I can understand why preppers do what they do. The current state is breakable. Mr. Poop can meet Mrs. Fan. Much of what we take for granted is fragile, thin, and managed by incompetents. Fiat currencies are just that – fiat – ensconced in crazy debts and banking systems which tend to privatize the benefits and socialize the risks. There are scary scenarios, made to felt larger and nearer upon on every screen we gaze.
I advocate for good planning, hedging risks, living with financial margin, and being able to survive for a few days without outside help in most emergencies. These help us help others, too. I cannot, however, advocate for retreating from technology, isolating my family into the wilderness, and hoarding. It doesn’t square with trusting God. It doesn’t square with biblical paradigms for how we should thrive in communities together.
Specific to technologies: Use tech at the highest level of functionality without losing one bit of your humanity. That requires the occasional fast, and the occasional choice against a technological application. (For example, I’m savvy with digital tools for writing and brainstorming, but know that I do much of my best original thinking with pen and paper.)
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A few years ago I devoted myself to studying geopolitics, the interplay of power, economics, crucial resources, manufacturing, trades and treaties, physical geography, demographics, sovereign debt, etc. Everything is about tradeoffs. Human factors (e.g., the will to power) are real but alone cannot overcome other factors. No two nations are friends, but many have aligned interests. The idea of one-world governments in Star Trek is fantasy.
One of the benefits of this kind of study is learning to distinguish hard trends, long-term trends, and surface disturbances and political noise.
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Peter Zeihan is one of the sharpest geopolitical analysts working today. He has access to amazing data sources which he beautifully synthesizes across domains. I’d love to learn more about the team of people who help him do this. He is a skilled communicator with books and presentations. I appreciate his insights. He’s spot on about demographic challenges and energy. He’s one of the few analysts working today who correctly ties energy and agriculture trends with demographics and history.
There are two aspects which you need to add into your mind as you listen to Zeihan’s work.
First, he is an analyst and does not think like an entrepreneur. He tends to think linearly. I think he underestimates adaptability of people who recognize a problem and come up creative new solutions. Entrepreneurs are fundamentally alchemists who create value streams.
Second, Zeihan does not see ideas, religion, and moral frameworks as key elements in forecasts for how groups of people will make decisions. Power and political will, yes, but religion no. Obviously this is messy and lack numerical data. It’s real, nonetheless.
I recommend Peter Zeihan’s work because of his strengths. Just add in those other dimensions in your personal synthesis.
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Plenty of people have advocated a return to the gold standard. I sometimes listen to them and think, “they must believe that everything financially bad happened after 1933 when the US came off the gold standard.”
Consider how much cultural and moral damage was done by government powers extracting gold, silver, and gems from militarily weaker nations and peoples throughout history. One of the benefits to moving to fiat monetary systems is we greatly reduced the exploitation of others for the precious metals in their homeland.
Is there too much fiat money? Possibly. Have we ratcheted up foolish debt? Absolutely. (But don’t worry, we’re repeatedly assured that all the people in charge are smart and virtuous.) The question I wrestle with is whether entrepreneurs are creating value faster than we’re printing money. At least pre-Covid, I think the answer is largely Yes.
One of my mentors compares the 1973 and 2023 costs and time of
- Getting a mail order package
- Making an international phone call
- Traveling from New York to London
- Diagnosing an internal injury
- Getting a complex product built and shipped to customers
- Sending a short message from Los Angeles to an individual in Delhi
- Delivering a 45 min sales pitch to 100,000 customers
All these are enormously cheaper (some are practically free) and more efficient because of entrepreneurs creating value.
I’m not a modern monetary theorist who says that it doesn’t matter how much money we print. We can be stupid and have been foolish. Just one of the wacky things about most countries sovereign debt is how much they owe to themselves, which inherently will never be paid off. We need mature and wise decisions in our financial systems. There are some difficult conversations ahead because the current path is unsustainable. I simply don’t think that reverting to a gold standard is a possible solution now.
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The United States is in a particularly strong position relative to most of the world. We have sufficient energy, and can feed ourselves. Our demographic profile is reasonably strong. We have abundant space and a high standard of living. Our geographic isolation insulates us from a large subset of military threats. The world is addicted to our currency. We have the ability to increase our manufacturing capacity to be largely self-sufficient within North America if we continue to intelligently partner with Mexico and Canada. We can freely trade with people we want to trade with and aren’t beholden to our enemies; our worst geopolitical enemies are more dependent on us than we are on them. And there’s still hope for our political system.
There are fewer reasons for optimism about the current vectors for Russia and China – the underlying demographic challenges are immense. I’m bullish on India. I need to learn more about the diverse situation in Africa.
The blessings of the US position reinforces our responsibility to be helpful to the world at large. That, too, requires maturity. We’ll need more deep people.
Individuals are the critical opportunity everywhere.
Don’t allow yourself to be discouraged or overwhelmed by negative trends. Human history informs us that it only takes 1% of people to ‘wake up’ and dramatically impact a population. The Renaissance and Enlightenment go back to a tiny minority of individuals. It only takes a few courageous individuals to change the atmosphere of an entire industry. This works both ways, for good and for bad, because Communism and Fascism likewise were sparked by an initial tiny minority. Embrace your calling as a one-percenter in your current sphere of influence.
