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When Will It Happen? What Will It Be?, by Son Of Texas
There as many opinions and even more guesses than those who are guessing about what will cause the collapse of the world as we know it. There may be unexpected triggers in nature or in society such as natural disasters of a sudden or a gradual nature, geopolitical events or developments, or environmental triggers that may be natural or man made. With or without any of these events and processes about which there is an enormous volume of speculation, my previous skepticism about one in particular has been transformed to a personal certainty.
Economic Collapse – Really?
The expectation that the economy may or will deteriorate beyond a typical recession is gaining wider acceptance every week. Let me explain why I am confident that this situation will become unmistakable within the next six to eighteen months. I will also discuss how serious this problem is likely to become.
Before we get too far into the discussion about what may happen in the economy, it is necessary to understand the nature of money and bartering. Money is fundamentally a way to facilitate bartering among a large group of people. When one person, lets call him George, needs something that a second person, lets call him Peter, can provide, George may try to offer something he owns in exchange for what he wants. This may become difficult if the George does not have anything that the Peter wants. The George is then left wanting unless he can arrange a series of trades or exchanges with other people until the George finally obtains something that Peter wants. Another advantage of money is if George has something that Peter finds desirable, but there is a wide disparity between the values of the two objects being considered for trade. For example let’s suppose that George has one too many cows and would like to obtain a hand saw from Peter who has an extra saw. The difference in value of the two tradable items makes it unlikely that an easy trade will occur. By this point I am sure you can see the advantage of having a reserve of money or currency to facilitate the transactions between George and Peter.
Now before we get too sold on the advantages of using money, we need to examine the major issues about using money. The first issue is how to determine the “value measure of money”, and the second is how to assure that the “value measure” of the money does not change unfairly. To put these questions in plain English we can ask, “What is a Dollar worth?” The second question is, “How do we know that a Dollar today will still be worth a Dollar tomorrow?” Some of you may remember the economic atmosphere in the United States in the 1970s and early 1980s when the Dollar lost about half of its value in six years. (Many countries had far worse experiences before and during that time.) Virtually every government, as well as a number of non-government groups, has grappled with those two questions throughout history.
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