Home Production Superior To Protests

After watching Tales From The Green Valley, I found myself thinking about how, in our modern world, more home production means less tax money for the government. With the government doing massive amounts of stuff we don't want, whether we are right, left, or have fallen off the line, it seems to make sense that we'd have a moral imperative to produce more things for ourselves, away from the the tax structures. I have always been quite in agreement with the standard libertarian argument against the local movement, which is that transportation costs are only one among many, which is true, but increasingly irrelevant in this modern world. Transportation allows for the application of tax, and tax allows for the implementation of evil practices.

The flip side of all this is that the modern system rewards people who go into debt and make everything imminently taxable. People using cash may just have it stolen by the DEA, and if not, they continually experience the theft of valuation, as the Fed and the banking industry continually create more currency. The system rewards debt holders, not asset holders. Mark Shepard advocates using this system to build the businesses, and get to the point where you can actually buy a farm. I see this as a legitimate strategy, most likely the best one most of us have right now.

But I also see how, at a certain point, how you would want to go opaque. If you like your alcoholic beverages, well, it should not escape your notice that you pay a lot of taxes, not only sales tax, but the price reflects various and sundry taxes and fees the brewery had to absorb. If you eat meat, well, most meat is passed through a very government regulated- and therefore an obvious place to tax- slaughterhouse.

Sure, in some cases a locally or home produced product isn't going to be as good as something we could just buy, but if you don't like something your government is doing, maybe you can make do with the a lesser product. Besides, in many cases the local product will be superior, especially if it is made by some enthusiast rather than somebody drudging on an assembly line for wages.

What do protests do? Well, I think they play right into the hands of the elite in this country, and encourage most middling Americans to think the militarization of cops might be a good thing. Nothing changes, except the same people who had too much power yesterday get even more tomorrow.

To take away their power you have to stop plugging into what makes them powerful. All this said, admittedly it takes time and careful planning to make an exit. I am not sure how to get there myself. One of the problems is that the 40hr work week makes it tough do manage much more than cooking for yourself- once you realize you should cook for yourself.