← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Kievsky
Thread ID: 17445 | Posts: 5 | Started: 2005-03-21
2005-03-21 21:40 | User Profile
This is an interesting thread on a "Peak Oil" web site. You'll notice that many of the people on this thread sound like some of us. I encourage message board cross pollination, or a quiet "invasion" of the board, though stick to the topic of Peak Oil and be nice. You'll find you can gently ease people in a certain direction that they want to anyway. [url]http://peakoil.com/fortopic4888.html[/url]
Some very good quotes about the Depression:
Quote: Well, everybody went on relief, and everyone raised a big garden. We raised everything from peas to potatoes and onions, and the extra vegetables we had we sold to people who didn't raise one. We lived off that garden for some time, and it was a big help. Once a month they'd give commodities out. You'd get dried beans, pound of bacon, pound of butter, dried milk, and sugar, and depending on how big your family was, was how much you got; and since we had the cow, we would trade the dried milk for coffee to people who didn't like coffee. That was supposed to last you a whole month, but that was government surplus, and they'd have a place that they dished that out; and I tell you we were so poor we had a gas stove, but we didn't even have the money to hook it up. We also had an icebox and couldn't even afford ten cents a day to put ice in it. When my son was born I'd mix his formula and put it down in the well on the rope and every time I had to feed him I would pull the rope up and get the bottle, but we had no refrigeration and everything we needed refrigerated went across the street to my mom and dad's place. When the war started in 1941, a lot of jobs were left vacant when the men left for war, so unemployment virtually disappeared after that.
Quote: Gas was sparse, so when me and a group of buddies would drive down a hill, weââ¬â¢d turn off the car so we wouldn't waste gas. Quote: Seemed to have just enough food to eat...no leftovers...had to eat everything on our plate. Things we take for granted now, such as water and heat in our homes was something precious in the depression. All farmers had to can food for winter and they ate out of gardens in the summer on a farm, there was no money and the people had to eat from gardens Quote: It has affected me all my life. It made a lot of people learn how to conserve.My dad could not find work so we went to live on the farm with my dad's parents. We had no money so when we needed something we had to "make do" or do without.
Quote: The city was affected more than rural areas. We always had food and wood from the farm, but city people had very little food or wood. They had to collect coal that dropped from the trains. Lived on a farm and had plenty to eat because we grew everything moved from town to live in Smithfield MO on a farm so that they could grow crops and have food to eat.
Quote: African Americans suffered more than whites, since their jobs were often taken away from them and given to whites.
Quote: Every tear I saw my mother shed was over the lack of money. All we seemed to do was to, literally, count the pennies in the house among all of us. We fought over money almost all the time, my mother would go into a panic if she could not account for every penny. Not one cent was ever foolishly spent and not one cent ever went for anything that was not vital to life. The memory that I retain to this day (77 years old) is that of my parents crying, singularly and together, about money! I remember one dinner where my mother, myself and my brothers and sister sat down to a meal. The meal consisted of 3 boiled potatoes and one slice of white bread which we divided up amongst us. I noticed my mother was not eating and I asked her why she was not eating. She answered that she was on a diet. When I was about 50 years of age it hit me that she had not been on a diet but was giving up what there was to us!
Quote:
When I talk about the essentials of life I mean just that. The list is easy to put together and here it is:
Rent, food, but no ice cream, candy, baked goods; only the essentials, electricity, gas for the stove, clothing, medicineââ¬âand that was it. We walked everywhere and I do mean everywhere. If a trip was less than 5 miles we would walk it.
There are five things that seem to be predominating in all that I have read about the Great Depression:
1) There was not one single private or public institution that was up to the task of coping with the depression.
2) The United States suffered more than any country in the world since we were the most industrialized.
3) People had to grow much of their own food in gardens.
4) There was a mass exodus to the country to live with farm relatives.
5) Money was seldom seen.
Are we headed there once again as peak oil/gas inhibits our ability to grow the economy, provide new jobs, and feedââ¬âclotheââ¬âhouse the new comers? Even without peak oil, this seems to be in the cards. And without an abundance of cheap energy to grow our way out of it, the forecast for the future is ominous.
A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel." Read my blog here: [url]http://depletion.blogspot.com/[/url]
julianj wrote: Quote: This massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich is about to happen once again.
But these events have a habit of radicalising the poor and waking up the apathetic. I don't think the rich iwll be able to sit it out in their gated communities.
Yes, and without WWII, which we were snookered into, I believe you would have seen massive social unrest in the USA. How will we pacify the masses this time?
2005-03-21 22:29 | User Profile
Excellent.
Here's a must read essay from the same site. [URL=http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic1476.html]The Mechanism of Collapse[/URL] This is the clearest explanation of Joseph Tainter's theory I've come across. :yes:
2005-03-21 22:41 | User Profile
Yes, and without WWII, which we were snookered into, I believe you would have seen massive social unrest in the USA. How will we pacify the masses this time?
WWIII, which we'll also be snookered into?
Of course, you don't have the genetic stock and social conscience you had available to exploit back in those days.
2005-03-21 22:56 | User Profile
Yep, I saw that, and no one had an SPLC type response! I said, "I got to send the ODer's over there!"
snookered into the Second War. There's some people there who remember Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford, I think. Kingcoal sounds OK for one, and I'm not sure about MonteQuest. He sounds a little bit neocon on his depletion.blogspot.com but who knows? We can observe.
Anyway, I think you guys need to branch out and post on other boards, and start to ease people into letting themselves think what they believe deep down anyway. Some of you have more time to post on message boards than I do. Stop preaching to the choir exclusively. branch out and spread the good word!
Rob
2005-03-22 00:20 | User Profile
This time around it will be worse than in 1929 for the simple reason that there are now more people and less farm land AND FARMERS.
Most Americans now days would not know what to do if they were to run out of toilet paper and this is only one sample of the many thing that is going to happen.
Like I posted before, the best way to know what it will be like is to talk to the old people and then get prepared according to what they tell you......or, spend a month is Cuba and live in a real time depression because that's the way that they have been living for the past forty years.
And that's the main reason that I am holding onto my silver (or KECEPH as the Jews like to call it) because I am not a farmer I will use it to get what I need but just in case I do have seeds and the land to use it in.
PS: I do have 10 bundles of 36 rolls each of toilet paper and intent to get ten more , lol :smartass: