Homestead mailing list

[Don Bowen <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

At 12/1/2004, you wrote:
> Tools and commodities (and to a large extent, skills) are not subject to 
> someone else valuing them, and this sets them apart from either purely 
> fiat money or gold.

Most of those survival scenarios are for a complete collapse.  What value 
has gold if every one around you needs food and no one has seeds or it is 
the dead of winter?  It is a partial collapse that gold provides the safety 
net, you can flee to a stable situation where gold has value.  I have read 
of Vietnamese wrapping themselves with gold thread and the original purpose 
of gold chains was to provide a very portable bank.

In a survival situation where there was no stable place to flee or you did 
not expect a return to stability skills would become much more 
valuable.  The ability to get a Diesel engine running on vegetable oil 
would be more valuable than a bag of silver coins.

So how you structure your survival portfolio depends entirely how you 
expect things to turn out.  I have always said if we have TEOTWAWNI, I want 
to be in the middle of a huge junk yard.

Don Bowen
Awl Knotted Up Woodworking
Valley Center, CA             http://www.braingarage.com