David Rauschenbach

Simon Black recently recommended a book to his readers titled Emergency, by Neil Strauss. The recommendation was this:

“Neil tells an important story that we are all completely dependent on a functioning system of complex infrastructure.

We don't think about, for example, whether or not the lights will turn [on] when we flip the switch. We don't think about whether or not water will come out of the faucet, if the toilet will flush, if the grocery store down the road has food in stock, or if the gas station will be pumping fuel tomorrow. We take these things for granted... Emergency tells Neil's story about making this realization, ...”

I call this coming to one's senses, which happened to me at some point.

And as complex as the issue is, I think it can be reduced to a single question: “What is the ideal place to live?”. The relevance might not seem apparent on the surface, but bear with me.

My Ideal House

Above all else, my house should be practical, and should serve my needs by supporting my most basic life processes, including sheltering my body, dependents, and assets, by providing for my drinking and eating, and by facilitating my work and rest.

In modern society, most of these needs are outsourced, whereby they are subjected to taxation, and put at risk by being made dependent on a fragile and unreliable infrastructure. I would much rather have such dependence be voluntary rather than mandatory. Therefore:

• My ideal house would be built from permanent materials of first class quality, such as stone and imitation stone (concrete), so that no money is ever wasted on an expensive and unwanted fire department, and so that the house would not require regular rebuilding. This would allow it to serve as a good inheritance for future generations, rather than taxing them with the upkeep demands of its wrong design. In other words, my ideal house would serve life, by assisting in the accumulation of wealth, rather than serving death and chaos through the destruction of wealth through planned-obsolescence, which could also be called the production of poverty for the many, in exchange for the accumulation of wealth for the few or the one, which is a dead end.
• My ideal house would have dedicated water infrastructure and storage, so that I might go on drinking and watering the fruit trees during a 4-year drought, without depending on anyone else to get it done for me, and without depending on pumping water up from water tables that can also no longer be counted on, because that resource is being exploited as fast as oil, with no regard for the future, or for the lives that depend on those tables remaining full as a buffer against nature's inevitable cycles.
• My ideal house would be a nuclear fallout shelter, for when the world decides to go back to war, and for when the next nuclear accident or terrorist event occurs, which has already happened twice in my lifetime.
• My ideal house would have a substantial thermal mass, and therefore be able to store enough heat in summer to draw down through winter, and to "store enough cool" in winter to draw down through the summer. In other words, it would use ancient passive solar technology, and would not be designed to import massive amounts of energy, and export massive amounts of money, just for dealing with seasonally normal temperatures. It might even store such hot and cold water simultaneously, in southerly and northerly cisterns, so that a Stirling engine could make a little electricity off of the difference, only if it had to.
• My ideal house would be an ornament of first class quality, for creative inspiration, and for when I am entertaining. But mostly, it would be a living factory for supporting life, with all of its parts exposed and serving a purpose, which I would find to be beautiful, if done right.

My Ideal Living Situation

• My ideal house would be mutually supported by a dedicated farm, so that I might eat from my orchards and fields where my personal standard of quality is assured, and where the food is "free", and not subject to any taxation or insane regulation that is triggered by buying or selling.
• My ideal house would be in a neighborhood of 5,000 to 40,000 people, surrounded by a 60+ foot tall wall, so that no money is ever wasted on impermanent expensive metal fencing, or on crop loss due to wildlife overrunning the gardens. It would be highly civilized (planned, organized, and expensively architected and constructed), but surrounded by at least several hundred thousand acres of woodlands, natural unmolested bio-diversity, and natural beauty. That natural beauty surrounding the fort would also be under its protection, because there is tremendous value in leaving wildlife free to roam, and leaving indians alone to live the way they want while tending their forest, rather than turning it all over to some wicked and incompetent federal government of expensive forestry bureaucrats and tax masters, who can wreck the best state parks in the world, and devastate animal populations, given enough time and money to squander on their meddling, which has already happened in America.

My Ideal Neighbors

• My ideal house would be surrounded by ideal neighbors, who held a common set of beliefs with myself, which is the essential prerequisite for peace and prosperity. Modern computer technology makes it easy and practical to gather concensus on any number of subjects, which would become the de-facto standard for any community. If nobody favors speed limits or any other form of legalized highway robbery, then so be it (amen). Anyone falling outside of their community's set of values would naturally sell out and move on to where their values are held, which might even include living outside of any community, foraging for acid-rain berries on the hillside where no values are held. Either that, or they might get banished and have their property confiscated for willingly breaking some inflexible law. This way, no money is wasted on expensive and unwanted police, who would otherwise be hired and charged with keeping track of the criminals in our midst, which eventually degenerates into them keeping track of you, me, and little baby Sophie, in order to help save us from ourselves.
• In my case, my ideal neighbors would also be independent producers who are at least as hard-working as I am, or maybe even as hard-working as the Amish, so that the community's private currency would remain strong, and because most people want an honest way to get ahead in life, which does not involve scheming, selling any trash, or telling any lies. That strong local currency would be a dramatic contrast to the currencies of other communities of tax masters and tax slaves, who love to spend their money on bureaucrats, politicians, federal administrations, police departments, fire departments, programs, and so on. If other people want to live that way, then that's fine, so long as none of it is on my dime, because when any of that waste is done on my dime, I become culpable. That moral boundary was crossed a while ago, and is a transgression of my free will that absolutely needs correcting. I expect the correction to occur through both internal and external forces, in my lifetime, as the pendulum swings back away from peak Empire and back towards liberty and prosperity.

What about Transiency?

My ideal house should exist in every geographic location that I want to have a business or recreational a presence in. My time in transit should consist only in moving from one of my "secure, well-appointed lilly pads" (as John Robb would say) to the next. By the time I get to my destination, I should like to go to bed, and sleep in perfect peace and security. And if a nuke should go off over my head in the middle of the night, I should think that I might stir a little, while dreaming about the foresight of my community, and with sadness about the ignorance and poverty of others who placed fear-mongers in charge of the whole mess. But then I should like to fall right back to sleep, knowing that my family can easily survive the fallout by taking a fast, if we are in practice, and by living through it like those Japanese nurses who only recently died at a ripe old age, in spite of all the radiation which had no effect on them, apparently for two main reasons. And I would ideally live through such times without any major lifestyle alteration, and especially without giving up any fear offering to anyone, because that would only perpetuate the whole mess, rather than steer a path through it.

Further reading:

• The Only Investment Worth Having (by John Robb)
• SovereignMan.com Notes From The Field — 2-Jul-2010 (Simon Black)
• The Ghost in the Machine (by Allan Nation, editor of the Stockman Grass Farmer)
• Doug Casey on his favorite place in the world [and phyles] (by Doug Casey and Louis James)
• The Ideal Place to Live, Volumes 1 & 2 (by Ray Swangkee)
• The Diamond Age (by Neal Stephenson)
• Living at Nature's Pace (by Gene Logsdon)