Ragnar Benson - Ragnar's Urban Survival - A Hard-Times Guide to Staying Alive in the City

In times past, U.S. dollars, British pounds, German marks, and Swiss francs were equally prized by traders throughout the world. No longer. Everything is U.S. dollars-even in agricultural villages in remote Mexico, prices are quoted in dollars.

It's kind of like being the chief leper in a leper colony. Because national finances are run so very poorly in most other countries, our own post-freedom economy stands out as being strongest.

New Zealand may be the only exception! Although New Zealand is headed in the correct direction economically and politically with increased emphasis on freedom it currently is experiencing a severe recession. This isn't of their own doing. Traditionally New Zealand exported raw materials to Asia while importing many manufactured goods. The collapse of Asian markets and 2 years of El Nino-induced agricultural failure has taken its toll.

At any rate, New Zealand's economy is and always will be too small to be much of a player in world markets. This also may be what happened to little Switzerland-it is a good economy but it's too small to be influential.

America's economy is so very large that it will dominate for the foreseeable future. Here is another example. While living in rural Africa, I frequently came across original Maria Theresa thalers being used in trade. This was 70 years after the collapse of the Austrio-Hungarian Empire. Certainly things move much faster these days, but even if the United States does somehow manage to collapse, it may still take years before people realize that its dollars are worthless.

At this writing absolutely everything worldwide is denominated in U.S. dollars. Oil, refinery products, computers, wheat, corn, gold, precious and nonprecious metals, iron, steel. cocoa, lumber, cases of tomatoes, melons, tobacco, and even a night with a woman. I can't think of anything not denominated and traded worldwide in dollars. As a practical matter, if there were no U.S. dollars we would have to invent them!

Dollars are even being sent rather than food to refugees in ravaged, war-torn areas. It's the trendy new way of arranging for food aid. Dollars in refugees' hands, we have found, encourage the inflow of food by private shippers and producers from hundreds of miles away As prices go up, local farmers are encouraged to plant more. Aid organizations sending food shipments into an area discourage farmers by lower.ng prices in their markets. When it's done by government agents, it is always handled in a corrupt and inefficient manner. Money gets the economy running again, whereas actual bags of foodstuffs depress it.

The bottom line-especially for city survivors who will be close to quantities of goods and services-is that storing lots of cash has the potential to overcome great deficiencies in one's survival plan. However, gold-including gold coins-is a poor trade good.

Cuba's economy has been in a state of collapse since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 when all Soviet aid to Cuba was halted. I have been there twice since that time. Under-the-counter barter in the tightly knit Cuban society keeps its economy afloat, but this is barter of my two chickens for your cabbage and dozen eggs, or my skill and labor to repair your Soviet-built motorcycle in exchange for your sugar ration. While there I traded extensively in the underground economy using dollars, but never for gold coins. They wouldn't have known what to do with gold: gold of any kind had absolutely no practical value to Cubans. It was much the same in East Berlin before the wall came down. Mexicans are in the same boat. Their economy has been devastated by recent massive peso devaluations and they want gringo dollars, not gold coins.

Gold coins are somewhat similar to the piano my dad's family traded for three sacks of potatoes. Apparently the only reason this deal was finally consummated was out of some sort of perverse sense of humor on the owner's part. Like the piano, gold packs too much value into too little space for owners ever to realize its full potential. It won't do to trade the piano one piece at a time.

Gold coin does meet the survivor's Rule of Portability, but other trade goods do this job better. On the other end of the trade spectrum, small gold coins are also difficult to handle. Teensy, tiny $1 and $5 gold pieces might even blow away in the wind! Our current experience indicates that gold is not a good exchange medium in a primitive survival economy.

TRADE GOODS

Portability, practicality, and profitability are the three P's of trade goods. Profitability has to do with things that are used as tools to create wealth. In most cases, wealth for city survivors is food, water, and shelter. What items should be stocked as trade goods? They have to be consumables!

This fact was reinforced again with visits to Cuba and Britain. Cuban cigar rollers still work on a piece basis. In very un-communist fashion, they are paid by performance the same as any other entrepreneur. Experienced cigar rollers are the best-paid laborers on the island. What did these top-of-the-line laborers want to trade from me? Not gold coins, not CD/tape players, not my watch, or anything else so exotic. It was common, dull, average things like bars of soap and aspirin tablets.

This is similar to what happens to me in Britain. On hearing my American accent, Brits around often position themselves so it is possible to quietly ask if I have any pistol ammunition I wish to trade!

Consumables

Consumable items such as ammunition, soap, film, medicine, toothpaste, toilet paper, shoes, underwear, aspirin, pens, pencils, paper (I was continually asked for these last simple little items in Cuba), cooking oil, salt, wire, wire snares, computer disks, nitrogen fertilizer, blasting caps, gloves, tape, knives, sharpening stones, matches, saws, files, chain saw parts, light bulbs, garden hose, motor oil, engine filters, powder, primers, bullets, canning lids, plastic freezer bags, electrical supplies, nylon rope, coffee, welding rod, batteries, lamp mantles, LP gas, flour, yeast, detergent, needles and thread, tape, bleach, Toothbrushes, antacid, sugar, steel wool, calcium hypochlorite (used to home-manufacture bleach), nails, screws. bolts, flashlights, batteries, bulbs and repair parts, tires, pepper, boot oil, and shoelaces all have potential as city survival trade goods.

It's very sobering to contemplate, but apparently the higher the casualty rates among fellow residents, the more these items will be scrounged up and put on the market. There were, for instance, so many German casualties at Stalingrad that hordes of Soviet soldiers enjoyed adequate supplies of captured boots and coats when the shooting died down-sorne for the first time since they had been in the army

The importance of simple flashlights in a collapsed city economy is easily overlooked. There are never enough of these. Flashlights and batteries were the principal items we used in our little company store to manipulate the economy of some rural African communities in which I worked. In a few cases we charged up to a full day's wages for a new set of flashlight batteries. The principle employed here may be identical to those we will likely encounter in city survival situations. Africans in the area were happy to work, but coulc. see no reason to work. There were no stores in which they could spend wage money By opening a company store and carefully orchestrating prices and availability of some especially desirable items, we were able to both get our work accomplished and provide a benefit to our workers.

Consumables make excellent trade items in collapsed economies.

In many regards it was similar to our own society. (Except here it's the politicians' running the government store that forcibly takes away our money in the form of taxes to finance showy, makework projects.) Placing money on a cord to wear around their necks as a means of ornamentation was common among rural Africans. This was of little economic benefit to the Africans. Providing flashlights, bulbs, and batteries they desperately needed was a benefit. It was never mandatory that they buy from us. When other stores opened we closed ours. Money is money and is always fungible.