Prefab Solutions to Life's Problems

There is an endless list of pre-fab solutions to various life problems. A lot of hobbies, for example, are entirely pre-fabbed. Let's take backpacking as an example. If a friend invites you on a backpacking trip, and you know nothing about it, you can spend a few minutes looking at a web site that tells you what you need and then you buy, borrow, or even rent all the stuff. The stuff, like a backpack and a tent and boots is now produced in a factory; in some cases the factories are on the other side of the planet. All the problems of living outdoors for a short while are pre-solved and available as products. Almost everything I can think of is like that, which makes sense because the economy has been packaging up solutions to every single life problem of all types for many decades in a row.

The pre-fab solutions are great until something breaks. For example if your tent gets a leak, the problem of staying dry outdoors in a rain storm is no longer solved. The camper needs to improvise to fix the issue. 

The baby-formula shortage is another great example--right now in the US, there's a big baby formula shortage. Some people, I imagine are learning to make their own. Some people are just driving around all over the place to buy it, which is probably a bad option when gas is $5+. In fact, I think knowledge of basic nutrition--what's required to live and thrive and where to get it is going to be extremely valuable. Anyway, a broken pre-fab option forces improvisation and invention.

In China, there's a persistent baby formula shortage because the Chinese mothers do not trust Chinese made baby formula. Some factories used fire-retarder for plastic to falsify protein content a few years ago and poisoned infants. (it also went in dog food and killed some pets) In China, there's a gray market for imported infant formula from Australia and the US and other western countries, so that's how the Chinese solve the problem. There's a huge mule-smuggler economy, apparently in China. People go abroad buy the limit, then bring it home.

It seems like a lot of systems that people assumed were reliable are going to start breaking down left and right because the most essential ingredients for those systems are in short supply, for example in Europe, natural gas might go into short supply. This is really and end result of massive malinvestment and "leadership" that's focused on dumb ideas. The same things have happened in the USA, of course, but we have more natural resources per-capita, so are more insulated from the stupidity of our system.

Transportation will become a major problem, for example. When gas is $10 a gallon it's essentially unaffordable for almost everyone. For SUV and truck owners, a single fill up might be $200! For a lot of people that is not viable. A car trip for a single task will no longer be a viable choice; commuting to work won't be viable for many people--it's always been kind of stupid to drive to sit in front of a computer, but now will just be impossible for most people. I don't think EVs are a solution to these problems at all, by the way, they're at least as reliant on fossil fuels as ICE cars.

In short, people will have to start to invent and improvise as the old system becomes unreliable. That will actually kill the economy and the government. The "solution" the oligarchs have in mind is pre-fab poverty: live in a block apartment like in the USSR, use electronic "money", and eat bug paste. That happened in the USSR, but they also developed a shadow economy. I don't think the pre-fab poverty solution in the west will work at all, except for the urban poor.

Once people start to improvise, it will transform the entire economy and the government will just be in the way at every turn for a short time. People will ignore it en masse. It has no solutions to offer. It's a giant parasite and the system the oligarchy has in mind is retarded. It relies on high tech and electronics which are produced at the pinnacle of the house of cards supply chain. Their excuse to bring in the electronic gulag will be a failing supply chain... so what's the point?

The people who are on the fringes of society experimenting with different ways of life are miles ahead of the masses in some cases. The off-grid homesteaders, for example, are, in some cases, light years ahead of the average Joe who totally relies on the system to survive in a suburban zone with a HOA. Ironically the hobos and homeless people who are already on the fringe are better prepared than most. Simple, cheap, basic is the way to go. No pre-fab solutions is the way to go, too.