Quoted:

No, it's worse...we have not been robbed of the information...we've been robbed of the freedom and willpower to WANT to be independent.  I personally am a bit of a hypocrit living here in the city, but at the same time I have spent a lifetime learning and practicing and have to say I am nowhere near self-sufficient, but understand the principles and can hold my own in the short term against most situations.  No, I am not a farmer, not living in the woods off the grid....but I COULD if I wanted to...and yes, I realize it takes a lifetime of preparation to do what the folks in the above posts have achieved...I won't pretend to think I could do that.

What is sad is these folks whose parents and grandparents grew up thinking all they ever had to do was work in the mill.  Forget the education, forget supporting yourself somehow....just the mill, son. They'll take care of you.  So the children didn't go to college and didn't learn to do anything except head to the bar after work and spend their paycheck and get more in-debt...then their kids did the same, and the same after that.  Then everyone got laid off and nobody knew how to find a real job or a real career or to think about moving....and they fell into the welfare state.  Now their kids think it's ok to have a criminal records....priors...warrants....there is no manners, no sense of honor, because nobody passed them down as family values. They've lost hope and don't know how to find it...don't care if they find it.

I lived in Pittsburgh...I lived in Detroit... I saw it happen to friends and neighbors. Some escaped, some didn't.

So...back to your question...how did we get robbed?  We robbed ourselves....we opened the door and gave our stuff away without even thinking about it.

Not me.  Never.  I'll never, ever let myself be that kind of slave.

Quoted:


I was born in '73 so much of this was done before I was grown.



I recently read an article in Backwoodsman about a family in OK that had a well and a way of making electricity quite some time back.  They even processed their own hogs.



How did we get from being so self reliant to depending on others for virtually everything we use or own?

Quoted:
The one true thing that has been robbed from us by the ruling eilte has been our freedom by ways of stealing the entire economic sistem. Once based on goods that had an intrinsic value, grains, salt, later gold and silver, these where replaced (rather recently) by fiat currencies that have no value of their own, because they take no effort or labour to be created in the first place. Once this happens no matter how much goods you have or how hard or smart you work, it will always be worth in terms of something you do not control yet someone else has inifite supply of at will. Those that "create" money out of thin air are the ones really controling everything. Not governments, but the corporations running them.
So yes, as long as we use fiat currencies in one way or another we are slaves to those that own the economy. Slaves with nices houses and cars, iphones and holydays here and there but under the thumb of the eilte milking us none the less. They never lose you see. If one goes bankrupt they create some more money (through debt, which is passed on to you) and give it to one another, keeping themselves in power.
There you go, see how you can easily ruin someone's day?
FerFAL

Quoted:
The complexity of our societal dependence is nuts.  It may be nothing but I think it is interesting that the OP said "others", and I think that is part of the problem.  If we could change that to "one another" and contain the whole business to our sphere of influence we would be better off.  I try to make decisions that reflect this.

Quoted:

I understand some of the old ways suck.  I also understand that there are many things we could be doing better and most of us are not.  For example,  I am not a Mormon...  but their ideas on food storage sure go a long way towards minimizing drama in the event of a lost job or something.

I cannot help but think of how bad off most people were in NO during Katrina and how easily a 2 liter pop bottle filled with water when it was empty of soda would have made their lives.

Fourteen Defining
Characteristics Of Fascism
By Dr. Lawrence Britt

Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.

9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

Quoted:
I like how people blame society for their lack of closeness to the land.

Fact is, free market capitalism makes everybody's life better. Here we are, 200 yrs after starting a country on that premise, and it worked great. Now we have poor people who are fat and have Cadillac's.

I hear they are still in touch with the land in Kazakhstan and Nairobi.