How to Survive When Money Is Worthless [video]
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
http://ferfal.blogspot.com/2008/10/thoughts-on-urban-surviva...
He seems to write a lot of survivalist tips, so I would keep that in mind - from a survivalist perspective, all society is at the point of collapse.
For instance,
> Some ate whatever they could; they hunted birds or ate street dogs and cats, others starved. When it comes to food, cities suck in a crisis.
Sure, some did. They even showed up on the news due to how weird even the idea of eating birds was. But that's the 0.001% - the average citizen reduced their expenses, moved back with their parents, asked their relatives for help, and/or started using the food banks.
> in 2001 half the country went without power for 3 days. Buenos Aires was one big dark grave.
That's straight up BS - there were widespread power outages, but they lasted typically hours, not days. And even though specific neighborhoods had days without power, to call it "a big dark grave" is too much.
> There are absolutely NO kids playing on the sidewalks at all, at any time of the day
There are no kids playing nowadays either, but that's because they are at school (the average school day is longer than it used to be), playing with their cellphones, or (at the time) playing Counter Strike in cyber-cafes with dedicated LANs.
And so on. It also doesn't help that he paints the entire country based on Buenos Aires, a city that has a very strong cultural division to the rest of the country.
Note: I haven't finished watching the video and I dont want to endorse it's message, just to point to some peoples' stories about what can happen if attacked in a rural homestead.
- the audio and subtitles didn't sync
- if I touched the scroll wheel on my mouse it would rapidly generate events that caused the 'next' action
- if I click on next after the audio was complete on one page there was no audio on the next page - just the subtitles.
..so I struggled through it and wondered how this was tested before they pushed it out.
finally, getting to the end - I didn't see anything that actually discussed how people are actually surviving!?
I lived in the USSR in the early 90s while crazy inflation was starting to happen; here are a few strategies people used in those days (in fact I and my family used too). Note that inflation got even crazier after I left - and I'm not sure what other things people did to handle that; but I suspect friends/family/connections continue to be extremely important.
- they kept dollars or other western currency and traded for rubles as close to purchases as possible
- everyone would use private connections with others get access to goods that we're not readily available. didn't seem to be at lot of bartering here - but taking very good care of those connections and reciprocating whenever possible.
- people would grow food at their datcha - and share with their friends and sometimes sell it at local open market / bazaar.
- finally, you take on any work - and I mean any work - to get a bit of extra cash - especially in foreign currency. You're not like "I'm a doctor, I've above doing ______" if someone will pay you to do ______; and you can do it - you probably will.
In case of my dad things were following
1. Arm yourself
2. Hire other armed people
3. Run as fast as you can to the Far East
4. Be at good terms with all the local seamen, from military ship crews, to Korean fishing cooperative members
5. Laugh at yesterday kings bringing you stacks of Swiss Franks, and golden bricks just to get a bag of flour.
My father still has a brick of pure scandium, and one of indium in his cabinet from the time some military bureaucrat gave them to him for few crates of instant noodles
What played a bad joke at communists was a fact that they were buying loyalty of their military officers with lavish lifestyle and gigantic expense accounts. A two star general could've afforded a lifestyle close to that of a person making 6 digits in USA.
The moment commies were unable to pay for it, and the subjective prestige value of state perks vent below that of owning a foreign made car, the ironclad loyalty vaned in just few months.
There were fun times in Vladivostok
Next time I see a site format like this, I won't bother, I hope this doesn't turn into a trend.
I got through it because I treated it like an interactive video with subtitles, which is better than a video. I liked the sound - which, in my iPhone, was muted at the started as my phone was muted, so I didn't even realise there was audio. I liked that I could go forwards and backwards. I liked that I could just read. It fit well on my phone, I don’t know what it looks like on desktop.
Now, getting to the content itself, I found it to be very sad, especially at how the spirit to protest was killed.
Onto the content...
I wonder, can someone tell me why there are so many obese people in these video clips, if food is so hard to come by?
Why does there seem to be so many people sitting around? Surely with so much manpower available, there are way to make them productive on a large scale?
If those people are alive (as they observably are), then logically they are getting food.
When you're poor, you generally can only afford low quality food. Low quality food is bad for your health, resulting in many problems including obesity and diabetes.
Low quality food is generally processed grain. It's cheap to make and cheap to keep "fresh," which is why we have so much of it in the US. Think high fructose corn syrup, and almost anything that comes in a box, and do the thought experiment across the food chain from the farm, through manufacturing and distribution, to consumption and the doctor's office.
When you see a population of obese people, don't think that their food problem is solved; realize that the food they have practical access to is a problem. (And yes, many rich people in rich countries are obese and have a choice, but many of those obese people are poor and do not, and we're not talking about a rich country at the moment.)
Yeah well, how to organize society? Let it organize on their own, free market, etc. - or organize it from top with commands.
In theory we have the first and they have the latter. But it is never that black and white.
Even if some try to paint it like that. And I doubt that there are really starving, "just" that it is hard to get meat for example. Only the very basics. So you still can get fat with rice and beans, but still suffer from malnutrition.
.. and "Revolutionary Kellogg's" ... I found quite hillarious.
The fundamental problem with corruption, and the reason that corrupt dictatorships do not work in practice is that people need to be able to keep the things they produce. If, say, you are hungry, you might start a community garden to feed yourself and your neighbors. However, you can only feed yourself if men with guns don't decide that the garden is actually theirs. If you expand this system out to every facet of society, then there's no point in anyone helping anyone else because any public good is sucked up by corrupt people who claim it for themselves. Everyone must get by on less than is worth stealing, or they have to do it in secret.
Corrupt dictatorships do work in practice.
They don't work for the common people, but then that's kind of not the point of a corrupt dictatorship.
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2017/03/31/venezuela-...
Univision reports that 57% of Venezuelans have gone hungry to feed their children.
https://www.univision.com/univision-news/latin-america/hungr...
The situation in Venezuela is clearly grave.
This is generally the earlier stages of such a crisis; as the timeline extends, the caloric restriction will gradually chip away at the obesity, but it takes several years as most of these food scarcity crises are not zero calories per day average, but severely restricted, like maybe half TDEE. Fat is an extraordinarily dense caloric storage medium, so shedding obesity can take longer than most people anticipate at that rate. Most first world HN readers who have 18%+ body fat can eat zero calories for a month and not suffer long-term adverse effects, as long as they responsibly observe refeeding syndrome cautions, and a lot of body fat can leap right back on after the fast.
> Why does there seem to be so many people sitting around? Surely with so much manpower available, there are way to make them productive on a large scale?
Generally this happens when the population still somewhat expects the old status quo to somehow re-emerge, partly because they don't know any better. You usually don't see local currencies, co-ops, etc. self-organize until the knowledge is spread to the right individuals who are fed up enough with the crisis to take the initiative to change.
This knowledge gap is where the Internet can help. A DIY kit for those segments of the population left behind by capital owners, to implement autarky where it makes sense, minimize autarky externalities and adverse positive feedback loops where possible, and interface with the external currency where sensible and practical. Perhaps building tech stacks like local cryptocurrencies, payment systems, co-op logistical coordination (think ERP for co-ops), etc., that can be stood up within days of a community deciding to disconnect by firing up free tier cloud instances, and optionally, tech stacks/procedures for re-integration should they decide to do so later. Ideally, these stacks are auto-maintaining and administering, eliminating the need for a staff of administrators or bureaucracy until the locality that disconnects reaches about 20,000.
Open source blueprints for building automated chicken coops that start from basic designs and slowly let adopters build into fully-integrated vermi-, aqua-, humanure-culture reactors, outputting valuable proteins for the cost of sweat equity, mostly scavanged junk, and modest purchases from hardware stores, then time, bacteria, air, soil, rain, and solar thermal energy. DIY preventative medical procedures, basic first-aid equipment, etc. DIY food forestry, which can be started with machetes and shovels initially. DIY styrofoam and plastics recycling, into insulation and feedstock to create community-wide goods like cups/plates/etc. while continuously improving energy efficiency from discarded goods. The challenge is to go as low-tech and scavenging as much as possible, leveraging high-tech knowledge, then get that information into the hands of people in the form of actionable first steps to encourage them to take a small risk and build upon initial successes, and get them out of the mentality of a currency-based exchange as the current system has failed them and won't materially help them anytime in the foreseeable future.
Anyone working on something like this?
For example, there are forums who talk about how to deliberately manage property valuations downwards to decrease the property tax burden, but they aren't connected to forums that talk about ditching your decorative lawn for a food forest as part of managing property taxes lower, or how to dismantle an HOA's rules against a food forest, or how to negotiate with property tax assessment jurisdiction representatives for services that really matter, etc. It is all "intertwingled" as one wit used to like to say, which is what makes the solutions in each locality highly individualized yet able to share commonalities.
Most people are overwhelmed when their currency and/or economic order fails them (those systems don't have to fail outright for alternatives to become viable actions, just fail enough for an individual). We don't necessarily need a single one-stop shop for them, just a marketing brand that raises awareness the alternative is even possible could be sufficient. Like Tiny Homes or vandwellers for millenials coping with real estate asset overvaluation, and now spreading to other generations. Just a recognition that there are nearly endless entry points, and people can start very small and iterate their way up.
If enough people reach for alternatives when capitalism in its current form doesn't serve them, then market forces will re-shape capitalism into a form that better serves those people, or capitalism will be replaced by a more efficient exchange tool that people find by iterating towards.
In many ways obesity is a symptom of malnutrition. When money is tight the cheapest foods available are little more than starch and/or sugar, they lack the any significant amount of nutrients, causing you to have hard to ignore cravings for more food.
Most of the people you see sitting around in the video are actually queuing for food. There's a huge shortage of food and you have to queue for hours hoping there's something left in the market when it's your turn to go in.
The audio cut out for several of the stories halfway through, then I was just reading the subtitles as they showed up.
I eventually refreshed the page.
Another story had the audio continue, but the video stopped and froze.
Trying out new formats, experimenting with different media types, and trying new things in general is what's going to push traditional media companies forward. Not pumping more and more intrusive ads.
The discussion here is about the exploitation, not so much about the source of the initial spec of attention to be exploited.
Besides just wait until someone points out which type of politics were at the source of this change.
The same is true of this comment.
That being said, I can't criticize anyone who commented on the article format or method of delivery because as soon as I saw it, I immediately shut the page.
We're not talking about the font-family being unfashionable. This NYTimes page simply doesn't work (i.e., let me view its content) for me here on the latest version of a major web browser. This is a big, mature organization whose purpose is telling stories about the world, and it's failing at that.
By attempting to publish using cool web technologies that don't always work (apparently), they made the story about their medium, not their message. In the Scott McCloud system, they chose to emphasize step 6 (Surface) rather than step 5 (Craft). That's a perfectly valid artistic choice to make but they can't complain when people focus on that.
I think we all understand that it's terrible down there, but there are many, many places in the world where there is tragedy. And in my own experience, there is, and always has been, tragedies consistently happening in my own local area.
Discussing a tertiary topic does not diminish the the value of the main topic.
And food for thought, maybe if that site hadn't made such a poor technical and artistic/design choices, they would have made more of a difference, and caused more people to get the information correctly. (and certainly would less likely to have detracted the discussions from the main point)
Certainly it's not the right choice for every story, but I think it's often better than a typical narrated video piece. Here's another one that I think takes advantage of the format beautifully: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/kinder...
I felt an intense pang of shame as my mouse hovered over the "next" button.
A single video would have been much easier to digest.
Not saying you cannot criticize the format, but shouldn't the discussion be more about what actually caused this situation and how it can be remedied or prevented?
We shouldn't miss the humanitarian crisis, but given that the HN community has a lot more influence over UX than foreign governments, the focus on content format isn't irrational.
Economic to defend which country? Based on what evidence?
> I'm curious to know why I should assume this question is posed by a Venezuelan
How do you propose I prove I'm Venezuelan?
In general, you will find that Venezuelans have a much less rosy picture of socialism than the gringos do, and for good reason.
Maduro and his clique did many things wrong, no doubt. They failed badly at reforming the economy and making it more sustainable. They're corrupt. They probably mismanaged the country. However international sanctions are the direct cause of most of the problems that make the news daily (lack of medicine, food, etc).
There's a fucking crisis destroying this country and you're complaining about this article being "extremely one-sided"? Any accurate portrayal about what's going in the country will appear one-sided because the situation is one-sided. You'll be hard-pressed to find anything the government is doing right. That's the extent of their incompetence.
> about a country well-known for repeated US meddling
Ah yes, Maduro's universal scapegoat. Can you point to what "US meddling" you think caused this crisis?
> why did Kellogg's leave the country? it's unclear.
Are you fucking serious? It pulled out of the country because the country is in economic free-fall, and the government is notorious for expropriating companies at a whim. How the government was able to ruin Venezuela's oil industry and is too incompetent to even operate existing infrastructure should be a case study for the world.
> May it be in part because of US government pressure? not unlikely.
Based on what?
Using the abandoned factory isn't the problem. It's what led to that situation that's the problem.
> international sanctions are the direct cause of most of the problems that make the news daily (lack of medicine, food, etc).
Direct cause of most of the problems? What the hell? On what basis do you claim this? Are you even familiar with the factors that led to the current crisis at all?
Some people have found work that is more than “just a job”.
- Paper money is useless (as seen in the video) so everything is done via bank transfer. This has led to a very fast adoption of internet banking. You want to pay someone, you make them a transfer and show them the transaction.
- There are places where paper money is needed, parking lots. You have to pay 100.000 bolivares in bills of 500. ATMs don't give you enough money to cover that, so you need to ... buy packets of money, for a premium.
- Credit cards can't keep up their limits with the inflation. All the credit cards in a middle class family amount to a few dollars.
- Unusual for a country like Venezuela, some weird sense of trust is now needed. You might go to get a haircut and then make a money transfer from your PC when you get home. No one wants your paper currency.
- Bitcoin has become a common way of sending money from abroad to family in Venezuela. There's people that will buy it in exchange for Bolivares (Venezuelan currency) at a premium. Again, you have to trust them to hold their side of the bargain.
- All of the issues above work while internet and electricity are working, which very often, doesn't. Banking infrastructure is pushed to its limits .
- There's start ups trying to work around these trust and centralized systems using blockchain technology. (https://www.citywallet.net/ - in spanish)
It's the Venezuelan Bolivar is worthless. If you use gold or silver, I am sure they will be more than happy to accept it.
Though amusingly by the definition of "money", worthless currency doesn't qualify.
I think that human computer interaction has taken massive steps back from the 90s. That, or I'm getting old. Could be both too.
Aside: some great content here though. so many beautiful shots of the country. And some brief text that gave a tiny bit of color.
I guess you operate your computer with no output devices?
http://output.jsbin.com/gacizibika/1
Text interspersed with img and video.
Now back to complaining about the content: It is very light on details. I'm very interested in the Venezuela crisis but this gives practically no numbers and thus no idea about how bad the situation is.
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/0306829021044...
While being able to heavily export oil, they could heavily import stuff that could help the poorest of the population.
But when the oil price dropped, they were loath to cut back on the support systems. Thus a massive trade deficit developed, and the exchange rate tanked.
While the reasons are different, it is the same "death spiral" as one could witness in Germany between the wars, or in Zimbabwe.
If you're going to have a multimedia presentation with polished production and very small amounts of text, you should be aware that it makes proofreading failures seem like a much bigger problem than they would be otherwise.
What are the best ideas proposed so far that might help them?
This is a very serious humanitarian and economic problem and the glossy reportage format is too glib and simplistic IMO.
More importantly, what will help is an end to the western siege on their economy because they are a socialist country https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/socialism-blame-ve...
Any attempt to do so will be resisted by the government as the meddling of the imperialists, to be opposed at all costs. We either have to invade to remove the government by force (and kill a bunch of the army), or we can do very little.
One thing that we might, in other circumstances, do, is to tell Columbia, for example, that any refugees that come over the border we will take, so that they don't need to try to keep them out. But under current political circumstances in the US, even that seems out of reach...
The article isn't so much an instructional video on how to survive, and could be interpreted as ironic on some level. I don't think the title is beyond critique, but the content addresses how people are surviving by showing people who are surviving, even barely.
If people think conditions in Venezuela are not that bad, and there are people who believe that, then this should give them pause.
Well, yeah, I actually thought it was pretty devoid of content even on its own terms. It spends a significant amount of time showing a barrista making a panda face out of the foam in a latte. It was very pretty, and in a different context I might even have enjoyed watching the craftsmanship, but that was an awful lot of screen time to make the point that coffee gets expensive along with everything else when you have hyperinflation.
The presentation style is simply not the same as a movie. You can argue that it's not unique or original, but trying to make that point by dismissing it as a movie seems pedantic.
Worthless money doesn't quite destroy the country's infrastructure, so you have water, and electricity, unreliably. It's good to stockpile water.
Shelter will generally be ok. If you've got a place to live, the economy collapsing around you doesn't remove it - the people who own it or run it have their own worries. You can stay where you are. If you have debt, good news, you can sell a pair of shoes and repay your house loan.
Food is harder, since everyone wants it, but worthless currency doesn't entice anyone to transport it. Farmers do ok, as they grow their own food, but getting it to others is more difficult. You will be paying high prices for food in a foreign currency on the black market, but your idiot local government will try to destroy black markets, despite them being the only real access to goods.
This is unlikely in the US, but if you're worried, put a tiny bit of your savings into gold and silver coins, and have a good supply of non-perishable food, and some sort of access to water. The regimes which cause these kinds of problems collapse soon thereafter, so you just have to last it out. Learn useful skills - fixing cars, plumbing, whatever, and you'll be marketable in such a situation. Higher order skills become kind of useless compared to the day-to-day ones needed to keep stuff working.
-- Egon Spengler
I honestly don't know how chrome users can use the web nowadays with how bad things have gotten.
I just tried without reader view and I got a lot of the same stuff but with needless video taking up the whole screen that I couldn't skip around.