Every inch of land is claimed by government; so freedom-seekers must be more creative than ever before. Accepting the Nonaggression Principle opens minds beyond ordinary limits, and innovative experiments spontaneously emerge. Our stories show diverse people forging new paths toward peace and liberty.UPDATE 9-4-11 Food Growing: An successful urban renaissance; 9-2-11 Community: Providing food for community resilience and teaching people how to grow their own food; 8-30-11 Housing: A high school student builds his own home; 7-1-11 Energy Resilience: Passive cooking for recreation or survival; 6-14-11 Health Independence: We Americans can stop the epidemic of disease now; 6-11-11 Currency Alternatives/Barter: Top barter items and skills in Disasters
COMMUNITY: Living harmoniously with our neighbors, nearby or across borders, is key to freedom and peace. Centralized big governments divide us, sow mistrust, and lure people into fearful dependency. But we can rebuild strong, peaceful communities, open source trade, and opportunities for all. Update 9-2-11: Portland Oregon combats hunger by showing people how to grow their own food; 5-9-11: Here’s how one blogger successfully began building neighborhood resiliency.
CURRENCY ALTERNATIVES: Barter: Most governments today are centrally controlled, with a fiat monetary systems. Central banks provide easy debt and debasement of the national currency through inflation. Pensioners and those on a fixed income are hit hardest. Earners barely keep up or fall into debt they cannot repay. The financial elite and politicians make out like the bandits they are, with the rest of us captured livestock — milked, shorn, fenced, controlled. Our one advantage: we are many. Despite an ever-growing army of bureaucrat-enforcers, life happens in ways bureaucrats cannot imagine nor fully control. Update 6-11-11: HERE are the top ten items and skills for bartering, in case of disaster of currency collapse.
“There was once a band called the Grateful Dead who had a following which toured with them. Some say the band sustained a population of 20K, some say it was 80k. The band played 3 nights in a row in a different city each weekend. In the parking lot was “The Zoo” or “Shakedown Street,” where those who were hip to what was going on would line up their cars and vans, forming a market zone. It was laissez faire capitalism at its best. There were no regulation, no taxes, and you could buy, sell, trade, barter ANYTHING and everything. “You could go to the show with a bag of wheat bread, a package of American sliced cheese, and sell grilled cheese sandwiches for a dollar and a smile, or trade for a beer or what have you. It is my guess that illegal drugs were a big part of the “alternative currency”.“This community survived for nearly two decades and spanned globally. The band’s contribution, besides providing a venue, was allowing taping; but tapers had to get a special ticket, the Dead provided a limited amount and then it was up to you to get on the list or pick a taper and give him some money/or alternative pay to cover the cost of mailing you a copy of the show. Tapes were also traded and a form a currency. TRUST… was the bottom line.“The day Jerry Garcia died was the end of my life as a free person. Since then it’s been one institution after the next telling me how to live. Trust me, I live way better than they ever knew how. It’s NOT about money. It’s about FREEDOM, TRUST and PRIVACY, that’s what buys happiness, not money.” – from The Granger, originally posted on TheDailyPaul.com
Time Banks: Many communities and networks use Time Banks, proving valuable additions to community resilience, as in this story out of Lyttelton Australia where the community Time Bank was able to immediately RESPOND to the recent 6.3 level earthquake with a network of skilled volunteers.
DISASTER RELIEF: In contrast to the military government response of Hurricane Katrina, volunteer networks coordinated by local radio stations, respond quickly and humanely to flooding in Alabama.
ENERGY RESILIENCE/CONSERVATION: Simple old-time skills are good to have in one’s portfolio, as well as newer technologies for energy independence: Here’s a great website and a simple skill for passive cooking, for recreation or survival.
FOOD GROWING: Bureaucratic control of food production and distribution lowers quality and efficiency while raising costs. For health and economic resilience, people are finding ways back to local food sourcing, often home grown: 9-4-11: See this cornucopia of video information for efficient urban farming and community resilience 8-30-11: Solar-powered chicken coop automatically moves for fresh chicken forage — build it and save, or rent or buy read-made; Small livestock for food, improved soil, weeding and insect control; 8-5-11: Save resources by going nature’s way with a bountiful backyard food forest; 6-2-11 One small family urban farm’s high quality food and lifestyle; 5-28 Dairy: Government control is more dangerous than ever before; central planning causes mass disasters impossible in localized planning for resilience. Japan’s nuclear power meltdowns now impact the global food chain; as always individuals take quick action to protect their communities as government lag and fail. Indoor Gardening: A south-facing window, some tupperware containers, rich organic soil, seeds and water. Voila, an indoor veggie garden. 4-Season Greenhouse: If you have space for an outdoor greenhouse, Will Allen shows how to grow abundant food efficiently through freezing winters, in a VIDEO introduction and his WEBSITE.
FOOD PRESERVING: Living independently means taking responsibility. For many that means acquiring skills our grandparents knew but we never learned. Now the young are reviving those old skills, with creative flair: HERE is an easy way to culture veggies for fresh, enzyme-rich food all year round.
HEALTH INDEPENDENCE: Americans suffer epidemic chronic illness as part of the larger consequence of depending on government-created monopolies in the “health” industry. People are trained from childhood to accept status quo M.D. protocol without question. The result is substandard, expensive, and even dangerous treatment that results in an ill and weak populace. Update 6-14-11: Most Americans trust the FDA and medical industry to watch out for their welfare. But federal subsidies and monopoly-status have corrupted our food and medical industries until the U.S. spends more on managed illness than any other country in the world. One of many medical challengers working to educate people for far better health and independence is Dr. Mercola.
HOUSING: A 16-year old high school student builds his own real-life dream home: cozy, no mortgage:
INDUSTRIAL INDEPENDENCE: Global Village Construction Set offers open source blueprints, to locally build civilization with modern comforts, by lowering barriers to entry into farming, building, and manufacturing. With GVCS templates you can build a life-size set of modular tools to create entire economies. This VIDEO explains, and here is the WEBSITE.