permaculture

[Michael Pilarski <friendsofthetrees@yahoo.com>]

Hello Harold Waldock,

Long time no see.  

Great article! I totally agree with you.  

Attached is a long article of mine on some of the practical things we can do 
to make ourselves/our communities more ready for the change.  Permaculture 
food production etc.  

wishing you all the best

Michael Pilarski

--- On Mon, 9/26/11, Harold Waldock <hwaldock@telus.net> wrote:

From: Harold Waldock <hwaldock@telus.net>
Subject: [permaculture] The Permaculture saying, "Prepare for Disaster" and 
the money system collapse (part 1)
To: "Vanpermaculture" <vanpermaculture@yahoogroups.com>, "Permaculture list" 
<permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Monday, September 26, 2011, 11:29 PM

It has been six years after my first warning: On the money system and the 
Permaculture saying, "Prepare for Disaster", (see the original text below 
from Dec. 2005)

I do not write on Permaculture very much and only vaguely read what is on 
Lawrence London's excellent list permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org and have been 
very quiet since leaving the board at www.yarrowecovillage.ca which is in its 
final residential construction phase in Chilliwack outside of Vancouver BC.  
I don't see that much big picture deep reflection and debate (perhaps I ought 
to search the archives with some keywords) but when I've posted in the past 
the response has been generous - to the point I could not follow it all or 
honour all the posts and make replies.  I hope to copy the best replies into 
the vanpermaculture listserv so that locals not network can hear from the 
greater Permaculture community thinking.

Two short stories to set the stage:  In Vancouver, I saw a short posting 
that, during the 3rd week of October 2008 a week or two after Lehman the huge 
bulk carriers in our port would pull up to the grain elevators but leave 
empty.  Bankers could not agree to give credit for 3.5 weeks it takes to send 
these ships across the oceans to make their delivery and get paid.  Had this 
gone long enough parts of Asia, Africa or Europe would have been short of 
grain.  But Vancouverites import 50% of its food from other countries too.  
In California in that same fateful week, a financial expert noted that the 
food brokers in the Central Valley had a hard time getting commercial paper 
(credit) to load trucks to send them 3.5 days across the North America to get 
paid.  The banks did not trust each other for 3.5 days.  Had this gone to the 
point of no trucks at all for a week the shelves in Vancouver groceries would 
have become badly depleted.  Locally we have a
 saying that we are always 3 d
 ays from food riots (- if they don't open the grain elevators)- (but my Dad 
can't eat wheat based foods.)  The money system is now falling down quickly, 
the credit markets are collapsing again and a new wave of fiat will inflate 
away dollar based savings once again.

Once again, I call all to prepare and let us know of your planning, thinking 
and recommendations for urban permaculturists.  I've been supporting 
Permaculture in the Vancouver BC Canada area since 1995 through the 
Vanpermaculture@yahoogroups.ca list and other activities.  Currency 
extinction events, bond repudiation and the depression hit people really 
hard.  What can we do to protect ourselves from the worst of these events?

History has shown that fiat currency systems have never lasted longer than 40 
years.  Well we have gone 40 years since President Nixon took the reserve 
currency, US Dollar off gold convertibility and made it irredeemable.  The 
current system is not a pure fiat money but fractionally irredeemable debt 
based money and fiat money.  Debts contracted with money printed out thin air 
from the unjust and unstable fractional reserve banking system back most of 
the currency.  These systems crash or die out in a whimper however, pure fiat 
always crash.  Most modern currencies are a mix of irredeemable and fiat.  
The fiat part is rapid rising of late.  All of these money systems are 
inflationary and constitute a hidden tax borne mostly by the working, widows, 
orphans and disabled. It also falls hard on those who live from the land like 
farmers. When paper systems collapse and are allowed to be replaced by gold 
normal business is restored in 3 months as
 happened in 1793 when the French Re
 volutionary currency, the Assignat, collapsed and was replaced, under 
Napoleon, by gold,  In Germany last century they had 2 currency wipeouts in 
50 years. 1923 and 1945.    Note in 1945 food rationing lasted a long time in 
Germany but longer in post war essentially bankrupt UK. (My parents were so 
skinny before they were married in 1960. ) So it suggests that 3 months of 
food should be had in every urban home at the very minimum but a years worth 
could be very valuable and allows one to be generous to those in need.  Food 
stores is what I strongly suggest everybody have. More on how in another part.

Responses to other repeated and modified versions of what I wrote below 
included the argument, "You can't eat gold" when objecting to the advice to 
buy gold.  I do not see that argument as reasonable as, those who have gold 
can always buy food or get to food in the worst of times.  I know lots of old 
grannies who survived WWII because of gold. And if gold is allowed to be what 
it does best as the highest quality money, then the justice of transactions 
enables those who live from the land (as opposed to those in the cities) to 
be fairly paid.  Note that in poor quality money systems such as irredeemable 
notes that we have, that people who live from the land suffer from injustice 
of inflation and land suffers as a result.   With gold as legal money the 
whole community can eat and afford to look after the land properly and 
control the greed of the bankers as well as the politicians too.  With gold 
as legal money politicians can't print it and make
 war without a formal request fo
 r taxes. With gold as legal money bankers can't create currency and create 
inflation or remove the value from savings or create debt with out limit and 
destroy people with predatory lending. Let us note that gold has unique 
properties that lend itself to being the highest quality money known to man, 
and well described by Aristotle 2300years ago.  Since business is defined as 
the free exchange of gifts, gold makes the finest business gift in exchange. 

Silver, is nearly as good as gold, thus is usually acceptable as a currency 
to gold on a cash, same day basis. Attempts, however, by governments to fix 
the ratio between gold and silver have doomed many currencies, economies, 
governments and persons.  Gold comes up as important in BC as it was founded 
and settled by gold miners.  Vancouver has always been a gold, mining, 
real-estate, lumber and fish town. I don't know what it does for income these 
days except sell real-estate and provide head offices for mining exploration. 
 So locally, gold is likely to be accepted and understood as money. Finally, 
I note that Gold has risen since 2005 from about $550 to the 1750-1900 area 
evidence of a fine and traditional investment for these times of crisis.  But 
it is not the summit of the purpose of human life to hoard gold in a mountain 
fortress like Smaug, the Dragon, as described in the epic book, The Hobbit.  
There are many other things even more important
 than gold that we must als
 o attend to in the care of our person, family, neighbours and world, lest we 
become like dragons.

To be continued Next Part or Parts:
Other arguments discussed
What happens in a crisis to the price and availability of seeds for home 
planting- No availability for 18 mo.
Potatoes - essential crop for cool wet temperate zone
Rice & Grain & Pasta preservation technology
How to feed Vancouver and the world after the crisis - Real Bills maturing in 
Gold as honest usury-free financing 




Begin forwarded message:

> From: Harold Waldock <hwaldock@telus.net>
> Date: December 7, 2005 4:54:15 PM PST
> To: vanpermaculture
> Subject: On the money system and the Permaculture saying, "Prepare for 
> Disaster". 
> 
> 
> Given what I know, I would be remiss to fail to warn fellow students of 
> Permaculture on the coming difficulties of our money system especially as 
> so many of us are urban based.
> 
> There is support for Permaculture in somewhat surprising areas - the 
> survivalist movement for instance.  Bill Mollison's Permaculture a 
> Designer's Manual is listed as a top 25 book in the editor's picks.
> 
> Another area is the Gold investors websites such as Chris Liard's 
> www.prudentsquirrel.com where he talks about the effects of deflation that 
> happen after any crisis in Survival Crisis.  Deflation means people can't 
> work because people don't spend because they can't make money doing either. 
>  Lots of economic and social situations that repeat though history mean 
> that one has mainly to look after one's own needs i.e. plant a garden, burn 
> wood, etc because you can't work for anything or you can't pay for what you 
> want.  In the undeveloped countries trade, industry, commerce and even paid 
> labour systems barely work so why bother just go to your farm and look 
> after your family from there.
> 
> Others have made the link between their current high standard of living and 
> the realistic consequences of the now highly likely monetary collapse in 
> the near future.
> 
> Causes of the monetary collapse:
> 
> 1) A currency or medium of exchange not based of units of real value.
> The money in your wallet or purse or bank is not convertible to gold or 
> silver and is otherwise worthless. The accurate name for it is "Worthless 
> transaction tokens"
> 2) High levels of irrational speculation across many important market 
> places i.e. the Land Price bubble we have now.
> 3) High levels of debt across the personal, business and government.  How 
> many of us live on our Visa and Mastercards?
> 4) Major trading partners in a crisis - Politics happen
> 5) Energy costs higher and rising sharply - the well runs dry after Peak 
> Oil production.
> 6) A severe test of the market. An event, not easily predictable, creating 
> difficult to resolve effects that affects the markets in a significant way. 
>  War, Derivatives Crisis, Oil embargo, regime change in a big oil producing 
> country, weather or earthquake or many other events.
> 
> 
> Sure signs of a  impending crisis are near or that you have a crisis now:
> 
> 1) A paper currency with no convertibility over 34 years given no paper 
> currency in all of history has lasted longer than 40.
> 2) There is higher and higher inflation.
> 3) The government tells lies. - Consumer Price Inflation is CPI is 6% below 
> the old method of measuring it.
> 3) Government does increasingly wild and unreasonable including the 
> confiscation of property, taking the life of innocent people.  In 1933 the 
> New Deal of F.D. Roosevelt meant that all gold was confiscated by the 
> government and paper money was given to the people instead.  
> 4) There are Bank Failures because people try to get their money out. We 
> have had 2 failures of Bank like institutions this year Portus mutual fund 
> and another one I forget the name of.  People rushed to get their money out 
> when the word got around but most people's money was trapped and may be 
> delivered cents on the dollar. When there are bank failures it means the 
> system is going down.
> 
> Consequences for us and our families, friends and society.
> 
> Shortage of real money acceptable for trade
> Economic collapse and unemployment
> Economic disruption to production and consumption - wrenching changes force 
> the economy to be dislocated and requiring time before production can meet 
> consumption requirements.  High unemployment for years.
> Shortage of key supplies that can be traded for by labour. Food and heating 
> not available at previous quantities or price.
> Social unrest, violent mobs and unstable and/or unreasonable and unjust 
> government
> 
> What we can do now to avoid the worst
> 
> Study Permaculture, get manuals on practical things,
> Sell all dollar assets: Bonds, GIC, Money Market, Treasuries, etc.  as 
> inflation will eat it all up.
> Sell Shares., mutual funds as the stock market is still near a top, 
> Buy Gold, Silver, but don't tell anybody www.vbce.info is the cheapest 
> place to buy
> Buy Guns (Think about life in South Africa or Zimbabwe or US slums), 
> Sell urban homes (over priced) buy rural properties near your friends that 
> have income opportunities: good soil, good trees, good electrical power 
> production, near abundant natural resources you can eat or burn (for heat) 
> or trade.
> Study truth where you can find it and tell the truth to those who will 
> listen because we can't look after ourselves by ourselves only - we need 
> each other.
> Organize to be of help to each other in times of need.
> 

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