“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”
The dialogue above is from Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises.
National economies work the same way. We are in the “Gradually” part right now but I believe we are close to the tipping point where we will wake up one day and the music will have stopped like a game of musical chairs. Yes, if you’re in an urban or suburban area, martial law will come quickly. In the country, we’ll be more on our own. There are not enough troops to cover everywhere at once. As local communities get organized, the Feds will focus their efforts elsewhere. Country folks are used to being producers, not consumers so I expect the impact to be less here.
I remember listening to my granny talk about the Great Depression. She wisely noted that those who lived rural and poor actually did better than the “rich folks” as they were already in survival mode and hardly noticed the depression. Most of their goods came off of the farm or from bartering with neighbors, or from the woods and hill around our little town. Even as I was growing up, things were still very much that way.
We would do well to reform those communities now. We’ll make it through whatever if we work together.