If crypto evaporates or becomes worthless due to a solar flare or EMP or nuclear war taking out the grid, any precious metals you hold will also become worthless.
PMs only have value because someone else wants them. You can't eat them, plant them, make guns from them, etc.
They are not very fungible in a disaster situation. They are heavy, cumbersome, difficult to transport, and difficult to store. If you have enough of them to make it worth your while, you don't have enough security for them. They will be a target for more people with more guns than you have, and they will happily take them from you at gunpoint. That means you don't want to be trying to trade much of it anywhere near where you keep them, as that also makes you a target.
In a survival situation, you can't prepare for everything. So prepare for what you enjoy preparing for, try to have resources like tools or other raw materials so you can be flexible in the moment/situation, and have a support group/community of like-minded people that will help you deal with whatever survival situation you find yourself in.
But if you're worried about being financially solvent in a survival situation, don't. There's nothing you can do to be financially solvent.
If you really want to be, you best be rich in alcohol and drug production facilities and have stables of young, nubile girls, and lots of young friends with guns.
I defined culture, try to read it again.
You haven't. You've only stated what it isn't.
"What I mean by culture is not race and not IQ..."
"It indicates that there is a cultural issue in that country, and not cultural as you are defining it, but cultural in that the leadership has rejected Christian mores, embraced tribalism."
Not race and not IQ, and rejecting Christianity, is not culture. Rejection of Christianity can be an aspect of culture, but it isn't THE culture.
Such as myself saying that all races are equal and the same with culture, I never said that and I would never say that.
I've never said that you said that. Feel free to quote me where I have said that you said that. It is an assumption on your part. The reason I brought it up at all is because this is the point where it is usually brought up in this sort of a discussion. People then misquote Galations 3:28 to back it up.
race isn't the issue, it is the cultural mores and values.
What is culture? Where does it come from? What makes it up? It doesn't spontaneously spring forth from nothing.
that the 20 years before the welfare state, black poverty dropped by 40 percentage points, then the welfare state was formed and the poverty reduction was slowed and then stalled out.
What else happened at this time that massively and dramatically affected the outcome of blacks?
What were their communities like before, and what were they like after?
How did they behave before, and how did they behave after?
Where did they work, shop, and pursue economic activity before, and what were they forced to compete with after?
What I mean by culture is not race and not IQ,
What do you mean by culture? I think you need to define your terms, as you keep pushing back on any use of culture by myself.
there is a difference in IQ, I don't agree it is enough to be the reason for the problems in Africa
The average IQ in sub-Saharan Africa is 68. That's the AVERAGE. In the U.S., if you have less than a 70 IQ your kids are taken away from you because you are not able to sufficiently care for them due to mental retardation.
I can point to places like Botswana that makes more than most Eastern Europeans, values education better than those countries too.
This is false. Botswana beats out four countries in Europe. They are war-torn Albania, war-torn Bosnia and Herzogovenia, the longtime ghetto of Europe of Moldova, and war-torn Ukraine.
All of these countries spent generations under Communism, two have suffered under extremely nasty civil wars and sectarian violence that continues to be on-going and has never been resolved nor rebuilt, and one is undergoing a current proxy World War even while it has been in a state of civil war for a decade.
And it is only with those caveats that Botswana BARELY beats them out in GDP.
Put another way, Botswana makes more than the bottom 1/6th of Eastern Europeans. Botswana doesn't make more than MOST EASTERN EUROPEANS. It isn't even close.
C'mon man, you gotta start arguing some real facts here. I get it that you have an emotional attachment to good people in Africa, and an emotional attachment to good places in Africa. But don't fall for the NAXALT fallacy, and if you're going to make claims, make sure they are based in truth.
You'll also notice that I'm not asserting inferiority or supremacy of anyone, or any people. That shit is beyond dumb, completely inaccurate, and a total waste of time. But it is IMPERATIVE that one acknowledge facts, imperial evidence, and REVEALED TRUTH. Different and unequal is not bad, nor is it evil. All individuals deserve respect for the spark of the eternal they have within them.
Humanity is not equal. No individual is equal to another in ANY measure except one: we have eternal souls that will be individually judged by our creator for our actions here.
In no other aspect are we equal.
And further, in no aspect is any race equal to another. No culture is equal to another. No society is equal to another. No civilization is equal to another. There are winners and losers in the world. Some are better adapted to one style of life and civilization, and others are better adapted to a different lifestyle and civilization.
Failure to acknowledge this results in grief, hardship, and pain for EVERYONE. No one wins when we try to ignore the truths about nature or God.
Ron is trying to imply that Trump was worse on COVID than him
He's not implying it. He's flat-out stating it. And he is correct in his accusations, and correct to do so.
Trump needs to get off this shit. It is a complete loser for him with his base. It is even a loser among most normies. The tide has turned completely against the vax.
but the fact is that Africans that immigrate to the US perform better than American born blacks. That indicates it is culture that is the main driver.
No, it doesn't indicate that at all. It indicates that the best and brightest from Africa are leaving there and immigrating to the West. And shocker, the top 10% of blacks from Africa do fine here, as do the top 10% of blacks here.
I found blacks there to be more educated and intelligent than American blacks. They had a better grasp of history, could read better, and could handle financial transactions. While the poor rural areas of Africa had tons of ignorance, I found the cities to be more intelligent than American blacks.
So, the average, common, run-of-the-mill African was ignorant as hell, but the most intelligent who gravitated towards increased opportunity turned out to be more intelligent?
This isn't a big reveal. Your anecdotes beg the question. Incidentally, you're also STILL falling into the NAXALT fallacy.
Your hypothesis would indicate that they would be dumber than American blacks, but I found that I had a lot more intellectual discussions with blacks in Africa than the average American black, both as soldiers and co-workers.
I'm not at all shocked that those blacks in Africa who had the mental discipline to be soldiers are smarter than the blacks here who lack the mental discipline to be soldiers.
Again, you keep pointing to anecdotal evidence that boils down to "this smart person over here is actually smart, not dumb." Your interactions correlate precisely with what the science indicates. It doesn't prove your case at all. It is helping mine.
And the entire rest of the African continent backs it up.
South Africa, where blacks have been in charge now only for about 30 years, can no longer keep the power on or the water running. They took a modern, well-developed infrastructure, and they ran it into the ground. Why?
How is it that an entire continent of Africa cannot develop any kind of a functioning civilization or technology at any level, even with literally thousands of years of assistance from other civilizations that have had these things, and passed them along to Africans?
And while we're at it, why don't you take a crack at what culture is, and where it originates. See if you can offer any suggestion to disprove that culture is intelligence expressed in an environment by a community. Because ultimately when you say "it's the culture," you're really saying, "it's their lack of intelligence."
Eastern Europeans didn't change their culture and then get higher IQ.
Eastern Europeans had the genetics for higher IQ. It was not being expressed in the environment due to nutrition and oppression. Fix those things and suddenly IQ increased almost instantly. I also suspect you are misusing the word "culture."
As for Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, and all other American blacks--they all have 15-20% white admixture. There are no pure-blood Africans in America unless they have recently immigrated.
And you are still stuck on the NAXALT fallacy.
but I've seen white fucks in Portland say almost the exact same thing, in person.
You've heard a white person tell another white person that they (the first white person) are better than the 2nd white person because they are white?
Lol. Ok then, Mr. Pants-on-Fire.
There's a difference between black people and what this thing is.
Stop lying.
Just because you have had personal experience with someone on the extreme right tail of the bell curve doesn't mean that the bell curve doesn't exist, nor where most fall on it.
This is known as the "Not all X are like that" fallacy.
It also goes the other way with your non-sequiter about antifa. Not only that, you're absolutely lying about antifa. No white "antifatard" has ever berated a white family and said they were better than, and over them, due to their whiteness.
So just fuck right off. No one is buying the lies you're selling.
The US is currently at risk to lose our republic.
I love the retards that come here and spout this low-info, low-IQ drivel.
The U.S. was at risk to lose our Republic 80 years ago. The last vestiges were wiped away in 2020.
The rest of your bullshit is just as dumb, and still bullshit.
When you get to the other side, please remember us, OP. Tell Jesus we need some support. Tell Him to not forget us.
Also, say "Hi" to my children for me, please. Tell them I miss them. And teach them about memes for me!
A smart individual will reason out what the 2nd is for, and then behave accordingly. That same smart individual will never, ever, ever discuss or point out what the 2nd is for online, as to do so will prevent proper behavior.
If we don't stick our neck out for him, why would we expect him to do the same for us?
This already happened. He already asked folks to protest. Protesters showed up. They were false-flagged. They were arrested. They are still in jail.
What did Trump do about it? He chose not to fight. He didn't issue any pardons. Why, exactly, would anyone show up for him again?
In a worst-case-scenario Carrington event, yes. 50 years, if not longer.
Possibly permanently.
It could destroy not just transformers (of which there are insufficient spares--less than 10%), but it would also wreck transmission lines, regulators, and generators. Forget about microprocessors. Every single one would be fried.
So, to recover, you have to rebuild the entire electrical generation infrastructure, and the entire information infrastructure, from scratch, using just materials on hand, before everyone starves.
Mining would be largely shut down. Refineries would be shut down. Engines with microprocessor controlled fuel injection or other features won't run. Farming will shut down.
How many easily mined surface metals do you suppose are left on earth that can be dug by hand to remake everything?
Zero. There are zero left.
In a worst case scenario Carrington event, after cacading failures, 90-95% of humanity dies out. Those that are left will be small, primitive tribes.
Best case scenarios are massive world-wide depressions and 10-20% of humanity dying out, with large portions of the grid being down for more than a year.