Tuesday, March 26, 2013

What A Lot Of Savvy People Are Doing Right Now


Why should anybody take heed of the following observations? Because, as discussed during this post, many of the specific predictions I’ve made regarding matters that disproportionately affect African-American women have come true.
Here’s a short list of what a lot of savvy and shrewd people are doing right now.

ONE: Disconnecting from whatever remaining “Takers” (aka “Grasshoppers” as discussed during this post) are left in their social networks. Y’all know who the Takers/Grasshoppers are.
TWO: Developing location-independent income streams. Tens of thousands of workers were displaced from their flooded workplaces during Hurricane Sandy. One writer estimates that “Hurricane Sandy displaced 150,000 workers in the first two weeks after the storm hit, with 70,000 jobs lost in New Jersey and 50,000 lost in New York.”

There was often a real difference between workers whose jobs require their physical presence and those whose jobs are location-independent. For Some After the Storm, No Work Means No Pay
THREE: Forming intentional communities and other types of trusted networks. I’ve been delighted to see several Black women bloggers take the lead in forming intentional communities, such as Evia (blog host of Black Female Interracial Marriage Ezine) and Zabeth (blog host of IR Dating Coach).
I will note that such networks are the only way many current day Spaniards are surviving the global economic collapse. Since many of them no longer have jobs or money, they’ve been forced to find ways to live without money. They’ve created time banks and other bartering networks. From In hard-hit Spain, bartering becomes means of getting by:
"BARCELONA — With two small children and no income for the past two years, Antonio Delgado, 44, says things were so bad he had considered taking his life.
Then a few months ago, Delgado found out about a group that rents small parcels of farmland cheap near his town of La Rinconada in southern Spain. Now he's bringing home boxes of tomatoes, onions, peppers, lettuce, zucchinis and pumpkins. But he is not selling them.
Delgado and others are bartering, or trading, their way through a recession that has lasted years and left more than a quarter of the workforce unemployed. Tens of thousands of households have no wage earners, but they have skills and time on their hands to do work that can be traded for things they need but have no money to buy.
"I had no clue about agriculture," Delgado said. "But this has changed my life."
. . . With few jobs and no disposable income, bartering and other ways of exchanging goods and services are increasingly seen as good alternatives.
Some Spaniards are using so-called time banks to "deposit" time, knowledge and skills and trade them for things they need. All services have the same value, whether it is one hour of teaching a foreign language or one hour of cleaning house.
Teresa Sanchez, 55, is part of the Time Bank in Valladolid in western Spain. She has deposited offers of Japanese language classes, massage and company for the elderly. In return, she has received English lessons, appliance repairs and haircuts for her son."
Savvy people are looking for and making these mutually supportive connections in their lives right now. Before a crisis forces them into a panicked scramble in search of people willing to help.
FOUR: As much as possible, decreasing their dependence on money by growing a portion of their own food; and if possible, retrofitting their homes to reduce energy costs. Resilient Communities and the Green Wizards Forum are two extremely helpful websites for learning how to do these sorts of things.
Quiet as its kept, the old economy is not coming back. In this age of peak oil and climate change, things can’t be put back the way they were before 2008. Nevertheless, it’s possible to live very well during this era. Despite the storms, there’s still a world of opportunities if you’re willing to look and work for them!