Posted on 10/29/2005 10:13:52 AM PDT by Travis McGee
In wisconsin i have an electric well with what must be a ten gallon accumulator. I have a solar panel that could help charge a few deep cycle marine batteries....which thru a DC/AC converter could power the pump intermittently. For large power draws on the battery array, a generator could occasionally be brought into use. Only consern there would be generator noise to give away location....
Big cities--when the balloons go up, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near them.
Just the "mental preparation" provided by reading this article will put you way ahead of the sheeple, if TSHTF. And for one thing, you already have firearms covered, and most sheeple don't.
I think the small cohesive community would be best. Solo, you can be picked off too easily. Big cities, forget it! Small communities means a built in watch system, and people to come to the aid of anyone under attack.
Probably nothing, except we might possibly be a little more wary of the direction things seem to be headed.
One of the reasons I now live in a small very small town in the piney woods of east Texas is in part due to the Y2K flap. Since the area is basically the family home "turf", I know or know of most folks around here. It's a quiet little community of farmers, ranchers, loggers and mill workers for the most part. No-nonsense types make up the majority. Wonderful place to live in good times; maybe better if TSHTF.
I don't know if you recall, but sortof concurrent with the Y2K scare was the specter of terrorist activity. If things went south due to the compter bug, would the hate America crowd(foreign and/or domestic) take advantage of the turmoil that may have followed? It was a possibility. BTW, there WERE problems caused by the Y2K bug, but they apparently didn't effect any critical areas, like infrastructure.
I don't know if you've noticed, but most of the rest of the world(fueled by the worldwide media no doubt) doesn't like us very much. There are probably many reasons that could be given by the tin pot dictators and the all-but socialist nations to rationalize their sentiments; none of which makes any difference. They could and would come up with new ones tomorrow if need be.
Civil unrest? The cities are having their problems even now.
Bottom line, there are a lot of clichés that fit the situation as I see it, but the Boy Scout motto says it as good as any, "Be Prepared".
FGS
I think i remember some 5th column talk...probably could dig up some good threads in th fr archives! :)
Thank you for your thoughts. Since Xlinton's been gone my shields have been lowered quite a bit. :(
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Despite the importance given to MNEs, they do not account for a dominant or even a major share of the world’s economic activity. In terms of employment, the world’s top 100 non-financial MNEs employed 14.3 million of the total 1.8 billion people employed worldwide in 2000, which represented less than 1 per cent of total employment (UNCTAD, 2001). Thus, the contribution to domestic employment from FDI does not seem very impressive, from a quantitative point of view at least.
Despite the relatively small role of MNEs on an aggregate level, the situations differ substantially across countries. MNEs account for less than 10 per cent of manufacturing employment in countries such as Japan, Portugal and Turkey, but this figure rises to well over 40 per cent in countries such as Argentina, Hungary and Ireland. In addition, MNEs tend to have two characteristics that make them stand out. First, MNEs have been found to be concentrated in the more “dynamic” sectors of the economy (Harrison, 1996). Thus, even though they play a relatively small role in most economies in terms of level of total employment, MNEs often play a disproportionately large role in two very different types of industrial sectors. On the one hand, they tend to concentrate their activities in the more competitive or dynamic sectors typified by high growth rates and the use of new and emerging technologies (e.g., electronics, communication equipment, and industrial machinery). On the other, MNEs tend to dominate in mature sectors where economies of scale, branding and advertising determine market share (e.g., petroleum products, chemicals, automobiles, food and beverages and consumer goods). In such sectors, while the technology underlying these industries may be diffused and codified, capital limitations and marketing capabilities have meant that just a few MNEs maintain a large share of the global market. Based on data from Argentina, table 1 illustrates this trend well.
In Argentina, foreign firms have a very strong participation in sectors such as electronics (78 per cent sales and 65 per cent of total employment), communication equipment (49 per cent of sales and 50 per cent of total employment) and machinery and equipment (46 per cent of sales and employment). They also dominate sectors such as petroleum (89 per cent of sales and 79 per cent of employment), chemicals (66 per cent of sales and 57 per cent of employment) and rubber and plastic products (66 per cent of sales and 56 per cent employment).
The second reason why MNE activity has significant policy implications is that the share of MNEs in both types of sectors have been seen to be increasing, largely due to the policies associated with the so-called new economic model (NEM). The increased role of MNEs in certain sectors is in part a result of aggressive liberalization of FDI regimes and privatization programmes. Indeed, the greatest change has been the reduction in state ownership and the subsequent privatization of assets. Between 1988 and 1999, US$107.3 billion worth of privatized firms in the developing countries had been acquired through cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The share of Latin America and the Caribbean was roughly 79.8 per cent (UNCTAD, 2000). In other words, during this period, about 20 per cent of the total inflows to this region were associated with privatization. During the period 1999-2000 alone, privatizations totalled $19.5 billion (ECLAC, 2001).
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Many reasons. Loss of manufacturing and technological base. Abysmal education system. Debt at all levels. Coming resource wars. There are many others.
I think the federal debt will be the straw that breaks the camels back. They've made too many promises to too many people (primarily social security and medicare) and lack the resources to cover those promises. The debt increased by over $500 billion last year and the federal government has already borrowed $100 billion in the new fiscal year, which in only one month old.
"They" realize the problem and are trying to solve it by inflating the currency. They believe they can simply inflate the debt away by printing more money. (Good luck). I'm not aware of any siutuation where that approach hasn't degenerated into a hyper-inflation.
His three story house was built below a hill which had a spring. He ran the spring water into a reservoir with enough fall to provide pressure. He ran the hot through the wood cook stove which had a hot water holder. Flush toilets, a telephone system which ran to his relatives house and was battery controlled. A carbide lighting system. Someone stole the huge bathtub out of the now abandoned house a few years ago.
My Father spent a good bit of his boyhood there. There was a sawmill, steam locomotive and always somethig going on. The nearest town of any kind was maybe 15 miles away. It is possible to live well without electricity.
Where my folks live, there is ample water just for the taking.
I don't know what to make of that information.
This is exactly what is happening here with the outsourcing, work visas, and illegal immigrant workers.
Got it. The author of this essay alludes to that in the ag sector, with multinational ag businesses sending food out for export which the Argentines cannot afford.
Shades of the Irish potato starvation, when Ireland was overflowing with food....all for export to England.
You'll note some incongruities within the article, eg., Immigrants pouring into the country once again with 12% unemployment and double digit inflation. What's up with that? Another article alluded to the detrimental(?) influence of unions in Argentina.
Much of it does have a familiar ring...
FGS
Interesting. I'll shoot that link to the author of the Survival essay at frugalsquirrels, for his comments.
Probably goes to show how desperatedly poor folks are in Bolivia and Peru, that any sign of life in the Argentine economy brings hopeful laborers.
'Spect so. As one who can barely keep up with the goings on in this country, I had no idea that much of SA was in such dire straits. Just wondering if the graft/corruption we're familiar with in our southern neighbor extends all the way down the southern hemisphere, AND what part it might play? Gad!
You can go down there and do the "tourist thing," and stay within the affluent bubble around the top 10% of the population, and think the countries are not much different from the USA. But the bottom 50% lives in conditions we can barely imagine.
I hate to say it, but Argentina appears to be ready for another strong man.
Rural communities and even ones on the urban periphery need to have contingency plans for deputizing substantial fractions of the population and for perimeter fortification. Sad it would ever have to come to that, but folks have got to do what they've got to do ....
I don't know if that would be any kind of a solution.
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