© Fernando Caracena, 2016
The Shaky Prospects for the Younger Generation
I do not generally give advice to young people, even to those in the family, such as my grandchildren. I sympathize with their having to face sour lemon prospects, and hope that they can make lemon aid out of what fate has dumped on them. Conditions have changed so much from those, in which I grew up in that smart people of this generation will know better how to deal with the challenges than I. However, I can offer some general advice that will be good for young people to keep in mind in facing the mess that previous generations have made, and in trying to make a living despite in its fierce backwash.
First let me say that I am optimistic about the future of humanity; but at the same time, I realize that people of the near future will be facing some severe challenges, not from mother nature, but rather, from misguided humanity. Civilization, which gave humans an edge on surviving the caprices of nature, now constitutes the chief hazard in an individual's life.
At the present, one simple, direct way that an individual can escape the above mentioned artificial constraints is by going off-grid and confronting nature directly by becoming a fundamental survivalist, that is, by trying to making a living in raw nature. In doing this, a person must understand that nature can be quite cruel; but living in nature has the advantage that nature obeys strict laws, which once learned, give the fundamental survivalist the ability, not only to get by, but to prosper. However, the fundamental survivalist faces a more serious challenge than confronting nature, which comes from organized society..
Civilization is a control freak that will not let individuality be. It will hunt down the maverick and try to force him to her to conform to mass standards. So the failings of fundamental survivalism is that the power structure of civilization may not allow it. That is certainly the case, if fundamental survivalism is coupled with a political or religious stance that alerts government 'authorities', such as what happened at Ruby Ridge. Perhaps, fundamental survivalists may have a chance to exist and prosper, if they take no adverse political stance, and seek to live in peace in a very remote area of the world where the authorities have no interests.
Anyway, for the above reasons, I do not advocate fundamental survivalism and I will concentrate my advice in the area of making it within the current system of the Western World.
The Mess You Face
In your name and before you were even born, people who have styled themselves "elites" have used you as collateral to pay off massive loans to run very expensive state programs of very controversial and dubious worth. They had pledged to service those debts using whatever portion of your income, would be politically feasible to steal from you at a future time. This tab overhanging the future is increasing like a dark cloud, so that now, through no fault of your own, your entire life is encumbered at birth. Soon everyone may be a tax slave. The net, which was used to snare the efforts of future generations, is made of fiat money and lifetime loans. This kind of system is known historically as debt peonage, or debt bondage. In addition, there is the notion of 'elitism' itself.
In the West, the original elites were the nobility. Somewhere the idea got started that some people are born to be elite and others, to be their support, or slaves. The whole idea is not based on anything rational. A person's worth to society is not counted in this kind of 'elitism'. There have been national leaders rising from the elite class, who initiated national disasters, yet felt perfectly free to carry out their own hare brained schemes without regard to their adverse effect on the welfare of the rest of humanity.
For a while, portions of mankind have been able to free themselves from the notion of 'elites' and 'slaves'. The French Revolution literally removed the heads of state. Then the idea of democracy developed: that people should be able to choose their own leadership.
The working of democracy requires that free citizens have free access to information, and thus be able to cast informed votes. The laws should be simple and few in number, and justice should apply to all in an equal way. No one is above the law, nor is anyone privileged in legal matters.
In a truly free system, the workings of everyday living should border on anarchy, that is, people should govern themselves and try to operate according to the highest ethical standards. The intervention of the law should be applied only when one individual acts in a way that adversely affects the life of another.