionary like an empty belly. It's not for nothing that 'bread and freedom ' (hlyap i svoboda) is almost the slogan of eastern european 'anarchist' groups.

My time in prison amply proved the truth of this. Nothing makes prisoners riot like not being fed. They will break inch thick steel with their bare hands when they are starving.

Modern states are nothing more than glorified prison systems, ultimately. Folks like Stefan Molyneux, Larken Rose, and others have said this, I mention these two because they both most famously used more or less this expression.

So, I have laid the foundation for me to say that, in all the world right now, and this may not be unique to Eastern Europe, indeed wherever Communism flourished in the mid 20th century, Leninism was there. So I think the smaller parts of South America, and probably Southern Asia are also where you can find other regions where the rural regions are thick with farmers. This gives almost everyone except Australians a place to run and find rural produce that the cities can't send out trucks to pick up anymore.

I am not a Leninist, far from it. I think that in fact simply Lenin has laid the historical groundwork for a survival mechanism for the human race, for the only and simple reason that under communism, poverty is so bad that people die from starvation. NEP prevented this from happening, by making agriculture a free market. Or, more precisely, refusing to control it.

I think, when SHTF, that where Communism mostly had control, and Lenin was revered, is where the safe zones are.

I am looking forward to the shitstorm that this will bring on if it manages to get upranked towards the top of the trending feed.

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