frostbite
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Post by frostbite on May 16, 2022 18:12:22 GMT 10
And a PM who gets $10 K per WEEK. You know you own an old tractor when.....You cant use your tractor to slash the yard because there are too many other tractors around. Chicken feed. Imagine being the big boss, all the responsibility and criticism falling on your shoulders, getting $500k a year whilst one of your lowly team leaders is paid $8 million a year. Scomo gets paid stuff all.
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Post by spinifex on May 16, 2022 19:33:02 GMT 10
This was one of the books that turned me from a ‘prepper’/survivalist into a full blown collapsenik 15 years ago. For me the preparing for floods and fires and having a few months food set aside was always the easy bit. Getting your head around an actual failure of the world as we know it and a variably slow/fastc decline was a big head shift. I jokingly refer to my property as a doomstead instead of a retreat, because I think self-sufficiency and having the numbers and ability to defend from the social fallout is going to be key. Having read the book I can completely understand that shift in focus it triggered for you. I like to think I'm forward thinking and various things led us to becomming preppers before reading the book. Nonetheless the book still feels like a bit of an awakening to me. I feel like I have more understanding about the 'why' of the Slo-mo SHTF we are in and that facilitates a better approach (more encompassing) on how to deal with it... specifically financially and perhaps also locationally. In the future we'll all be living in a Lagos environment. This series is a tutorial for future living. Watch and learn. Especially what they talk about as being important to them ... and how 'business' is conducted. Particularly citizen justice. Take your time and watch it slow. Really take in how it all works.
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tactile
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Post by tactile on May 16, 2022 21:26:54 GMT 10
And a PM who gets $10 K per WEEK. Pay peanuts and you'll get (bigger) monkeys.
I would cut their super and other "after term" benefits though, they shouldn't be a burden to the tax payer when they are no longer serving.
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Post by milspec on May 17, 2022 22:08:50 GMT 10
Im pretty sure we're already seeing a lot of the trends the book forecasts. Jobs are disappearing as automated systems replace humans. Wages have less growth than the cost of living inceases. Immigrants come in and happily take low paying jobs because they are better rates than some of the crap places they come from. Hi net worth Digital nomads move to tax havens like Dubai and Portugal which reduces tax collected here in oz. Big corporations move offshore to limit tax in Australia. Fewer people work traditional full time jobs and tax revenue drops. Governments get bigger and more inefficient and corrupt wasting even more tax dollars. Welfare demand goes ever upwards as people work less. The population lives longer creating a greater welfare burden. It is not sustainable. Some people see it and 'get out' those that are left have to pick up the load ... more tax, more regulation, less benefits, more crime, less policing, less health care. It is much like the frog being boiled in the pot.
The book is a good reminder that "nations" are only a very recent development in historical terms and they only developed as a means for ruling groups to efficiently unite and control larger territories... as opposed to what may have formerly been provinces controlled by individuals who had wealth and control of armed forces. ... a return to those conditions is entirely feasible if unified nation states break up and provincial ruling groups establish themselves along with armed forces and 'police' and defend the 'rules', taxes and new order that come into effect in said new provinces.
I doubt that all nations would simultaneously or completely collapse but a number of Western Nations are heading to a financial train smash ... and unlike in the past our nations are no longer unified and no longer full of qualified people and manufacturing bases to repair the damage once that train smash occurs. As always local and foreign opportunists will move in. As always the un prepared and the unbelievers will suffer the worst fates.
The industrial age is over. Decent paying production line jobs for those with limited qualifications are gone. Government has gone from bad (inefficient) to worse grossly inefficent with national resources) The change is already well and truly underway.
It would be prudent to consider what your options are now that the water is getting hot.
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iceage
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Post by iceage on May 18, 2022 0:52:03 GMT 10
(only 100 pages in) So far it reads like it was a pep talk for likes of gates, jobs, musk, bezos and zuck and all those in big tech who follow in there footsteps. In a way the nation state does answerto big tech in the same way it answers to the global powers that be, they work hand in hand, big tech probably has more foothold as it has more answers to give the nation state on how to control the masses. My father used to always say that religion was the opiate of the masses, how times have changed!
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Post by milspec on May 18, 2022 8:17:10 GMT 10
(only 100 pages in) So far it reads like it was a pep talk for likes of gates, jobs, musk, bezos and zuck and all those in big tech who follow in there footsteps. In a way the nation state does answerto big tech in the same way it answers to the global powers that be, they work hand in hand, big tech probably has more foothold as it has more answers to give the nation state on how to control the masses. My father used to always say that religion was the opiate of the masses, how times have changed! I agree, plenty of the IT based wealthy would have read this book and nodded thinking that they've already started on the paths the book describes. With respect to religion ...Indeed. the book goes into detail on how the industrial age bought in the printing press and distribution of the bible to the masses began to change the churches monopoly on religious knowledge and power. IMHO it is the book's retracement of societal behavior through history from the dark ages to the beginning of the information age which really puts our current world of nation states into perspective. Our present system like many before it has become unhealthy, and bloated and focussed on supporting the unproductive elements of society and it will fail like all the ones which preceeded it. What replaces it will no doubt share some elements of past 'arrangements' we've experienced in history as well as some novel arrangements. The pictures painted by some dystopian future science fiction movies may be more realistic than we'd care to believe.
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bug
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Post by bug on May 19, 2022 14:28:17 GMT 10
Peter Thiel was a co-founder of PayPal and he's a billionaire. Ive not read the book yet, but it was an interesting bit of info on the amazon review for the book. "The example highlighted by Peter Thiel in the opening perhaps sums up the optimism of the authors. They predicted Hong Kong would be a paragon state for the new age. However, as we have seen, authoritarian China has squashed Hong Kong into submission." It is a model of excellence if you ignore human rights abuse! Surprised that there was anyone who didn't think the CCP would eventually merge HK into the PRC.
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