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Voting With Your Feet
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
When do we finally accept the hopelessness of reforming a self-serving machine bent on destruction?
My recent conversation with Max Keiser on Summer Solutions (25:45) included three bits of advice:
1. Stop financializing the human experience
2. Acquire skills, not credentials
3. Vote with your feet
Today's topic is Vote with your feet.
The beauty of voting with your feet is the advice applies to the full spectrum of human experience. When faced with a dysfunctional, destructive situation that cannot be reformed, the only real solution is to exit stage left or right.
Voting with your feet often feels like admitting defeat or abandoning those trapped in a deteriorating situation. But we can't help anyone if we are in danger of losing our life, health, mind, livelihood or opportunity.
Unfortunately, dysfunctional, destructive relationships and systems soon degrade to unhealthy states of co-dependency and complicity. We can't leave the alcoholic because they need us to survive (and to play along while they "hide" the liquor bottles).
We can't leave the dysfunctional workplace because we'll never earn the same money working somewhere less toxic, doing work we actually care about.
We can't leave the dead-end city/county because our family is rooted there.
And so on. So we waste our time and energy trying to reform the alcoholic, make the toxic workplace slightly less toxic and pound away at the bleak prospects in the dead-end city/county, even though we know (and so does everyone else) that our abilities and ambitions are being squandered.
For many people, their nation of birth is a dead-end. Never mind the countries torn apart by civil strife and open warfare; there are plenty of places where opportunity is reserved for the children of elites.
Many people feel America is slipping into a dangerous state of totalitarianism masked by a phony veneer of wealth always wins democracy and various toxic flavors of crony-state capitalism that protect the privileges of the few at the expense of the many.
Sometimes the only way to reform a relationship, family, town, company or political system is to vote with your feet. When everyone who values their autonomy, freedom of movement and opportunity opts out, a Darwinian selection process leaves behind those who are acting out of humanity's least productive traits--guilt, complicity, fear of change and love of comfort. The resulting collapse clears away the accumulated deadwood and enables real reform.
There is often an institutional lifecycle at work. When the institution was founded, it was staffed by idealistic go-getters who believed in the mission and paid little attention to pay, pensions and perquisites.
But as the institution matured, the majority of workers were no long idealists; they were people seeking to minimize their workload and maximize their private gains by whatever means were available.
The focus shifts from the mission to maximizing one's share of the swag. Those with a higher purpose either quit in disgust or are banished to bureaucratic Siberia as threats to the free-loaders and stiffs.
Eventually, the friction, waste and sloth builds up and the institution collapses under its own dysfunctional weight. Here is a chart of the process:
Another way of saying vote with your feet is opt out: opting out is an increasingly attractive strategy as empires, nation-states and corrupt, self-serving bureaucracies lose their grip and start sliding toward dissolution and implosion.
In financial terms, admitting the borrow-and-spend game is over is called bankruptcy. Sadly, there is no institutional equivalent for the politically bankrupt systems that dominate the major trading nations and alliances.
It's not just empires that collapse: relationships, neighborhoods, enterprises, towns, cities and regions can collapse, too. The dynamics of collapse are scale-invariant, meaning that they work equally well in groups small, medium and large.
Here are the nine dynamics of decay that lead to collapse:
1. complacency and intellectual laziness
2. profound political disunity
3. rise of unproductive complexity
4. those bearing the sacrifices opt out/quit
5. decay of effective leadership
6. rise of bread and circuses social welfare and entertainment to distract/placate restive citizenry
7. decline of wealth-producing capacity--status quo living off financial trickery
8. sclerosis--status quo controlled by vested interests
9. resource depletion/environmental damage
All of these dynamics are currently in play around the globe.
Michael Grant touched on many of these dynamics in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a short book I have been recommending since 2009:
There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. (The Status Quo) attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.
This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.
This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.
Rather than sacrifice ourselves to prop up a system that protects the privileges of the few at the expense of the many, we can choose to no longer grease the machine with our sweat, blood, tears and toil.
When do we finally accept the hopelessness of reforming a self-serving machine bent on destruction? When Belief in the System Fades (March 12, 2008).
My interview with Mike of Rethinking the Dollar, on Why Things Are Falling Apart (32 min): please ignore the fool in the video (me), but listen to our wide-ranging discussion on why things are falling apart and the USD is strengthening. (I can either be composed or answer the questions, but not both.)
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Isn't there something about voting and guns? I forget the quote. But I'll take that one.
Vote with guns. Cast your bullet.
I am Chumbawamba.
"When all else fails vote from the rooftops."
nowhere to run to.
nowhere to hide.
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.
"The Marching Morons" by Cyril M. Kornbluth, a science fiction story which becomes truer everday, perfectly demonstrates the results of this process.
I love that book.
no where to run... no where to hide...
Yes there is... In fact, there are lots of places to escape the madness of the west... you just aren't looking hard enough...
I got the hell out of Dodge (any big tech center) years ago and while I don't make as much money, my cost of living is much cheaper. I also got out of the markets completely a few years ago with people telling me about all the money I was losing not doing the BTFD thing, but I've never been greedy. Now I sit on land I own, living how I want to live and preparing for the world to fall apart. I'm just a happy Knuckledragger who doesn't know any better than to enjoy life until I take the great dirt nap.....
Yep. Smartest thing I ever did was leave the city (and a promising future and all that shit) and move back to the country 45 years ago. It's been a life well lived (I'm 76 and winding down...)
Yep, nothing like a life well and properly wasted... :-)
Galt's Gulch is looking more and more attractive by the day..
as a side note, "Idiocracy" will soon be moved to the documentary section.
No kidding. Who would've thought that Mike Judge would prove to be a modern day prophet?
Pretty much anyone with an IQ above 100 and a sense of humor.
"I didn't get no damn fries!"
You're right. Nowhwere to run. Wherever you go there will be government thugs. Some better organized than others, but thugs all the same.
Besides, "voting with your feet" to encourage reform seems futile to me. Empires don't usually collapse overnight or even in a single human lifetime. Roman empire, Byzantine, Tang, Mayan, British...they take centuries to decline and finally "fall" (Britain may be the exception-almost overnight in historical terms).
That doesn't mean one might not want to 'flee with their feet' to a less dangerous, less oppressive venue.
Also, see Harry Brown's "How I found Freedom in an Unfree World".
"Vote with your feet" implies there is somewhere to go that will be beyond the current decay. "Opt out" is only slightly better, it allows you to say "I'm not with those guys" but, unless you're talking off-planet, there's no place to opt or walk/run to...
A post-globalization empire collapse will be a new thing entirely. Talk about nowhere to run, there will also be no time to get there. The classic empire collapses were pre-airplane/drone era.
And the nukes that go off, or best-case scenario, the meltdown of neglected and/or sabotaged nuclear reactors will assure that even those who are able to somehow segregate themselves, with optimistic plans to "make do" (I'm not talking about Americans/westerners obviously) will still be unable to escape the (literal)fallout.
I wish the story ended differently.
No need for sabotage. The absolutely criminal nuclear industry and regulators have been actively sabotaging plants for decades in the form of premeditated, fully informed, willful, shameless neglect.
I believe I have the actual Tyler Durden response.
Rather than voting with your feet, voting with your wallet might prove more effective, or at least, couple the two together.
A societal paradigm shift is overdue. Whether general quality of life and freedoms get better or worse stands to question.
When a society looks the other way as humans are harvested for parts I think we are due for a very painful overhaul.
Don't worry it'll get worse people in the city when SHTF will turn to cannibalism, why?
USA food products create fetal stem cells with genes extracted for transgenic foods.
Its GMO ON STEROIDS.
Pepsi products have MEK 293 derived genes from Senomyx to improve customer's taste receptors to their products.
But, don't worry again they try to use disinformation to people by saying the aborted kidney cells aren't used in the final product only the derived genes to be spliced with other human or animal cells to create proteins or whatever they want.
Corporate PR trolls are the fucking worse. Lawyers help trolls tiptoe around words with newspeak.
SOYLENT GREEN ANYONE? [sarc]
You are rapidly becoming one of my favorite commentators...the force is strong with this one.
Still and all, an external stimulus is needed...a "trigger mechnism" if you will. Something that finally stresses the system to break apart, deviate from its norm in an even more unhealthy way. Was 2008 that stimulus? probably inasmuch as it wasn't an "extinction level" possibility (not event). It could be papered over, just more of what we didn't do in the Great Depression, which like so many previous crisises of the old British Empire (Spain, the Dutch, France, et al)...actually made them (& the USA in the Civil War, Depression, etc) stronger.
"Great entities actually build their strength from a series of narrow escapes"....Salah
I want LAND!
fawk its so expensive. The federal government owns the west. Price per acre has doubled in 9 years.
"Price per acre has doubled in 9 years."
Or, the real inflation rate has been around 8%, which would lead to a doubling in prices in 9 years.
true true.
whos got 2 thumbs and an income that hasnt doubled in the last 9 years.
^-this guy
Grin and bag it!
When every one around you is either too stupid or too passive to get it done or figure it out (most of the former USA)...then it's time to exit stage left.
Well said. I share my own experience as an example. 30 years in a healthcare field that I was miserable in, always justifying remaining there due to the income level it was providing. Having to grovel daily to do continued business with orthopedic surgeons, just enough of whom are sufficiently arrogant and abusive to make the job true torment. My health, mental and physical, slowly deteriorated to the point that I was forced to leave the career field and live on a fraction of my former income. To my great surprise, I became a new and free person. I can't undo the damage to my physical health but I'm not adding to the problem, anymore. My mental health has returned. Oh to have understood my self-induced problem at an earlier age!
I went to my town clerk and delivered a letter revoking my voter registration four years ago.
I canceled my Citi Bank credit cards 4 years ago. I told them I would no longer do business with a criminal organization.
I use cash when ever possible.
I moved most of my currency from Bank of America and put it in a small regional bank and TD Bank (they don't have a proprietary trading desk where they play with my assets like the big international banks).
I paid off all my loans.
I still have a land line and a rotary dial phone, just in case. I have a throw away cell phone turned off and stuck in a drawer until needed.
I've have taken numerous other measures which will not be discussed with others, especially in any electronic forum.
"Loose lips sink ships." For those of you too young to not be familiar with that phrase from world wars, it means keep your big mouth shut so the enemy can't intercept you or know your strategy.
Yes, to bad you just gave the NSA more information.
TD Bank most certainly does have a proprietary trading desk.
I am no friend of TurD Bank. Better to be at a local FCU.
TD's brokerage and options also give shit fills. All the orderflow is sold and probably sold twice.
TD is almost as bad aas Citi and Bnak of America sucm.
Let's talk about some real options about where to go and still make $200-$300k/yr. These posts about Bermuda and the Caymans are stupid. Most people there are the working poor. Singapore and Honk Kong earnings aren't that good either.
There are real options. I found some in South America, mostly in Brazil. Yes, Brazil bashing in media recently has been constant (I wonder why)), yes, I agree, countries go down, so will Brazil. However, some REGIONS will do much better than others. Check out http://visa4brazil.com/ , info about relocation and investment options as well.
LOL! This time it is in fact global Weimar!
Where you gonna run to motherfuckers? Mars?
Elysium
If I recall correctly, Charles Hugh Smith lives in California, in the Bay Area. If so Charles, why haven't you voted with your feet by getting the heck of California given the progressive politics which are now dominating this State? Just asking.
I believe CHS resides in Hawaii.
Vote with your feet may not mean today what it used to mean. In the past there were always new places to go. It may not have been exactly easy, but it was easier than dealing with the status quo.
Now that the world is all "discovered", vote with your feet may mean stand your ground. Stand up and share your beliefs so that others gather around you.
It's definitely harder and will be worth it in the long run.
Seriously, what the hell is this crap?! And go where? Alex Jones' website is called "Prison Planet" for reason. Is the author opting to go to the moon or something? If anyone knows of some new land of the free, by all means let me know, but I hate to break it to you, there isn't one.
And what's this opting out crap? LMAO. Opting implies choice which is the antithisis of tyranny. If we could opt out we wouldn't have a problem in the first place because that would mean we are free. Duh! Ask Irwin Schiff how opting out worked for him.
ways to opt out:
1. don't vote; if you vote you're part of the problem
2. consume the least possible (reuse, recycle, reduce)
3. make your own, grow your own, build your own, repair your own where possible
4. don't watch tv, shut off the MSM
5. don't buy big corporation made in China crap and quit eating poison shit food
6. think of creative ways to avoid taxation
7. work less, get by on less, spend more time with family and volunteer with friends and community
8. barter and/or transact in cash
9. pay off debts
10. convert savings from cash to precious and keep stacking
Why (9) pay off debts? They can't take anything if you don't officially "have" anything.
this is voting with your feet on the credit ponzi. a dollar paid off in debt is a dollar removed from the scam. default is the other option if you prefer...
This is not opting out. This is incovienencing yourself to pretend you are freeing yourself from tyranny. It's like sneaking in a couple magazines and a Tastykake while you are prison.
Actually that's not really that good of an analogy because at least that makes things better. It's more like going on a hunger strike in prison to protest the conditions. Your overlords don't give a shit and you a wasting your time.
Keep telling yourself that. Has it never occured to living more self reliant makes some people happier..people like you will be among the first to die if thi ngs get bad..among the first to be looking to som eone else for your next meal..if you are good with that..Darwinwould be proud. When the Soviet Union fell.. those who sur ived the first few hard years.. usually had skill sets, growi g a garden, tools, could create a product or barter..whiners and the u prepared starved or swept the streets for a few rubles. Have fun whenit hits the fan, and good luck..you and your family will need it
You got it.But people are lazy, because they can not do the opt out even in small ways, they are like the people in hurricane sandy and katrina who waited on govt or media to tell them what to do. These people can not give up cable or grow a garden..or have a plan if things get really dicey.like Scarlett Ohara..they will think about it..tomorrow.
All of that and more I have been doing for the last 15 years . The next step is to leave the country and work on a second citizenship and finish college there on the cheap.. I'm done with this fuckin ZOG machine.
Soap Box: Michael Hastings, etc.
Ballot Box: Multi-billion dollar circus.
Jury Box: Good luck ever getting your civil case heard by a jury.
Ammo Box: Ready and waiting.
Yeah but is 22 win mag good enough for zombies and social work.
It's all about aim.
While voting with one's feet is certainly a viable option, leaving is really a submission to their tyranny. Leaving is also the trading in of one tyranny where you are, and belong, for that of a land where you go and do not belong--From an owner to an interloper.
We, the American people, are many, and mighty. They, tyranny, are few and weak. Tyranny depends upon us, our production, to sustain them--they need us, we do not need them.
We are as 750 pound lions in a cage with a meek tamer, and his whip and chair--he only controls us by distracting us from our size and strength. If we were to become aware of our size and strength, and ignored his whip and chair, we could in an instant take and devour him. The whip and chair could then do us no harm without the tamer.
We are many, and mighty. They, tyranny, are few and weak. They depend upon us, what they steal from us, to sustain them--they need us, we do not need them.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
Oh do tyranny, step in the cage with me. Do believe the whip and chair sufficient. Do provide me you as relief of my hunger.
"If we were to become aware of our size and strength"
Well these tamers are doing everything in their power to make sure that doesn't happen, including the drugging and poisoning of we animals.
I mean look around. Look at the state of us. Mangy as fck, and can't even remember what life is supposed to feel like. They've started to shoot us in the streets for growling.
It's now or never.
When food becomes scarce.
The California draught will make scarcity inevitable.
Then the elite will have their revolution.
Their arrogance will defeat them.
My feet hurt...
LOL Voting with one's feet, did that awhile ago is it working hell no because not enough of the population would care or want to do so.
I have been farming, renting, paying cash on everything, self - employed, paying off debt as quickly as possible, well- informed on history and current events, make my own soap products to salad dressing oils from natural ingredients grew by me non-GMO, saving seeds I make, investing in capital/asset preservation, owe mil spec 2nd gear, armor, emergency plans for nearly every circumstance for SHTF, educating myself and others, learning languages besides English, computer coding, etc.
Most Americans, can't even tell me what wild weeds, herbs, trees, etc is edible or poisonous or pass the citizenship test or be independent from government and others either because most Americans aren't really fundamental Americans that believe on the founding of the nation and precolonial times.
Most people who live in America are collectivists. Why the HELL WILL I CONTINUE THIS FUCKED CYCLE GENERATIONS HAVE ALLOWED TO BE PASSED ON TO MY GENERATION (millennials).Individalism used to exist in only one nation USA. Oh and the FUCKING MILLENNIALS are apathatic, not informed in the right subjects/areas and stuck worrying about paying debt instead of getting ahead in life. Their fault, but somehow they brought the progandna passed down from their parents, teachers, society. I was even told to go to college by both of my parents despite either of them having an on-campus college experience or having any no idea that we weren't living in the fucking 90s when its 2008- 2010 (financial meltdown aftermath) GEEZ, college was a fucking joke. LITERALLY, it was high school 2.0, but I was paying for it. I taught myself on more subjects then the college did. I did my own study abroad in Canada, I learned more from common people than LIBERAL FEMINIST, COLLECTIVIST, OUT-SPOKEN, FOREIGN PROFESSORS. Not a goddamn conservative professor with 4 years of college WTF?
I FUCKING LEARN MORE ON ZH ON ONE DAY THAN A WHOLE SEMESTER AT A 4 YEAR PUBLIC/PRIVATE COLLEGE!
Ballot box is fucking controlled Charles Hugh Smith. The Jury box is done, too. Oh, and the CARTRIDGE BOX is being assaulted by the STATES and the FEDS. FEDS are only arming up more as they disarm us systematically. Oh and godforbid one owns body armor LEGALLY because somehow that prevents more crime .
Sorry ZHers, but USSA is an occupation with the enemy in government at nearly every position of power and literally inviting more enemies and creating more enemies because there's just aren't enough for Americans to defend against. Oh and the amount of division being driving by the FEDS to cause turmoil in our ranks.
I couldn't believe one can be a paid government troll for the USSA or USSR, information warfare is so invasive.
UN hates the USA and therefore needs the total transformation of USA to USSA. NWO isn't it beautiful enough to vomit.
Hugh Smith until people have nothing else to lose but their own physical life in a critical mass amount there will be no fucking change for the better.
There are many ways to "opt out" and "starve the beast," before physically moving to another part of the planet.
One can start by opting out of (& protecting against) the fiat currency/financial/banking system by converting excess financial assets into gold or silver bullion in your possession.
Use a credit union rather than a money-center commercial bank and use FeRNs instead of credit card whenever possible, to starve the banking beast of deposits and credit card merchant processing fees that now skim 2-3% of gross commerce.
Ignore, refuse, resist and accuse all levels of gubbermint (as much as possible without risking liberty or property) at every opportunity.
Always vote against and publicly humiliate all ruling ElephantJackass Party sock puppets, especially incumbents.
"Shrug" by living off the grid, ceasing productive activity, removing capital support from the ecomony and eliminating all but essential personal commerce.
Prepare for collapse by stockpiling food, supplies, firearms and ammo.
Educate and encourage others to do the same (and read ZeroHedge!)
Careful. You are now on the Thought Crime and Oppositional Defiance Disorder lists.
So am I.
Burticus,
Do you know how inconvenient that would be for the sheeple?
Why it will never happen en masse
Been doing it for years amongst a couple other things to starve the beast. It's not hard to do and i've saved up so much powder for the next downturn so I can do what the elites do. BUY when there's blood in the streets.
.... read Zerohedge comments ....
"Voting With Your Feet"
Where does one move, Mars?
It comes down to the trully skilled labor crowd. This small fraction that actually does things. I suspect they are the real 3% that scares tptb. Ever so slowly they are catching on.
Thats the effort that makes this system work. Lets say 90% of the effort is done by atomotons. That last bit cant be faked. A global strike of teachers would not make any change. A strike of that trully tallented group would be a shitshow stopper.
If that group ever got together and said no more fiat/lies/force we get the stall. The good news is that small group is not afraid of truth. They are always the first to see things for what they are.
If we can keep them from starting WW3 we just might have a shot.
The reset is comming. The question is can they get that tiny percentile to go along. Or does that group go its own way?
CHS did a piece on this a few years back.
Integrity matters. I will not be a party to this shit show. Mr Krugman et al do it yourself!
Lots of ways to vote, feet is only one of them, and actually not a very good one.
Voting with your wallet is better. If you really want to fuck with the system, though, vote with your information. When you go low-profile and off grid, with your wealth existing outside of the banking system and your living situation as downscale as you can tolerate, you're the skinniest cow on the feedlot, and way less interesting to harvest than the others.
Off grid and self sufficient -- I'm not saying they won't find you, but the work they have to invest v. the reward just isn't there for them. Government is populated by the those that go after the easiest harvest, not the fairest one, so play into their weakness.