Upcoming Days

I don't claim to be an expert at prognostication, nor would I expect my pontifications to be gospel truth, but I've recently become one of those people who is actually worried about the future stability of our country. It doesn't feel to me that we've gone off the deep end, or there's going to be complete anarchy, but I am concerned enough to consider that it's worthwhile knowing how to reduce dependency on the market for the most basic of life's accoutrements.

I'll be considering where this impacts the standard lifestyle of Americans, so I'll attempt to consider topics as they arrive. At the moment, I've considered a few hypothetical ways to reduce economic impact at the same time as reducing environmental impacts...

1- Sharing. This, of course, is one of the primary virtues of pre-institutional education for most families, I know this was the case with mine. The idea is that certain appliances simply do not necessitate being one-per-house. Vacuums, mops, washing machines, and lawnmowers, amongst other things, are all items that are not regularly used on a daily basis. By coordinating with a few neighbors, four households can own between them one of each appliance, reducing the need for each to have one. Material benefit: less waste. Perceived negative: less purchasing in the market. That is, however, a false negative; if goods are not needed, the lack of their purchase is the market functioning properly. This enables more resources to be spent on other goods and developments that will open new markets by the preferred method: improved technology and increased productivity. It is, of course, not as simple as that, but this is one method to reduce your individual budgets and make sure you're more financially soluble overall.

Why is this unlikely to happen? People are shy; fewer people know their neighbors than in the past, and the connections are diminishing. We feel apart and detached from others, and we're less likely to ask for help the less we feel that we can depend on others. The solution to this is to have grassroots organizations begin to connect people for non-political aims, or to have popular leaders attempt to alter the behavior of their flocks.