Saving for Catastrophe

I read that rich people are having fun playing survivalist.

And why not?  No harm in it, and just like our years’ supplies, they may do some good during those horrible catastrophes that history tells us are inevitable but that our daily experience conditions us to believe can never be.  There are black swans–course changing events that we could not have predicted–and there are white swans–course changing events that we could have predicted but sure didn’t.

All the same, most plans for real catastrophe are silly.

Like Taleb’s black swan investment strategy they mostly assume the continuity of the government and current Overton windows.

Or else they are fundamentally nihilistic.  Live in a luxury-stocked bunker somewhere eating down your luxuries waiting or hoping that someone else puts civilization back together, comforting yourself until you die.  There is no future in that vision.

The rich guys who buy farm land are at least thinking a little, though not very much at all.

Here is what a rich guy who thought it through would do.

He wouldn’t focus on supplies or even farms.  Solidarity is the single biggest survival tool.  He would focus on creating or joining a thick community in a good geographic location, then make sure that community had the supplies and the farms it needed to weather the storm.  That is the best survivalist strategy from a purely secular standpoint.

For example, he would buy 1000s of acres somewhere, maybe somewhere with a gravity fed irrigation system, and then he would give it on long-term leases to a group of Amish in return for payments in kind or something.  He would make it clear that this is a long-term generations long relationship he envisions.  Then he would interact with them–help  pay unusual medical expenses, contribute to their community projects, etc.  He would also find a small group of co-ethnics, co-ideologues, co-religionists, what have you, and hire them to help him run the place.  But also on a long term basis.  He would help pay for their kids schooling, he would make a real commitment to them and expect one in return.

Friendship and loyalty is the only sound currency.