I think this post-civ talk itself is nonsense. Everyone acts like it is going to be Mad Max. As if the government is keeping us from being rapists and murderers.
Capitalists who want to be survivialists…now there is a contradiction.
I welcome the market. I love it. I welcome civilization, it allows me to specialize into a field that I desire to be in.
All voluntary actions are part of the market. This is why the market will never go away. Now civ is inherently collectivist and statist and replaces markets with statism. H/Gs had 100% free markets since they had no state. Find me one H/G society with a state and I’ll change my mind.
Also, survivalism isn’t just to escape statism but also to escape being poisoned by the state. Fluoride in the water, mercury in the vax, cancer in the food and all sorts of other ways the gov is dumbing us down and giving us disease. H/Gs don’t get autism or cancer for a reason.
All the post-civ folks I know are concerned with finding a tribe, not living by themselves and collecting gold in the hopes of being some post-civ king of trade.
All the postciv survivalists I know ARE concerned w/ gold and postciv trade/capitalism.
Well, the guy that coined the term, Derrick Jensen, is one of those anti-property commies. He made the documentary, END CIV, with the help of another one of those property hating bastards, and all the people that seem to review it and like it are more concerned with the complete disregard of property rights rather than placing them on a pedestal. You and your friends are an anomoly.
"All voluntary actions are part of the market. This is why the market will never go away. Now civ is inherently collectivist and statist and replaces markets with statism. H/Gs had 100% free markets since they had no state. Find me one H/G society with a state and I’ll change my mind. "
Ah no they are not. If I think of a really sweet thesis (which is an action), that is not part of the “market.” Also how is civilization inherently collectivist or statist for that matter? I guess you would have to start with a definition of collectivist.
And hunter/gathers had states in a sense. They did not have modern states in the sense that we think of them but they had chiefs which were executive officials who dictated directions to those around them.
“Also, survivalism isn’t just to escape statism but also to escape being poisoned by the state. Fluoride in the water, mercury in the vax, cancer in the food and all sorts of other ways the gov is dumbing us down and giving us disease. H/Gs don’t get autism or cancer for a reason.”
Ok you obviously have some concerns with food & water. Understandable. Clean living can be commendable. However this idea that cancerous growths do not exist in hunter gather societies is somewhat naive. Cancer can and does happen in a multitude of locals but let us assume the best and that your clean living discontinues cancer, you still have animal/food diseases that you can procure from ingesting bad meat or berries. Also there is a nutrient problem because you are not investing any grains in your diet because again you are no establishing agriculture because that would be a sedentary society, not a hunter/gatherer. That would be civilization or at least the beginnings of it. If you are trying to move away from disease completely then its not going to happen because disease is pervasive to humanity. You can certainly mitigate disease but I do not think you have to become a survivalist to do so.
“All the postciv survivalists I know ARE concerned w/ gold and postciv trade/capitalism.”
To be a survivalist is to be shut off from civilization which encompasses trade. A survivalist is self-sufficent, you eluded to this earlier with your talk of food. If he/she is self-sufficient, what would they have to trade for?
I agree with most of your post, Andrew, but a few things caught my eye
There was a kind of state, in the form of authoritarian hierarchy, present in some aboriginal cultures. However, they were not able to exercise the kind of control over the rest of the tribe due to the lack of calories, manpower, and machines that the modern state relies on.
grains are horrible for you. Everyone should go primal, as far as their diet is concerned.
Ah no they are not. If I think of a really sweet thesis (which is an action), that is not part of the “market.” Also how is civilization inherently collectivist or statist for that matter? I guess you would have to start with a definition of collectivist.
No. All voluntary transactions between people is part of the market.
And hunter/gathers had states in a sense. They did not have modern states in the sense that we think of them but they had chiefs which were executive officials who dictated directions to those around them.
No. Part of the state is the ability to tax. H/Gs didn’t have taxation. A chief is not a state unless he steals what is rightfully yours.
And even so, I plan on living by myself. Nothing but complete self-reliance.
However this idea that cancerous growths do not exist in hunter gather societies is somewhat naive. Cancer can and does happen in a multitude of locals but let us assume the best and that your clean living discontinues cancer, you still have animal/food diseases that you can procure from ingesting bad meat or berries.
I plan on eating nothing but raw wild plants and maybe raw milk (which is where the gold comes in since I can trade gold for RM.) No meats, no pasterudized (cancer-causing) milk products, nothing but eating the way nature intended.
What happens when you run out of gold?
What happens when you run out of gold?
Then I become totally self-sufficient.
People think primitive survivalism is tinfoil hat behavior. False. We know that civ can’t last forever. It’s impossible. Natural resources will run out at some point or another, even more so w/ the state propping up monopolies left and right. I feel that knowing everything that’s going on (economic collapse, fiat currency becoming absolutely worthless and a form of slavery, poisoned food and medicine leading to cancer and autism and other diseases, dumbing down of children via the state education camps) right before civ collapses the state will become its most tyrannical. It’s better to learn the skills now and leave civ for the woods, preferably in New Hampshire since the gov is the least tyrannical there and most likely won’t come after you, before everything starts happening so you’ll be ready when it does happen.
“There was a kind of state, in the form of authoritarian hierarchy, present in some aboriginal cultures. However, they were not able to exercise the kind of control over the rest of the tribe due to the lack of calories, manpower, and machines that the modern state relies on.”
Well I’m skeptical of that. I do agree that the power of the state has transformed over time.
“grains are horrible for you. Everyone should go primal, as far as their diet is concerned.”
I’ve heard different but hey its your body, your choice.
“No. All voluntary transactions between people is part of the market.”
Well that is kind of a truism. If there is a transaction then that means there is trade which means there is a market…
"No. Part of the state is the ability to tax. H/Gs didn’t have taxation. A chief is not a state unless he steals what is rightfully yours.
And even so, I plan on living by myself. Nothing but complete self-reliance."
Well yes part of the states ability is the ability to tax but even if you are right and all hunter gathering societies did not have a taxation system, taxation is but one power of a state. Also before you were talking about stock pilling gold…if you are going to be completely self-reliant, which in my personal opinion is extremely bad because you cannot specialize, then why are you stock pilling gold? I mean it has its utilizies as a luxury but self-sustainability does not really require it. It may actually be a burden.
“I plan on eating nothing but raw wild plants and maybe raw milk (which is where the gold comes in since I can trade gold for RM.) No meats, no pasterudized (cancer-causing) milk products, nothing but eating the way nature intended.”
OK so you are not really self-reliant, you are now trading for goods by barter.
. Also before you were talking about stock pilling gold…if you are going to be completely self-reliant, which in my personal opinion is extremely bad because you cannot specialize, then why are you stock pilling gold? I mean it has its utilizies as a luxury but self-sustainability does not really require it. It may actually be a burden.
I said I’d only become 100% self-reliant once I run out of gold. Before that I will barter voluntarily for raw milk and tools.
"I said I’d only become 100% self-reliant once I run out of gold. Before that I will barter voluntarily for raw milk and tools. "
Ok I see you as not really being a hunter-gather then…maybe just a hermit.
Ok I see you as not really being a hunter-gather then…maybe just a hermit.
H/Gs had barter economies.
You are living off the land on a subsistence level. I do not really see how you can have established barter economies but whatever.
- False idea the government has been feeding you. I do not mean to sound like a health nut (and I am quite hesitant to react when someone says that the government willingly lies to us about food safety (besides big food interests, of course)), but my family has made apple cider completely naturally without any chemicals or special equipment and we’ve not gotten sick of it (it is slightly alcoholic and I’m sure it can be increased in alcohol level).
- Furthermore, my parents make wine themselves. I don’t see where you get the idea of that many infections from.
(the above is referencing my statement about brewing infection)
Wheylous, I wasn’t talking about “infection” that will make you sick, but “infection” of the brewing yeast that will give you off flavors. When brewing beer the various chemical put off by the yeast can give you a wide variety of flavors, some desirable, others not. Brewing with just any wild yeast is likely to give you a really funky, potentially sour product. Some other infections might cause a medicinal or “band-aid” like taste. It’s not about safety, but about quality.
I’ve brewed with some friends and experienced this stuff. Also, as others have said, there are types of beer that actually market the funky or sour beers, although even then the “wild” yeasts they use are pretty controlled. This isn’t some lie the state has fed me, it’s just a fact of brewing. 
Any case, I’ll end this beerchat thread derail, haha.
Andrew Cain, At the risk of sounding condescending, I would suggest that you do a little more research on nutrition. Grains on a macronutrient level only provide carohydrates, which are completely unnecessary. No one (in good health. Excluding diabetics here) ever starved to death from a lack of carbohydrates. As far as micronutrients go, some grains do have some micro, but the antinutrients and toxins actually deplete the human body of more nutrients than you gain from the grains, in most cases. In the rare cases when you do find aboriginal peoples eating grains, they are usually sprouted, fermented, or washed repeatedly.
in addition to being superfluous, as a source of energy carbohydrates are actually bad for you, because they put you on the glycogen/insulin seesaw, which is the cause of many ailments of the modern world. Dietary fat is a much better energy source.
the advantages of grains have everything to do with the manufacturing aspect. Economies of scale mean that, at a certain size population, it becomes possible to sustain a larger population on a nutritionally inferior diet. The humans who experienced noticeable health problems in the short term as a result of grain consumption were not able to reproduce because the diet killed them.
so with all these calories from carbohydrates, we see a population explosion tha continues to this day. With all these extra people we are able to make war on each other and on competing species.
when h/g’s were doing their thing, they certanly didnt have the surplus calories and manpower to have anything like what we consider a state. We know there were hierarchies, just like we know there were egalitariancies (aboriginal societies are incredibly diverse). And I am sure aggression occurred, but I find it hard to imagine that very many aboriginal societies had the labor available to enforce involuntary association of a reasonably sized population over any meaningful span of time. What is a state versus a crime?
so natural resources in the woods wont run out? And no one will go to the woods and snatch up the natural resources? You remind me of a guy I met once. He was obsessed with outer space. He had this book from the 80s that was like the technical manual for the space shuttle, and now that they are not operational and the guy is dead from stomach cancer I can tell you what his plan was. He didnt want to be an astronaut in a conventional sense. He was an amateur astronomer, amd he always figured that one day he might see an extinction-level comet inbound through his scope, and peel out of his driveway and make it all the way to cape canveral in florida, and jack a space shuttle, and make like a tree and leave. Thats what you remind me of. He was fun to talk to as well, and we loved challenging his theories. So yah…How are resources going to run out here but not there, and billions of people are wandering around parking lots eating gravel, but you are lounging on the beach in nh drinking coconut milk? Wtf mate?
so natural resources in the woods wont run out? And no one will go to the woods and snatch up the natural resources? You remind me of a guy I met once. He was obsessed with outer space. He had this book from the 80s that was like the technical manual for the space shuttle, and now that they are not operational and the guy is dead from stomach cancer I can tell you what his plan was. He didnt want to be an astronaut in a conventional sense. He was an amateur astronomer, amd he always figured that one day he might see an extinction-level comet inbound through his scope, and peel out of his driveway and make it all the way to cape canveral in florida, and jack a space shuttle, and make like a tree and leave. Thats what you remind me of. He was fun to talk to as well, and we loved challenging his theories. So yah…How are resources going to run out here but not there, and billions of people are wandering around parking lots eating gravel, but you are lounging on the beach in nh drinking coconut milk? Wtf mate?
No one will touch my natural resources if those resources are MY private property. I would think after civ collapses private property will still exist as it always has, so all I need to do is use some of my gold and silver to buy up parts of the woods where I’ll hunt and gather my food supply. Good enough?