Quote number one

“I’m living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.” – H.H. Munro

This is the start of a little series I’m going to do over the Christmas season on money quotes. Fortunately this quote doesn’t apply to me at the moment but apparently it does apply to a lot of my neighbours. We were recently informed by the Bank of Canada that on average Canadians owe about $1.50 for every dollar of disposable income or about which is apparently about $91,000 each on average. I tihnk that we should then pile on each person’s share of government debt - $16,000 for living in Canada, another $19,000 for living in Ontario.

The obvious (to me) conclusion is that the whole money thing is just a game. No one actually expects everyone to pay off this level of debt. If we tried we wouldn’t be able to buy anything new. and then all those people who make their living selling new stuff wouldn’t have a way to pay their part of the debt.

It is a good example of how money, or more specifically credit, has created a disconnect between the consumer and reality. For now everyone is happy to keep this system propped up so no one call in the debts and they will let you spend your 2013 earnings in 2011 because the other option is change.

My question is that while imaginary money can be unlimited we live on a finite world. So how far off is the day that real physical resources are too precious to trade for vague promises of payment in the distant future?

The Moneyless Man

I finished the moneyless man. It was a quick easy read. The most
striking thing about the book was that he had nothing to write about. A
lot of it felt like padding as he talked about the other people around
the world living without money, excessive dwelling on how meeting the
publicity demands was the most trying aspect of the year and on his free
feast to start and end. I got the impression that if he wasn’t
disappointed in how easy it was to live without money his publisher sure
was so he was trying to simulate some struggle.

The conclusion was essentially for a few people to live off the waste
of our current system it is no problem. It would have been more
challenging if he had had competition but he didn’t so it was easy.
The fact that the bitterest part of winter was about minus three degrees
Celsius didn’t hurt either.

In honour of his experiment I’m going to do a series of posts about
ideas about money for this the most consumerist of seasons.

The Divide

I went up to the land yesterday and every time I go I see something along the 37 that reminds me why I don’t want to live in a city anymore. Right on the side of the highway there is a house with a sign offering “New Honey”. The honey sits on a bench under the sign in mason jars with a tupperware container to hold your payment. I don’t know how many times this unattended set-up has been robbed of either honey or cash but apparently not so much as to deter the proprietor. In ten years of living in cities I’ve never seen such a set-up - roadside selling on the honour system.

The city is not nearly as bad as the nightly news would have you believe. Why just the other week I went to Hogtown in the wee hours of the morning and didn’t get shot. Never even got shot at actually. Listening to the evening news I’m not sure if I should be relived or insulted?

Seriously though, the roadside honey stand to me speaks to a different relationship to your environment in rural areas. I’m not talking about smurf villages or anything but just a less adversarial environment than the metropolis.

Asset or Liability?

I watched the Doczone on CBC last week, well the first part. The superior attitude made me turn it off. It got my thinking about why does the mainstream media (MSM) always seem to ridicule the survivalist community? I should mention the episode was all about laughing at the nut-jobs preparing for the latest end of the world date - 2012. Or at least that is what it seemed like to me.

So why is that? Is it meant to comfort the mob? An attempt to reassure people that the government has everything under control despite all the Cassandra's in science and economics chirping about looming disasters? In the MSM there appears to be overwhelming support for the three day emergency kit but scorn for a three week or three year preparedness plan. In the event of a massive breakdown or even a localized Katrina-like disaster would you be an asset or a liability to your community?

In my real life I’m not losing a lot of sleep over the world coming to and end in 2012 but I do accept that our society (Western Christendom or global village, take your pick) is no more invincible than societies of the past. Some of which have collapsed in spectacular fashion so if some people need an imminent date like December 21st, 2012 as motivation to become more prepared or self sufficient I’m all for it and a responsible MSM would be too.