Episode 123. Don't Be Discouraged by Good News

Yeah, that's right. Don't be discouraged by GOOD news!

If you've been prepping for the big Collapse that many of us believe is coming, it can be surprising, and even disappointing, when the occasional bit of good news surfaces.

An unexpectedly favorable jobs report. The stock market hitting another high. How can that be? The world is going to hell in a handbasket! How can there be good news?

First of all, you need to understand what you're feeling. You're not really upset that the collapse hasn't arrived. Few people truly want bad times to come, and it's not likely you're one of them.

You're probably concerned that all your preps will go for naught. That you've wasted precious time and money. That the hours of worrying, and planning, and prepping, could have gone into something more productive.

Well, before you go too much farther down that path, keep a few points in mind:

1) Prepping for "The Collapse" has the side benefit of keeping you prepared for a range of disasters, large and small. Remember that the next time you have a power outage in your neighborhood, or nearby.

2) Your disaster preps are insurance, not an investment. You're not prepping to get rich, you're prepping so that you can get through hard times. If you're preparing for the worst but hoping for the best, and the best is what happens, then you got exactly what you were hoping for. That's good!

3) The occasional piece of good news is inevitable in a world as complex as ours, even when the long-term trends are negative.

Finally, do not let your surprise over good news in the short term influence your objective evaluation of what is happening long-term. The global economy isn't improving, it's getting worse. The stock market bubble will not last forever, it will end. Nobody can predict when that will happen, but history suggests that bull markets end with a surprise. Be ready.

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Episode 122. Blessed Are the Poor, So Become Poor

Motivation to "shrug out" of the mess we're in can come from many sources, including Christ Himself, from the first Beatitude:

And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him.
And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

Whether yours is a religious or secular life, the message of this podcast is to re-direct your labors to your true needs and those of your family. Seek liberty and self-reliance. You may become poor in the eyes of Caesar, but wealthy in much more important ways.

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Episode 121, What Should You Do With Your Money?

Is the failure of the Cyprus banks and the rumored 40% haircut taken by depositors with assets over 100,000 Euro a harbinger of things to come?

If you have managed to accumulate a nest egg, or if you are in the process of doing so, just what should you do with it to keep it safe?

Is time-honored investment advice from "financial planners" still valid? Or is the "diversification" they advocate just a small and surprisingly risky slice of the investment opportunities available?

And what are you really doing when you make an investment? You're placing a bet on what you think will be valuable at some point in the future, right? What will be the value of emergency cash, municipal bonds, and company stocks, the spectrum of conventional financial diversification, in the event of a general collapse of the economy and society?

In this podcast I explore alternate forms of accumulating and preserving value.

Also, this is the first show recorded on Liberty Ridge, the soon-to-be location of Shrugger Studio. You might hear a light gust of wind in the microphone now and then, or a bird calling as he flies by. I recorded this show on the porch whilst enjoying a perfectly beautiful day (as pictured, left).

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Episode 120, We're Not Out of the Woods, Keep Prepping

Well here we all are, in the middle of the new normal for the US, with 8% unemployment, government debt ballooning past GDP, rising taxes, increasing regulations, and rapidly growing medical costs.

For a lot of people, the new normal is starting to feel, well, normal. It's something a lot of us are learning to live with.

Tempering that sense of new normalcy is, for many people, a persistent and growing sense of anxiety. If you feel it, that's your "spidey sense" at work. Spidey sense for bad times coming.

Past downturns have conditioned us to expect that things will get better soon. Some day they will, eventually, but in my view we are on a long, slow, downhill slide that could suddenly get steeper, or hit the wall, without much warning.

The unsustainable debt and demographic bomb are not going away. The "Sequester" and how it unfolded should convince you that avoiding a financial and societal collapse is well beyond our politics. Politics in America has become a reason-free zone.

Now is NOT the time to assume that a turnaround is near. Now is not the time to become complacent. Do not put off your preparations for what is coming. Our dependency culture is getting worse, not better. The rift between the makers and the takers is getting bigger, not smaller.

We're not coming out of the woods, we're going deeper into them. Keep prepping.

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Episode 119, Will Robots Save Us, or Kill Us?

A bit of a thinking podcast for this episode.

Automation has been a huge factor in the world's economy over the years. As fast and disruptive as advancing technology has been, we ain't seen nothing yet. Robotic technology is storming the gates, and as a society, we are not ready.

What will happen to the economy, unemployment, and government debt when easily-programmed general purpose robots, like Baxter here, are able to flip hamburgers and perform thousands or even millions of routine jobs all over the country?

How will politicians react when hundreds of thousands of voters--eventually millions--lose their jobs to cheap robots that don't need an HR department, don't require Social Security payments, and don't receive government-mandated employer-funded healthcare insurance?

Will Baxter and his ilk usher in a new age of prosperity? Or will they bring the evaporation of the middle class and a new age of poverty and despair?

And what will the advent of sentient robots bring? Will a dominion of robots much smarter than us view us as worthy masters to serve, interesting equals to tolerate, or parasites to eradicate?

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Episode 118, White Rose

What happens in a hard tyranny when a small group of people resist?

White Rose was a tiny resistance movement in Nazi Germany that began in June 1942. A small group of medical students at the University of Munich conspired to issue six anti-government leaflets over a brief period of nine months, urging readers to wake up and resist the regime.

Many other students and citizens silently cheered them on, but when they were caught in February 1943 and put to death (by guillotine!) days later, their movement was crushed as swiftly as it began. And as we know now, it had no lasting effect on the German populace, or on the Nazi regime, which continued until the country was overrun by the Russians from the East and the Americans and British from the West over two years later.

White Rose is a story about the rarity of dissent in Nazi Germany, and how ineffective it was against a well-established hard tyranny. The German people never escaped the regime until it was destroyed from the outside.

What's the lesson for us? It can only be this: Do not allow tyranny to gain a foothold in the first place. Rise up before it is too late.

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Episode 117, They're Not Coming for the Guns--Yet

Will the fallout from the Sandy Hook massacre be enough to trigger gun confiscation?

For now, no. In spite of Sandy Hook, the average citizen still supports the 2nd Amendment. So do a majority of Congress-critters. The latter fear what would happen at the ballot box if they supported bans and confiscations. As long as the Constitutionally-mandated process for enacting federal legislative remains in place, it's unlikely there will be national gun confiscations stemming from Sandy Hook.

But what if Sandy Hook is repeated? What if another nut job shoots up another kindergarten classroom? Or worse--what if several well-coordinated gunmen assault a restaurant or some other public place, killing dozens, and escaping the scene. What if "the media" discover they belong to some "militia group", striking out in support of the 2nd Amendment? What if the media report that other militia groups all over the country have come out in solidarity?

Now what about gun confiscations? Whether the militia attack is real or faked, public sentiment could change overnight. We might have put guards in public schools, people would say, but we can't guard EVERY public place! With "dangerous militia groups" posing a threat to American citizens, wouldn't disarmament be a viable course of action?

And yet, it's likely an attempt at national gun confiscation would be met in some quarters with armed resistance. The bloodshed might stay localized, but what if it didn't? What if confiscation triggered a nationwide anti-Fed insurrection? Would the government risk its own existence by launching a gun confiscation program?

Maybe not. But here's one final "what if" for you to consider: What if the leaders in the federal government come to realize that a collapse of the economy and society are inevitable?

Put yourself in their shoes. You know a collapse is coming. You don't know when. You know a collapse with millions of armed citizens would mean nationwide chaos and bloodshed. And probably the end of your government. You want to prevent that.

Here is your choice: Let the collapse happen whenever it does, and take your chances against all those guns. Or try to grab as many of the guns as you can, at a time of your own choosing, provoking an insurrection that might be less lethal? Of course the confiscation itself might trigger the collapse, but that was going to happen anyway.

That sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie, doesn't it? It couldn't be a strategy, could it?

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