Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] World Made by Hand

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] World Made by Hand
  • Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:40:35 EDT

>His view of a complete government breakdown seems a bit off the mark,
governments will do anything to maintain power.



The operant phrase here, says I, would be "anything they CAN do". I heard
in '99 that the govenment would not allow the dot com stocks to tank because
of
what it would do to the economy. They tanked anyway. More recently we heard
that the could not be a housing crash, the government would never allow it.
It crashed (is crashing).

I've thought a bit about this. I read Victor Hansen's "The Other Greeks"
and I wondered at those far flung isolated farmsteads and how an ancient
central
(city state) government ever hoped to maintain any control over them.
Likewise the far flung yeoman of any culture or centruy, to what extent can
the
government profitably strong arm the finges into submission?

In the proper circumstances making an example of one resistent farmsteader
might gain some influence over the others, but in Kunstler's world, they had
no
idea what was going on in the next county over. Muscling a family or farm
there would gain you nothing five miles away and might cost you plenty.

Without gasoline and a maintained communications network, how much could the
modern government do? In the dim and distant, a local leader (or thug)
allied
himself with the general leader and delivered the goods and obedience to the
central authority. We've lost the knack for that, and so I wonder if
government, regardless of what it wanted to do, would not almost crumble
entirely in
absence of motor fuel and electronics. </HTML>




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page