EU, when I was a boy living in Rio de Janeiro in the 60s, I lived in a Penthouse on Ipanema Beach, and the boys I played Futbol with lived in the Favelas, ramshackle homoes precariously perched on the hills around Rio. When I went to college at Columbia, I lived in an apartment on Morningside Heights, overlooking Harlem from the west across Morningside Park. I rode the subway, I was mugged a couple fo times, I rode my bike to my job as a research assistant at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and had pipes thrown at my wheels to knock me off my bike so it could be stolen from me. I grew up on the streets of Hells Kitchen in NYC, before it was gentrified. I have come close to losing what I have several times, I am lucky because I know how to do many things and was blessed with a good education. However, I am thoroughly aware of how money and economics divide people, how societies devolve to rich and poor, I have seen it first hand in my travels through my life. I have been all around Europe 3 times, Interrailing with the Swedes and the Danes, sleeping on the beaches and int he rail stations. With my ex-wife, we railed around eatern Europe, visiting her relatives in Budapest while it was in the possesion of the Soviet Union.

I have no idea how old you are or how many places you have lived or travelled through in your life, but regardless of this your ability to comprehend the nature of economic deprivation is less related to where you live than it is to the ability you have to empathize with the plight of others. You clearly have little empathy, you basically want to take all the poor of the world and enslave or imprison them. Its not a good solution.

You know what they say about poverty? "There but for the Grace of God go I". If in your currency trading schemes you have many indebted to you and they cannot pay you back, like the Big Banks of Wall Street, you also will go Bankrupt. If the stocks you hold lose their value, you also will have no money. Walk a Mile in the shoes of a Poor Man, at least in your mind, before you pass such judgement on them that they should be forced to eat Cockroaches, or their daughters should be sold off as whores.

Soon we ALL will be Poor. It behooves NONE of us to live at the expense of another. It behooves us to help one another make it through, with a generosity of spirit and a willingness to forgive. These are the attributes of a Good Man. Look for them in yourself, they may be in there somewhere buried deep, though not evident so far here on the pages of Peak Oil.

Reverse Engineer

I am 39, from mixed Polish-English family and I have good understanding of these cultures (i spent about half of my life in each of these countries).
My wife is Malaysian Chinese and she is from rich family, so I understand their culture quite well.
I have also seen many European countries and few others like Jamaica for example.
I am reasonably well off but not rich and yes, I am debt free.


I believe in enforcing personal responsibility for ones actions.
However I am not as mean as you are trying to suggest.
Read my posts again.

I suggested that those who have fallen into debt trap for genuine reason (serious disease, accident) should have their debts discharged with no nasty consequences.

I have also suggested that for reasons of expediency (to reduce numbers of debtors to manageable levels), some arbitrary amount of debt (say $10 000) should be slashed for all.
Don't you think that your beloved poor would be off the hook by now?

Essentially my proposals would mostly affect irresponsible, hubristic part of middle class who recklessly accumulated excessive debt to support lifestyle beyond means.
These consumers of American Dream, you know.

And yes, I do blame these peoples for all the evil related to pending collapse.
So I want to make them foot the bill...

You know little about black market.
With very few exceptions I was never giving or accepting any credit there.
Giving credit would often mean losing money, unless you go to extreme in measures to recover it and accepting credit could easily make you enslaved by various criminal gangs, the fate which I have avoided.
So any credit was available only between my closest friends, who have never let me down

By current standards yes.
However they will ALWAYS be poor and poorer.
Relativistically it will mean that poor will be rich, if compared with poorer.

Too idealistic.
It was never the case in the post agricultural revolution past (eg for last 12 000 years) and it will never be the case in the future until survivors numbers will count in single millions worldwide and cultural collapse as per Orlov scale is complete.

Even in your beloved Tribalism there are equals and more equals.


So what if you help a fellow man in need and s/he refuse to help you, when you are in need?
Generosity does not mix well with collapse environment, where there is a fight for survival.
I think, in such situation most evil parts of human character are exposed.
In such environment strict enforcement of contracts is a last barrier preventing development of total chaos, civil war, lawnessness, proper slavery and all the evil, which you are trying to prevent.

Of good intentions Hell is being built.

EU, it all depends on where you live and who your friends are. I have no doubt in many places where there are large number of people all basically at each other's throats because they do not know their neighbors and have no sense of community, all the worst aspects of the human psyche will play themselves out. I do not ive in such a place EU.

I live on the Last Great Frontier. In the town I live, there are fewer than 6000 Human Souls, I know about all of them because I see them all the time, and I teach many of their children. In the entire Matanuska Valley, there are only about 60,000 Human Souls. I don't know every last one of them, but I guarantee you there is only one degree of separation beteen me and any of them. somebody I know knows one of them.

If and when it gets bad around here, I COUNT on my friends, and I truly believe we will pull together. The environment up here is so harsh, has been for all time, that everyone here KNOWS they cannot EXIST if they cannot count on each other.

No doubt, it could get very tough and at my age I dont count myself as a long term survivor, but that is not important to me. What is important to me is that I do the best I can to help my friends make it thru, to help the children I have taught make it thru. This way, when I die as I inevitably will, I will die with HONOR.

Some here are debtors, I know that even though I am not one of them. I pass no judgement on the reasons for their debt, I only pass judgement on their willingness to give whatever they have to help us ALL make it thru. Where you are with the mindset you have, you are too disconnected from those who surround you, you perceive them more as enemies than friends. I do not see it that way in my community. These are my friends. I will help them, and they will help me. I believe this to be true or I would not be here.

I refuse to let the Dark Side of Humanity or the mistakes we have made lead me to lose Hope. It is losing hope to bow to the Dark Side. Not me, not the Pale Rider. I will Preach HOPE. And I will back it up with a GUN.

Reverse Engineer

And how most of US citizenry is organized?

So who are those "rich", which you are going to rob, just to give money to poor?
Local employers?

Everyone will rely on friends to some degree.
But there are vast forces out there which cannot be addressed by man with a gun.

So I will.

So why not to chip in money to pay off their debts, if they are so close to you?



I might have few friends, may be 1 or 2 enemies and 95% of local villagers entirely neutral.
Our village have ~350 souls.


You may refuse Dark Side...

What if Dark Side embraced you?
With guns of desperate neighbors who found you slightly richer than they are, regardless how poor are you... with guns of of fascist law enforcement... with guns of SWAT teams... and with nice smiles of evil faces...

They would be smiling gently and telling to you:

Hey Pale Rider... cooperate with us... we have money... we could provide that antibiotic for your sick, dieing daughter... we could release from nearby uranium mine that little fool whom you was teaching few years ago and who now stolen a loaf of bread from the store...
You can help all of them... and many others... but we know that you are a good gunman... we need you... we will feed you... we will even pay you a tiny little bit... So would you like to join our debt collectors team?... think about it... your daughter without that antibiotic has only a day or two to live... look at her... you love her... and your other daughter is in her 20-ties, she have plenty of debt, you know, that college bill... she is also quite pretty... we and no one else can write off her debt.

So my question is:

Would you become their debt collector in such circumstances?

Or would you allow your lovely daughter to die... and would you allow your other daughter to become a w... ?
Would you?

Answer sincerely.

in 50s and 60s people in Germany did not discuss with their kids what happened in wartime out of shame. I bet most veterans have dark nightmares about what they had to do to survive.

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, the Shadow knows"

According to my 84 year old friend, recalling the Depression of the 30's, quote, "People will do anything, ANYTHING!! If things get bad enough." I didn't ask him to elaborate, just took him at his word. This is the guy who landed at Normandy and made it through the Battle of the Bulge. He doesn't volunteer much about that time, either. It is noteworthy that he is one of the kindest, most generous people I have ever met, and I believe that is a product of his experiences somehow.

As a child in the 1960's, I could hear our neighbor yelling at night when he had nightmares from WWII. He either got drunk so he could sleep, or he didn't sleep. Daytimes, he was like the previous man, a kind and gentle soul.

The use of antibiotics has the end result of MRSA, multiple resistant staphlococcus aurealius.

Short answer, I don't like the use of medicine, never use it myself, not even aspirin. I would lance a boil, treat a fever with ice baths, mainly I would practice good preventitive medicine by teaching good cleanliness and sanitation practices and by teaching good nutrition to bolster the immune system.

If despite that, my daughter came down with an illness that she could not recover from without the use of a modern antibiotic, she would die. So it goes.

As for my other daughter who managed to not die of a childhood disease and made it into her 20s, she would have no college debt, since she would go on scholarship and work her way through on her brains, like her daddy did To be honest, I did take out some college loans myself which took me a long time to pay back, and were a never ending source of headaches for me during that time. If it came down to the choice between taking on debt for college or not going, I would tell my daughter to head for the library and just read. I missed plenty of classes anyhow for more important parties Most of what I learned I learned by boning up the last week before finals holing up in the college library, which was kept open 24/7 the last week. You simply moved in there supplied with sandwiches from Mama Joys Deli and plenty of Jolt Cola.

Insofar as trying to help out my friends by paying off their debts, like Warren Buffett I don't have enough money to do that. So I simply say wipe them all out, burn it ALL in the greatest bonfire of paper wealth in all of recorded history. Burn baby, burn.

Reverse Engineer

Has anybody ever suggested you're actually a bit disturbed.

What's the term sociopathic?

Let's give EU the benefit of the doubt on this and assume he is just arguing for the Dark Side.

If he really does believe in his schemes to turn every indebted female into a whore and turn every male debtor into a slave working in unsafe conditions while fed on cockroaches, then sociopath would be a mild label for this type of thinking

I'm looking at it as though he is just going a bit over the top here in his solutions. I have enough experience with this to identify it as such Of course in my Pale Rider persona here, I get to go over the top fighting for the GOOD SIDE. Nothing like holding the moral high ground in an argument to give you those warm and fuzzy feelings inside. LOL.

Reverse Engineer

That is very generous of you, but I actually thought that Quinny was referring to you (lol)...

I think we're all a little bit disturbed, especially with what's happening out there. I don't think I'd describe RE as sociopathic, his ideas seem to be more creative than sociopathic.

Patience Wrote:
"People will do anything, ANYTHING!! If things get bad enough." I didn't ask him to elaborate, just took him at his word.

There are portions of the bible that talk of boiling your infants for food...God I hope & pray that things don't get that bad But chances are, they probably will.

It was a little confusing. Quinny however has cleared up the confusion I was able to figure it out because I know Quinny's attitude.

Reverse Engineer

Well, I think that such an outcome should be a final stick on reckless defaulters.

However there would be nothing wrong for them to work very hard by any other means or employ their ingenuity to secure necessary funds and to repay their debts.

I believe that contracts should be enforced unless there are very, very good reasons to "forgive".

And explanations that "I thought that a price of my home will go up and it went down" or "ah, well, my neighbors went on holiday to Maldives, so I wanted too, and I really didn't think much how to repay my CC bill when I was buying that package..." are certainly not good enough reasons.
So if money are not found to foot the bill now, some hard work in uranium mine (or a bit lighter one but still very unpleasant in brothel for $5 a go) would be an appropriate solution to recover debt.

So I would certainly tighten bankruptcy laws for example.

In environment of shrinking economy society cannot afford to accommodate for irresponsible debtors.

So you may expect debt servitude coming back, take my word for it.

It is pointless to enforce the unenforceable. You cannot bleed money from a stone. If a person has no money and no job, you cannot GET any money out of them. Imprisoning them will actually COST you MORE money. The idea of using prisoners to run some kind of business is ludicrous, since nobody can figure out any business worth running at the moment. LOL.

Neither a Borrower or a Lender be. The lenders in this case were AT LEAST as stupid as the borrowers, what idiot in his right mind lends money to people who in all likelihood could not pay back the debt they were handed in a credit line? I can make at least as good a case that it is dumb ass lenders who made all this credit available who should be imprisoned here, but they don't have the money to pay back EITHER.

You make bad laws, you cannot enforce them. Prohibition against Alcohol didn't work because you cannot legislate morality, Abortion prohibition suffered the same problem and so of course does your favorite moral vice, Prostitution. If a law does not work, why on earth try to enforce it? Waste of time and money. Think of all the endless hours your Tax dollars paid for Cops to go shaking down Prostitutes and their Clients. This is money well spent?

Enforcement of laws relating to Private Property are written specifically to protect the interest of the property owners, and in the long term are unenforceable because in reality NOBODY can own the Earth. If you follow Capitalist philosophy to its reductionist end, one highly succesful Capitalist could in theory end up Owning the ENTIRE planet! How stupid is that? LOL. We all should become Slaves to the Chinese because we owe them money? Who was stupid enough to LEND all this money? You don't see culpability in stupidity?



No doubt this will be attempted, just you have a significant logistical problem when EVERYONE is in debt to the Future of the Planet. Even if you personally do not owe money, the Goobermint of your country to which you theoretically owe allegiance is almost certainly a debtor, in which case you own a piece of that debt. So are you going to pay off Polands debt? (you are Polish, correct?)

I hardly think the US will willingly become debt slaves to the Chinese. You want the money back, you'll have to get it at the point of a gun. A possibility if you have a Bigger Gun then the debtor, but at the moment all the major players have the same big gun, the H-Bomb, which nobody really wants to pull the plug on for obvious reasons.

The Lenders here have to accept the same culpability as the Borrowers for this mess. You CANNOT have a dumb ass Borrower without a dumb ass Lender on the other side of this equation.

Neither a Borrower or a Lender be.

Reverse Engineer