Should I keep a stash of paper currency? Will a stash of coinage be any better? (Can I get my household-sized wind turbine concept to production in time?)
Yeah, that's the problem. When I sat down to think about it, paper currency has no value. It's just paper unless someone decides it has a value. Coins are similar. My fictional people trade food or services -- I chop X amount of wood for a gallon of milk, for example, or I turned the crabapples in my backyard into a tasty alcoholic beverage that I will trade for wood I don't have to chop.
They are reaching a point where they are less in survival mode, so I do need to deal with currency. The more I noodle on the idea, the more I feel that good old US coins with a local exchange rate makes the most sense. They're durable. But they still only have a value if people decide they have a value.
But I do, coincidentally, have a local family that realized house-sized wind turbines made a lot of sense and started manufacturing them. I plan to have a funny bit about what happens when the local scrap yard runs out of material. I also plan a not-so-funny bit about what happens when the wind dies and you haven't got enough battery storage to get you through when it starts again and you've got things that actually matter relying on the turbine. People don't really realize that solar and wind won't save them without sufficient storage, which most of us currently don't need because we're not reliant upon that panel or turbine. Most of us have grid backup. If the apocalypse ever does happen, we (in the collective sense) are in A LOT of trouble.
Jim Rickards of Strategic Investing recommends a cash hoard that you can reasonably afford - it will be good for a little while, if a grid outage is not too long. "Junk silver" is a term for dimes, quarters, and half dollars minted before 1964. They actually contain 90% silver, and can be bought from most coin dealers, usually sold by the bag, based on a percentage of the face value. For an 'apocalypse' situation, barter will work until a coinage system is accepted, but it's pretty awkward, because a lot of things are not easily divisible into units. You'd have to be a good "horse trader" or negotiator to make a good deal. Coinage has been in use from very ancient times, but you really have to have a government of some kind to regulate it.
My more libertarian (right anarchists) friends have some really interesting ideas for how you get around forming a government. They suspect every government becomes corrupt and authoritarian eventually. This isn't a new observation. George Washington said "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." He was making an argument for a controlled government. He'd be SHOCKED by how far we've drifted. We've left the government to irresponsible action. And maybe that's where all governments end up in the end. If we could keep it very, very small and very, very ineffective...but then it would be ineffective, so why have it? Maybe a network of private companies handling specific functions, paid for by the users of those functions, would work better. Then, if we didn't like what a company was doing, we could stop paying them and they'd go away to be replaced by a company that knows there's consequences for not doing their jobs.
Oh, Wow - you really have given this a lot of thought. I've been thinking along the same lines, but not as extensively as you. I touched on it in https://alchristie.substack.com/p/imagine-the-electrification-of-everything
I'll have to get hold of your novels, now that I have a better idea what they're about.
Why, thank you!
Should I keep a stash of paper currency? Will a stash of coinage be any better? (Can I get my household-sized wind turbine concept to production in time?)
Yeah, that's the problem. When I sat down to think about it, paper currency has no value. It's just paper unless someone decides it has a value. Coins are similar. My fictional people trade food or services -- I chop X amount of wood for a gallon of milk, for example, or I turned the crabapples in my backyard into a tasty alcoholic beverage that I will trade for wood I don't have to chop.
They are reaching a point where they are less in survival mode, so I do need to deal with currency. The more I noodle on the idea, the more I feel that good old US coins with a local exchange rate makes the most sense. They're durable. But they still only have a value if people decide they have a value.
But I do, coincidentally, have a local family that realized house-sized wind turbines made a lot of sense and started manufacturing them. I plan to have a funny bit about what happens when the local scrap yard runs out of material. I also plan a not-so-funny bit about what happens when the wind dies and you haven't got enough battery storage to get you through when it starts again and you've got things that actually matter relying on the turbine. People don't really realize that solar and wind won't save them without sufficient storage, which most of us currently don't need because we're not reliant upon that panel or turbine. Most of us have grid backup. If the apocalypse ever does happen, we (in the collective sense) are in A LOT of trouble.
Jim Rickards of Strategic Investing recommends a cash hoard that you can reasonably afford - it will be good for a little while, if a grid outage is not too long. "Junk silver" is a term for dimes, quarters, and half dollars minted before 1964. They actually contain 90% silver, and can be bought from most coin dealers, usually sold by the bag, based on a percentage of the face value. For an 'apocalypse' situation, barter will work until a coinage system is accepted, but it's pretty awkward, because a lot of things are not easily divisible into units. You'd have to be a good "horse trader" or negotiator to make a good deal. Coinage has been in use from very ancient times, but you really have to have a government of some kind to regulate it.
I'm not sure you need a government to regulate currency. I think banks could do it, so long as people were diligent in providing consequences when (not if) someone gets the idea to game the system. We learn American history wrong. We focus on where the few banks that got greedy and failed rather than on the many banks that issued money and regulated it well. https://cdn.mises.org/History%20of%20Money%20and%20Banking%20in%20the%20United%20States%20The%20Colonial%20Era%20to%20World%20War%20II_2.pdf
My more libertarian (right anarchists) friends have some really interesting ideas for how you get around forming a government. They suspect every government becomes corrupt and authoritarian eventually. This isn't a new observation. George Washington said "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence-it is force! Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." He was making an argument for a controlled government. He'd be SHOCKED by how far we've drifted. We've left the government to irresponsible action. And maybe that's where all governments end up in the end. If we could keep it very, very small and very, very ineffective...but then it would be ineffective, so why have it? Maybe a network of private companies handling specific functions, paid for by the users of those functions, would work better. Then, if we didn't like what a company was doing, we could stop paying them and they'd go away to be replaced by a company that knows there's consequences for not doing their jobs.
Lela, I came across a review of a couple books by Eric Cline, about civilization al collapse in ancient history. Thought you might be interested.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/04/cline-collapse-book-history-armageddon.html