From The Altantic, May 2009:

“[Cody] Lundin is not a racist; in fact, he’s an Obama supporter, and he resents the racist associations attached to survivalism. Nor does he wish for the grid to go down. He says he enjoys electricity and indoor plumbing. He tends to think, though, that civilization is a thin film, and that in times of economic distress, it’s smart to be prepared for the day when Safeway runs out of milk. “This isn’t something I hope for. But what if the illusion does really crumble, and we have to move as a society to something else?”

I asked Cody how he invests his money. “I don’t believe in the intangible economy; I believe in the tangible economy. When I have extra money, I buy tools, food, or land. I like to be able to see what I’m buying. And I really don’t like debt, so I’d rather not have certain things than be in debt to anyone. I just feel better knowing that I don’t owe money, and I feel good knowing that I can take care of myself. That’s the American way, to be able to be self-reliant.”

For the record, I don’t think the grid is buckling under the weight of consumer debt or the mistakes of AIG. But we’re in a strange moment in American history when a mouse-eating barefoot survivalist in the mountains of Arizona makes more sense than the chief investment strategist of Merrill Lynch.”

and

“Unconventionality makes me nervous, but less so than conformity. I’m finished with conformity. In picking an adviser, I’m also looking for someone who is unleveraged; someone who is putting his own money into the investments he’s recommending; and someone who can explain to me in a few sentences, in language easily understood by earthlings, his philosophy of investing….”

  Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic, May 2009

 My Comment

My, my.  Survivalism is finding its way into the stodgy halls of the establishment. A genuinely truthful, even humble, piece by Jeffrey Goldberg. Note: I don’t know if it adds to the surprise that Goldberg supported the Iraq war in 2002.

Of course, there’s the mandatory and utterly gratuitous swipe at the racism and anti-Semitism of survivalists (you’d think survivalists were the only racists of any kind around).**

But we’re not picky about the dawning of good sense.

We’ll take it wherever it comes, whenever, and however.

But then, we read what seems to the companion piece to the one above, The Quiet Coup, by Siimon Johnson, a former economist at the IMF. Johnson writes correctly, but rather belatedly, that the country has been taken over by what he gingerly terms ‘American oligarchs.’

Well, substance-wise this is somewhat tardy, now  that the horse – indeed a whole team of horses – has fled the barn.

And style-wise, we much prefer the earthier feel of  ‘bankster’ or ‘mobster’  to ‘oligarch.’

But it’s what Simon Johnson tells us to do in this piece that sets off our b-s detector.

Simon sez nationalize.

We’ve heard this before, from every economist in town. And the public said, thank you very much, but no.

But here it is again. Nationalization is obviously something the establishment badly wants.

[I say establishment, because that’s exactly who’s pushing it].

And that makes me have second thoughts about the Goldberg piece. Much as I like it, I begin to wonder about it…what end is it being put to?

Co-opting exactly the same mood (libertarian and survivalist) and the same economic argument (impending disaster) that characterized “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets” (down to citing behavioral economics and Kahneman) the Atlantic seems to be pushing an establishment big-government solution that’s directly opposite the libertarian small-government solution we advocate in the book.

That is, using the same arguments, The Atlantic gets to another place.

The Atlantic wants more of the same (big-government and nationalization)

Libertarians want change (non-intervention and self-reliance).

Libertarians read the Goldberg piece and go all warm and fuzzy, hoping the establishment is about to come around.

Still warm and fuzzy, we read the other piece and begin to give the argument a second thought. Maybe it’s not so bad, we mutter…

Maybe we should rethink some of our criticism…

Maybe they only mean some stop-gap measure..Maybe, in that next piece of mine I’ll tone down some of the rhetoric against nationalization….

We tone it down…

The naive undecided reader reads the libertarian blog and the mainstream press and likes what he reads.  He sees two similar sounding arguments and recalls only the similarities. He forgets the differing conclusions. He starts to think the press can be trustedl. He hears the same solution touted all over the networks and begins to see no other way out but nationalization….

You see how it works?

**I’m philosophically a survivalist, but a bourgeois, urban, cosmopolitan one…….. more inclined to subsist on green drink powder than wild mice..