socialism Archives - The Pickled Prepper Blog

How Venezuela Turned Back to Capitalism when Socialism Failed

If you were paying attention over the last few years, you got to witness the collapse of Venezuela as it experienced the failed promises of socialism. Now capitalism may save it.

Ah, the glories of socialism.

In one generation, Venezuela went from being one of the wealthiest countries in Central and South America to having a poverty rate of 96 percent. The monthly minimum wage of $2 made it the poorest country in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yes, they are worse off than Haiti.)

Yep, that’s what socialism will get you. Four percent of the population living on the hard work and sweat of the other 96 percent. Four percent, the elites, living in high-end houses with armed guards while the rest of the country cannot afford to buy food or medicine, has intermittent electricity, and little or no clean water to drink.

I wrote earlier this year about the tens of millions killed in China and Russia implemented socialism. They don’t have an accurate count of the dead in Venezuela yet, where malaria and other diseases made a comeback and where a simple infection can kill you due to a lack of antibiotics. They do know that millions fled the country. Among them are the ballerina that escaped to Columbia and became a prostitute, and the highly paid professional who made it to the U.S. and worked as a butcher. Sadly, they are the lucky ones.

When Did American Become a Third World Country?

As the country draws ever closer to socialism, there is one thing keeping us from falling into the quagmire of socialism: Privately owned firearms.

Rolling power outages
Seeming endless riots and protests
The media acts like mouthpieces for the government
The rich get richer while the poor get poorer
People who complain or speak out lose their platform to do so
Government spokespeople threaten reporters
There are shortages and long wait lists to obtain goods
Government gun confiscation and bans
Large numbers of people wait in food lines
High unemployment and massive deficits
Politicians want to lock up people they disagree with

At any other time, I’d say the above are signs you are living in a third world socialist country. Today, it’s just life in these United States.

I find that frightening.

In just these last few decades, this country has slid so far down the slope towards socialism that it is hard to think we will not soon be a third world socialist country heading to the inevitable collapse. We could be the Venezuela of the Northern Hemisphere. Or maybe we will wall off California and a few major cities and let them become the East Germany of the United States. (And if you don’t know what that means, get a world history book written before the year 2000 and look it up.)

Don’t Feed the Beast: Why You Should Take Going Galt to the Next Level

Are your hard-earned dollars supporting companies with positions you don’t agree with? Don’t feed the beast! Seek alternative companies and brands.

I want to talk more about going Galt, which I have previously referred to as refusing to economically support a government with which you disagree by dropping out and generating as little tax revenue as possible. In other words, don’t feed the beast.

Today, I am going to take it further than the government and talk about why upstanding citizens who support the constitution should stop supporting large organizations that have become so tightly intertwined with the liberal wing of the government that they act like socialist apparatchiks.

If you haven’t grasped this yet, I’m talking about Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Instagram, Google, and news organizations like CNN and the New York Times. All of these companies perform services for the government that would be illegal if the government performed them. Some examples follow.

How to Fight Back Against the Elites

Marie-Antoinette, who famously said “Let them eat cake,” is a good example of the attitude the elite have today.

We’ve talked about “the elites” before, and it raises the questions, who are the elites and how do you identify them? What can we do about them? (More on that later.)

Some would say that the elites are defined by money, but I would argue that. Was Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart at elite? I don’t think so. And I’m not sure that Warren Buffet is an elite, yet he’s one of the richest guys out there.

While having money is an ingredient to being one of the elite, you can have money and not be elite. Wealth, if you flaunt it and wield it like a weapon, can give you privilege, and it is the privileged who are among the elite. People like Sam Walton and Warren Buffet didn’t assume the mantle of privilege and acted like regular guys.

A Report on Life from John Galt’s Gulch

We can stop socialism in its tracks by not sharing our money, our ideas, and our labor with them. Make little or no money, and they can’t tax you. Don’t work for the man, and the system will collapse.

Earlier this week, I realized that I have Gone Galt.

Based on Ayn Rand’s character John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, the phrase “Going Galt” means that I have withdrawn my financial, intellectual, and economic capital from the system and refuse to play by the “work, earn, tax, and repeat” rules imposed by the ever-increasingly socialist government.

Going Galt was not a conscious decision on my part. I didn’t sit down and say, “Screw you, I’m not going to play by your rules.” It all just sort of came together at the end of 2019. My employer shut down, so I went from earning more than $100,000 annually to collecting unemployment. (Thanks to COVID-19 stimulus bills, I am still collecting $350 a week.) I stopped paying more than $20,000 a year for health insurance, getting Obama Care at no cost to me. As my income disappeared, my income tax bill has dropped so much that the IRS might have to pay me this year.

What You Should Do now that the Georgia Election Results Are In

The actions on January 6 will have long-reaching, unintended consequences. We discuss what you can expect and how to prepare for what is to come.

When we were looking for our prepper property, we set a goal of moving before Election Day. We missed it by about five weeks, but am I darn sure happy that I moved before inauguration day. I’m also glad I do not live or work in Washington, DC.

In yesterday’s book review, I talked about the lead character being slow to catch on and recognize the problems they were facing. I wrote, “You’d think a military vet would be able to see the writing on the wall and make better, faster decisions.”

I recommend that you look at the world around you and ask yourself if January 6, 2021 was a day that should have motivated you to act. If you don’t, you may one day look back on it and think to yourself, “That’s when the first domino fell. If only I had acted then instead of doing nothing.”

This Year, I’m Thankful for Capitalism

Among the many things for which we can be thankful, living in a capitalist society with a mostly free market is an important one.

I am thankful for many things in my life, and most especially for my wife, but this year, I am also thankful to be living in what is still predominantly a capitalist society in which hard work will still result in a better life more often than not.

Communism and socialism are the source of much hunger, death, and misery. I am thankful that socialism was largely knocked back down in the past election, even if Joe Biden captured the presidency.

Socialism Leads to Starvation

An oft untold story about the First Thanksgiving has a first-hand example about the problems with socialism.

Why the Great Reset is Anything But Great, Part 2

The Great Reset means more government, more regulation, and more sustainability and socially acceptable investment by governments. But that’s not whats best for the people.

Yesterday, we wrote about the World Economic Forum (WEF) using COVID-19 to push through their agenda for a Great Reset, which when you dig below the surface is double-talk for a plan to implement socialism. If you have not yet read it, we discuss why they want things to be “fair.” The WEF’s idea of “fair” is similar to that of communism, meaning everyone is equal, even if they are equally poor, equally hungry, and equally powerless.

Today, we’ll look at the second pillar of the great reset which the WEF says will “Ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.…to create a new (system) that is more resilient, equitable, and sustainable in the long run. This means, for example, building “green” urban infrastructure and creating incentives for industries to improve their track record on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.”

This is simply a fancy way of saying that governments should make investments not in roads and bridges, military and defense spending, or courts and justice, but in environmentally-friendly, politically correct, socially acceptable causes. (Acceptable to whom, you may ask? Acceptable to the socialists and the elite.) They want to build a “better society.” Better for whom?

Why the Great Reset is Anything But Great, Part 1

The World Economic Forum wants to take advantage of COVID-19 to change the world — and not for the better

Today we are going to take a break for COVID-19 coverage and talk about something that is only tangentially related: the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset plan.

According to their website, “The World Economic Forum (WEF)is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.”

In other words, every year a bunch of rich and powerful people get together in Davos, Switzerland, to try to influence a bunch of politicians who themselves want to be rich and powerful one day and try to achieve that goal by sucking up to those who already are.

This year, the WEF proposed taking advantage of the disruption caused by COVID-19 to implement the “Great Reset.” Or as their Executive Chairman said, “The pandemic represents a rare by narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world.”

The Problems Socialism Brings and How to Survive Them

Like a building made with cheap materials, socialism leads inevitably to collapse of both the economy and society, but there are a few things you can do to prepare.

I prep because I fear there will be a large-scale disaster that results in the death of hundreds of millions of Americans, and I want myself and my family to live through it and come out alive, healthy, and relatively well adjusted when things calm down.

In the more than 20 years I have been prepping, the cause of that disaster has changed. For a long time, I thought it would be the result of an attack by an outside force. A nuclear strike or some kind of enemy attack, like a 9/11 but 1,000 times worse. Or an unexpected natural disaster, like a comet strike or the Yellowstone Caldera blowing up and blanketing most of the U.S. with ash.

These days, I look at the moral decay around us, the decline in education, the theft of our history and our place on the world stage, the arrival of the very things we were warned about in Atlas Shrugged and 1984, and I cannot help by be concerned that we are witnessing the end of the United States for many of the same reasons that the Romans and other empires died: internal rot. I wonder if we might self-destruct, if our society has decayed to the point that’s socialists, Marxists, and communists will destroy us from the inside out.