Your Views On What A US Economic Collapse Might Look Like

[libertygrl]

I've been doing some research online about this topic. Some people believe it will be similar to the collapse of the soviet union, while others believe it will be worse. Here's one opinion. What do you think?

In its final months, the USSR was limping and wheezing. Then the price of oil fell sharply, slashing their income from oil exports. The system could no longer afford to function -- crash! Families began struggling, and the government did little to help them. Factories shut down, traffic disappeared, and the air became clean and fresh. There were long lines at the few open gas stations, where sales were limited to ten liters (2.5 gallons), paid for with a bottle of vodka (money was worthless). Middle class folks discovered rewarding new careers in dumpster diving. The birth rate fell, and the death rate surged. Many drank themselves into the next realm.

Despite this, many homes remained heated, all lights stayed on, nobody starved to death, and the trains ran on time. It turned out that an excellent place to experience a collapse was in a communist land, where the state owned everything. Nobody received an eviction notice, because there were no private homes. The Soviets brilliantly decided not to create a car-based transportation system, because that would have been a foolish waste of precious resources. Gasoline shortages were not a serious problem for a society that was largely car-free. Importantly, their economy did not depend on imported energy.

Housing projects were always located conveniently close to the excellent mass transit system. They wisely did not create a nightmare of endless sprawling suburbs. Instead, Soviets lived in unglamorous, energy-efficient, solidly built, high-rise apartment complexes, many of which provided garden plots for the residents.

The Soviet collapse lasted about ten years, and then the nation got back on its feet. While Russian oil production had passed its peak, they still had significant reserves of oil and natural gas to sell, and this was their salvation. It gave them another decade or two to live in the industrial lane. They were able to bounce back -- temporarily. The US will not be so bouncy.

The American collapse will be harsher, because we live in a market economy, and free markets have zero tolerance for providing free goods and services to the destitute. The bank that owns your home will foreclose if you can't pay. The tax collector will evict you if taxes aren't paid. The power, phone, and water will be shut off. The repo man will snatch your cars. The food production system will stumble. Say bye-bye to law enforcement and for-profit health care. If the railroad system isn't modernized before the crash, the USA is likely to break apart.

Near the end of the Soviet empire, there was widespread contempt for the system. Driven by resentment, many highly educated people deliberately shifted to menial work, and sought their pleasure in nature, books, and friends. When the crash came, they didn't lose their identity, have an anxiety attack, and submerge into despair. "The ability to stop and smell the roses -- to let it all go, to refuse to harbor regrets or nurture grievances, to confine one's serious attention only to that which is immediately necessary and not to worry too much about the rest -- is perhaps the one most critical to post-collapse survival."

Air, water, and food are necessary for survival. Many of us have been brainwashed into believing that life is impossible without flush toilets, automobiles, cell phones, electricity, computers, and on and on. These are wants, not needs. Orlov recommends that we begin the process of mental preparation now, so that we can become more flexible, and better able to roll with the punches when the storm arrives. Simplify your life now, and learn how to be comfortable living without non-essential luxuries and frivolous status trinkets. Imagine how you will live when money becomes worthless. Learn practical skills.

The USSR provided its citizens with a place to live, and most people stayed put. They knew the people around them, which encouraged mutual support. Americans are highly mobile, moving every five years. We often feel like space aliens in a world of strangers. It's smart to get to know your neighbors, so you can help each other.

When hard times come, be generous with others. Keep possessions to a bare minimum, so you aren't attractive to thugs and thieves. Outwardly, blend in with the herd -- dress like them, act like them, and think like them. Create a wardrobe that's in harmony with the trendy down-and-out look. During collapse, being an oddball of any kind will be risky. Angry mobs have a big appetite for finding folks to blame and punish, and American mobs are very well armed.

Before the revolution of 1918, the Russian people were well fed by a system of small, low-tech peasant farms. The communist collectivization of agriculture was a disaster. On the bright side, this inspired big interest in kitchen gardens. At the time of the Soviet collapse, these gardens comprised ten percent of cropland, and they generated 90 percent of domestic food production. The average garden was just one-tenth of a hectare (a quarter acre). The US also blundered into industrial agriculture. In the coming years, rising energy costs will eventually derail our highly mechanized food production system.

Reading this book is a sobering and mind-expanding experience. It gives us a vitally important subject to contemplate. Readers are served an all-you-can-eat buffet of good old-fashioned common sense -- the best antidote there is for magical thinking, denial, and the intense never-ending hallucinations of consumer fantasyland. It's a valuable book for people who have "krugozor" (a broad mental horizon that allows outside-the-box thinking). I read the first edition, published before the crash of 2008. Following the crash, Orlov published a new and improved second edition.

Richard Adrian Reese
Author of What Is Sustainable

This guy has some thoughts as well:

http://h ttp://madconomist.com/what-...-needs-to-know

[Danke]

The US has plenty of energy.

[Carson]

This.

[libertygrl]

The US has plenty of energy.

Meaning what? That our supply of energy will sustain us? What does that mean for the average person/family if the dollar collapses. For how long will our energy supply sustain us? Please expand.

[acptulsa]

If our very first reaction to it is to tell Washington, D.C. to get bent, our financial collapse will look like an economic recovery...

[oyarde]

I have plenty of firewood.

[Danke]

Meaning what? That our supply of energy will sustain us? What does that mean for the average person/family if the dollar collapses. For how long will our energy supply sustain us? Please expand.

Did you read the article you posted?

" The Soviet collapse lasted about ten years, and then the nation got back on its feet. While Russian oil production had passed its peak, they still had significant reserves of oil and natural gas to sell, and this was their salvation. "

[libertygrl]

Did you read the article you posted?

" The Soviet collapse lasted about ten years, and then the nation got back on its feet. While Russian oil production had passed its peak, they still had significant reserves of oil and natural gas to sell, and this was their salvation. "

I'm just asking because how would I know how much reserves we have to sell after a collapse, compared to the Soviets supply? Wouldn't that pretty much determine the condition of the average American and how many years the collapse might last?

Forgive my ignorance on this subject. (As well as a spacy head cold & lack of sleep, LOL)

[Danke]

I'm just asking because how would I know how much reserves we have to sell after a collapse, compared to the Soviets supply? Wouldn't that pretty much determine the condition of the average American and how many years the collapse might last?

Forgive my ignorance on this subject. (As well as a spacy head cold & lack of sleep, LOL)

We have a lot of NG, and that can be converted to liquid fuel too. Also, a lot of coal and oil shale, same with Canada plus tar sands and some oil.

[bolil]

Certain states would flourish, they are called flyover states and they produce the food. Montana would do very well. The east coast would spiral into violence, so would north eastern Illinois. Certain areas of california. I guess any place that is over populated by people that cannot feed themselves without jewell osco will do very poorly, places that have reasonable levels of a homogeneous population combined with the space and ability to cultivate crops (like montana) will actually do quite well.

[DamianTV]

What would it look like?

Well, the MSM will tell you to look at how well Wall Street is doing, then not say jack $#@! about Main Street. Want to know what it will look like? Look out your window.

[Henry Rogue]

So according to the article, soviet people were not affected by adverse conditions from the crash. That's because people who never had sh!t, can't lose sh!t.

[Origanalist]

So according to the article, soviet people were not affected by adverse conditions from the crash. That's because people who never had sh!t, can't lose sh!t.

This is true, you can't miss what you never had.

[oyarde]

So according to the article, soviet people were not affected by adverse conditions from the crash. That's because people who never had sh!t, can't lose sh!t.

Pretty much and on top of that , much more resiliant and accustomed to hardship , barter etc.

[tod evans]

Can't say I'd loose sleep over some of the glass houses shattering around their inhabitants...

[Carson]

So according to the article, soviet people were not affected by adverse conditions from the crash. That's because people who never had sh!t, can't lose sh!t.

That all sounded a little too pro socialism to me.

I remember horror stories of food lines and cannibalism happening in Russia. It is hard to conceive a down turn going un-felt.

Then again maybe their down turn was a shift to the capitalistic type of socialism that we have. After all our shift to communism went unnoticed by most the masses until the stealth back door socialism sucked all of the life out of the capital, capitalism need to flourish.

Maybe they have been frogs in a pot of water slowly rising to a boil there also.



This lady came from a country that was part of the Soviet Block I believe. This is some of what she has to share.

[acptulsa]

That all sounded a little too pro socialism to me.

I remember horror stories of food lines and cannibalism happening in Russia. It is hard to conceive a down turn going un-felt.

Then again maybe their down turn was a shift to the capitalistic type of socialism that we have. After all our shift to communism went unnoticed by most the masses until the stealth back door socialism sucked all of the life out of the capital, capitalism need to flourish.

Maybe they have been frogs in a pot of water slowly rising to a boil there also.

This is exactly why I said it would look like an economic recovery--especially here in the 'flyover states', otherwise known as The Breadbasket of the World. If the government back on the Dirty Coast screw things up to the point where the transportation isn't working (which I doubt), guess what that means? It means more food for us.

Barter, old silver coinage coming out of the safes and the sock drawers, small business no longer afraid to hire because they don't have to worry about what bizarre crap the fedgov is going to dream up next to penalize them for employing people--this federal government is nothing more or less than a millstone around Flyover Country's neck. I sincerely believe that the biggest problem we'll face is massive immigration from third world hotspots like New Jersey and Connecticut.

The Soviets had seventy years of The Soviet System to remove them from capitalism, and had an adjustment period. Out here the pioneer spirit never died. The 'period of adjustment' will be the dawning of a new age for the American Pioneer Spirit. It will consist of horror over what's going on on the coasts, followed by a huge sigh of relief, followed by a bunch of sleeves being rolled up and traditional American life beginning anew.

[tod evans]

Well said!

This is exactly why I said it would look like an economic recovery--especially here in the 'flyover states', otherwise known as The Breadbasket of the World. If the government back on the Dirty Coast screw things up to the point where the transportation isn't working (which I doubt), guess what that means? It means more food for us.

Barter, old silver coinage coming out of the safes and the sock drawers, small business no longer afraid to hire because they don't have to worry about what bizarre crap the fedgov is going to dream up next to penalize them for employing people--this federal government is nothing more or less than a millstone around Flyover Country's neck. I sincerely believe that the biggest problem we'll face is massive immigration from third world hotspots like New Jersey and Connecticut.

The Soviets had seventy years of The Soviet System to remove them from capitalism, and had an adjustment period. Out here the pioneer spirit never died. The 'period of adjustment' will be the dawning of a new age for the American Pioneer Spirit. It will consist of horror over what's going on on the coasts, followed by a huge sigh of relief, followed by a bunch of sleeves being rolled up and traditional American life beginning anew.

[RonPaulIsGreat]

The US won't collapse, IMO, it will decay. Why do I think that, because we aren't anything like the soviet union. Literally the whole world relies on the US Dollar and / or us imports. In terms of the US percentage of global GDP, we've been in gradual decline for over a decade, and that is how it will continue. The difference is if we really collapsed, china would collapse, japan would collapse, all of europe would collapse. None of them want that, so china will keep buying our bonds, if something happens, bailouts will go in whatever direction necessary to keep the train going for the time it takes for this global power transition to take place, as in it is very unlikely the us will be "ALLOWED" to collapse for 20 years or longer, as China can't consume at the rate required to keep it's production engine going , and they also aren't as advanced as the US economy which is mostly service industry, so they are a slave to the model for the time being.

They will rise slowly and we won't rise as fast as them, so the effect is we get weaker, they get stronger, of course, this will be masked in large part by advances in technology that will soften the impact of our "relative" decline in power.

Now, some crazy stuff could happen like a nuclear bomb detonating in LA or something that just makes it impossible to maintain the system, but I'm viewing it from the perspective of "normalcy" and projecting from the decline we have already experienced. It should take about 20 years (Guesstimate), before other parties feel comfortable without us. Contrary to popular belief countries like China need us to consume for now anyway. They won't be dancing in the streets if we fall tomorrow, they'd have riots, as that is what happened in 2008 when tons of factories shut down over there, because we stopped importing.

IMO.

[CaptUSA]

Want to know what it will look like? Look out your window.

This!

People, we are in an economic collapse. It is here. It is happening now. There won't be some cataclysmic event that will happen where everyone will all of the sudden be like, "Ooops. I guess we were wrong. The economy has collapsed. Better start bartering for food." There may be several minor events that happen, but your media will elide over the severity. Rome didn't fall in a day.

So what will it look like? High long-term unemployment. High inflation. Your money will buy less and less. Borrowing will become more difficult. Interest rates will rise (This one hasn't happened yet, thanks to the Fed. But eventually, they'll have to allow them to rise in order to spur lending.) Many people will just give up and become more and more dependent on government. Those who hang on to their prosperity the longest will have more and more of it taken away in order to pay for those that gave up. The police state will become more aggressive, and there will be incidents of people rebelling against it. Those people will be lambasted in the media and public opinion. Our influence abroad will be less and less respected. Our enemies will be enraged by our aggression and emboldened by our moral weakness. Our government will build more weapons to quell the uprisings at home and abroad and to continue the vain attempt to keep the populace employed.

So you ask what it will look like? Like Damian said, "Look out your window."

[JK/SEA]

collapse?...everything is fine. Go back to sleep.

[Tod]

This!

People, we are in an economic collapse. It is here. It is happening now. There won't be some cataclysmic event that will happen where everyone will all of the sudden be like, "Ooops. I guess we were wrong. The economy has collapsed. Better start bartering for food." There may be several minor events that happen, but your media will elide over the severity. Rome didn't fall in a day.

So what will it look like? High long-term unemployment. High inflation. Your money will buy less and less. Borrowing will become more difficult. Interest rates will rise (This one hasn't happened yet, thanks to the Fed. But eventually, they'll have to allow them to rise in order to spur lending.) Many people will just give up and become more and more dependent on government. Those who hang on to their prosperity the longest will have more and more of it taken away in order to pay for those that gave up. The police state will become more aggressive, and there will be incidents of people rebelling against it. Those people will be lambasted in the media and public opinion. Our influence abroad will be less and less respected. Our enemies will be enraged by our aggression and emboldened by our moral weakness. Our government will build more weapons to quell the uprisings at home and abroad and to continue the vain attempt to keep the populace employed.

So you ask what it will look like? Like Damian said, "Look out your window."

You don't think there will be a major re-valuing of the dollar and subsequent problems with just-in-time delivery, leading to shortages/stoppage of critical stuff like food?

[CaptUSA]

You don't think there will be a major re-valuing of the dollar and subsequent problems with just-in-time delivery, leading to shortages/stoppage of critical stuff like food?

I think the re-valuing of the dollar is already happening. As for the subsequent problems, I think that each time something happens, it will be viewed in terms of a specific problem and not in its entirety. Because of that, I don't think anyone will notice. I do expect shortages, but not in a widespread manner that would signal to the average person that there is a systemic problem. There will be events, but there are already events happening. I think this is the collapse. It will get worse, but not all at once.

[tod evans]

Those plastic food-stamp cards are all that's keeping riots at bay...

[Tod]

Those plastic food-stamp cards are all that's keeping riots at bay...

Are retailers required to accept them if they don't believe they are being fairly compensated? Or will the cards just buy less and less?

[tod evans]

Are retailers required to accept them if they don't believe they are being fairly compensated? Or will the cards just buy less and less?

Don't have any idea, I've never used or accepted one....

[Tod]

Don't have any idea, I've never used or accepted one....

Same here, although in retrospect, I'm guessing that they are just worth a certain amount of money and the money can only be spent on certain things (my local grocery store has little tags that say "WIC approved" on some items) so if things get out of kilter the "customer" will quickly be able to buy less and less with them.

It wasn't that long ago that I saw people in line with paper food stamps which would surely cause problems for the grocer should prices be changing rapidly. The electronic cards probably mean instantaneous transfers....

[osan]

Meaning what? That our supply of energy will sustain us? What does that mean for the average person/family if the dollar collapses. For how long will our energy supply sustain us? Please expand.

The US is different from the Soviet Union only cosmetically. There, the so-called "state" owned everything. Here, it is the "bank". Both are nothing more than labels denoting subsets of the population. There is no material "bank" or "state", save the effects such as buildings, vaults, and so forth. "State" and "bank" are conceptual constructs. Recall the old Indian monkey trap where food is placed into a jar. Monkey sticks hand in, grabs food, becomes trapped because the hole is too small to let his balled up hand pass. So it is with politics and all manner of other aspects of human life. So long as we believe in the reality of banks and states and "the people", etc., they will be subject to the grip and the dictates of those beliefs. Monkey trap.

The US population contains the world's sole surviving group of freedom-oriented people of not only significant proportion, but of the means to assert that freedom, all nonsense protest of rifles v. tanks notwithstanding. Because there is an agenda afoot for world government, which is a thin euphemism for world dominion, there exists a need for psychological uniformity among all those over whom dominion is sought. The uniformity must be absolute and perfectly pervasive such that any deviance will be automatically "handled" by those who are dominated. That is, they shall be self-policing, self-oppressing, self-limiting, self-defeating. Given this necessary condition, it is imperative there exist no examples of nations such as the USA that excel in any manner or degree beyond that which is deemed acceptable, for to tolerate such a thing would be to invite disaster to your empire because people will see. Seeing will prompt even the dullest among the uniformly dull and thought-trained to begin to wonder, "if them, why not us?" and thereby is the seed of the tyrant's eventual and inevitable destruction sown.

All that said, the way to reduce the people of the USA to the required standard of material and psychological life is not the same as that of the most of the rest of the world. The Soviets were different in that they were an already conquered people, broken to the halter by the master and unlikely to rise in rebellion of any dangerous significance. Indeed, we witnessed the expressions of the desire by many for a return to the good old days of the soviet, even if a new Stalin had to be tolerated. Better the bread line than no possibility of bread.

Americans are different in the ways in which they see themselves in the world. All the bad aspects of the more recent mean psychological profile aside, huge numbers of us are still endowed with the spirit of rebellion against those who presume authority over us, and while this does present examples of greater net negativity in terms of results, the overwhelming tendency is that of the good. In many this world-orientation is strong and healthy and has helped us retain what freedoms are left to us today. Those Americans will not accept soviet-style orders, but because they do accept "free enterprise", they can and may be defeated by the leverage the banks hold over them. The wallet is the approach we will see here and so long as the basics of life are available there will be NO credible risk of general insurrection.

As the economy spirals downward, which will only happen if the people sufficiently resist the current drives to further curtail their rights (gun control, for example), and people approach a panic threshold, the "government" will likely hold out its beneficent hand in different ways to different people depending upon what each party seeks. Some will want food, others not to lose "their" homes, and so forth. In any event, it will all reduce to issues of material want on the part of the to-be-conquered American citizenry. On the part of government the equal consideration shall be but one thing: authority to control by consent of the controlled.

This is not something that will happen casually, mind you. I believe that They will take a great portion of us right to the very edge of terror such that we will never forget and thereby be less inclined to have second thoughts later. That is the stick. The carrot shall consist of being provided for by the gentle hand of the Master such that we need never again fear for our stomachs aching with hunger and our limbs shivering with the wet and cold. This will be impossibly powerful and irresistible to what I suspect will be a majority sufficient to keep the rest under control.

Never make the mistake of assessing the timid man as a universal coward. When loaned a spine, courtesy of state imprimatur, he becomes one of the most unimaginably vicious adversaries imaginable and it is precisely people of this low character, people that exist in wild abundance, who will be recruited as the new force to help the beloved Master achieve his noble goal of shepherding the entire flock.

Those shivering, frightened, despicable examples of humanity will be readily identified and recruited as the new wave of citizen informers and enforcers. In exchange for their newly found positions of authority and their guaranteed meal tickets will be their unquestioning loyalty to Them and the physical signing away of their Rights, their signatures indicating their admission and confession that neither do their rights ever exist in the first place, claiming that they did constituted a crime against "society". They will promise never again to transgress and to do all that "society" demands of them. In exchange they will be fed, clothed, housed. In this scenario, those so recruited will develop a hatred for their fellows of the bitterest nature and greatest intensity. These people will become the equivalents of Nikolai Yezhov, Stalin's lap dog to whom the moniker "bloody dwarf" was ascribed. He was, in fact, so shockingly murderous that Stalin eventually had him shot. The mind reels and fails in an attempt to comprehend how insanely dangerous one must be that a man like Stalin would even be appalled.

The levers against us here are many. Our weakness is our weakness. We are not accustomed to privation of food and heat and shelter, yet these are the very things that can be so very readily imposed upon us. It will not happen all in one day, I suspect. It can be set into motion one household at a time. Dad can't get work. Money runs out. Now what? Steals a loaf of bread? Perhaps is caught, faces jail time, and what of the wife and children? Not so terribly difficult to visualize. "Mr. Average, we understand your plight and we want to help. I believe you would agree that there is not great purpose served by placing you into jail for the next six months, leaving your family without a provider, yes? But we cannot allow people such as yourself to go around stealing, can we? What shall we do?... Here's our proposal: you can go home tonight to your wife and children if you sign this document. In return, you will become a ward of the state, you and your family that is, and we will provide you with work and the means to live a very good life. How does that grab you?"

Mr. Average signs his and his family's rights into oblivion, goes to work for Them in whatever capacity they deem desired, and the world continues turning.

We are far too well armed for Them to risk a real tet-a-tet. Why assume such risk when all one needs do is turn off the spigot in cleverly conceived ways to drive the cattle through the stock yard as desired? Does the slaughterhouse worker start shooting at the cattle? No, they simply guide them to the hammer. The cattle do 99.9% of the work necessary to their own destruction. Any Master worth his guano does the same. Efficiency can be a beautiful thing, as you can see.

Because we are armed and persist in holding on to these silly notions of individualism and liberty, we must be broken by other means - more gradual means and that is why a "collapse" will not be the same here as they have been elsewhere. We remain dangerous whereas the rest of the world has been de-balled.

Finally, and as regards those pockets of die-hard individualists, They can wait them out or simply send in armed battalions of enforcers who will not be charged with apprehending, but with wiping such enemies of the people from the roles of the living. The rest will in time come to cheer these purgative actions and that will be the sign that the Master's goal has been successfully attained.

Have a pleasant day.

[Madison320]

I think the best case scenario is that the dollar collapses slowly and we "only" get price inflation of maybe 20-40% a year. That will still be high enough to make it by far the number one problem but we'll have time to do something about it. At that point we may actually do the right thing and drastically cut spending and stabilize the dollar with gold backing. Worst case scenario is an extremely rapid collapse of the dollar. Then all hell will break loose. I have no idea what will happen under that scenario.

[TonySutton]

Anarchy isn't such a bad thing