Fifty Things To Do NOW
If You Fear an Economic Breakdown

1. Become a part-time entrepreneur, garage-market-dealer, urban farmer, welder, whatever. Just be productive under your own command. It doesn’t matter what it is; just be directly productive, and directly deal with suppliers and clients. You’ll find it awesomely liberating and it will be highly useful for the free underground market.

2. Switch off the TV. Read books!

3. Socialize with people that share your ethics and that are productive and respectful. Eat together, discuss, challenge each other, help each other, have a good time.

4. Get a safe or safe deposit box. Start moving all the cash you can get in there, convert at least 30% of your cash to silver and/or gold coins.

5. Invest in trust. Do minor deals for people on a trust basis. Taking others at their word, and let yourself be challenged by yours.

6. Start looking for matches. When you talk with people, memorize what they do, and if an opportunity comes up, connect them with someone else for a minor finders fee (a burger, a few beers, whatever).

7. Join your local LIMA house. (We’ll explain this in a future post.)

8. Travel, but don’t go sight-seeing – spend your time getting to know the people there. Think about business opportunities with them.

9. Start using aliases and pseudonyms. Get comfortable using them in real-life situations.

10. Learn to use cryptography.

11. Learn ethics and law (not the government law…).

12. Study logic, especially the fallacies.

13. Put more cash aside. Use your part-time job as the source of saved cash.

14. Start to invest cash with people you know, in off the books projects. Start making micro-loans to people or buy shares in their operations.

15. Learn basic double-entry book-keeping. Don’t waste effort on the account-numbers they teach you – understand the concept and use it.

16. Learn to write in code. We all have to use recordings, bookkeeping, contact books, transaction notes etc. These should be hard to decipher for someone taking a quick glimpse, and even hard for someone taking time to analyze them. Use tricks like date-shifting, shorthand, making up your own terms, etc. Or, if you want to spend a little more effort, learn to use memorized ciphers, such as memorizing some longer text, then apply it as a simple shifting-key to what you write, with the page number or a marker as a keypart.

17. Tell other producers, entrepreneurs, traders etc that you appreciate what they do.

18. Buy primarily from others like you, stay away from the on-the-books market as much as you can.

19. When in conflict, ask someone to mediate. Solve conflicts yourself wherever you can. Use a mutually respected and trusted third party when necessary. Stay away from state “justice” whenever you can.

20. Start respecting secrets. Secrets are good most of the time; transparency is bad most of the time. Detox yourself from the “everything should be in the open” propaganda.

21. Slowly make your part-time, off-the-books business, your main line of income. Things like underground dental hygiene are very cool.

22. Learn that “off-the-books” means that you really have to excel in what you do. You have to provide quality.

23. Don’t invest in single deals; invest in relationships with the market.

24. Get over it: Voting doesn’t help at all.

25. Work with friends to create buying associations and selling associations. This will give you and others lots of money to save and lots of money to hide.

26. Harbor a fugitive. (Good ones, obviously.)

27. Help someone cross a border without documents.

28. Offer small merchants silver or gold rather than fiat currency.

29. Sell your products in silver or gold.

30. Accept and use digital gold, such as Pecunix or C-gold.

31. Start a community currency in your town.

32. Use digital cash, such as eCache.

33. Use Loom, Truebanc.

34. Get serious about protecting your Internet traffic.

35. Get comfortable working your will in the world.

36. Learn how to work your will beneficially. This is not about being “right,” it is about causing benefit.

37. Fix your mistakes (you will make them). Learn not to repeat them.

38. Learn how to communicate effectively. Again, this is not about proving that you are right – this is about getting true ideas into other minds effectively.

39. Stop obeying the state in some new way. Tell your friends about your success doing so.

40. Get comfortable with the term “Economic Civil Disobedience.”

41. Spread the idea that the state is not magic – it is nothing more than a collection of your neighbors – no more ethical and noble than the lamer next door.

42. Learn how to find the false assumptions in arguments. Most public lies sound okay if you don’t find their unspoken assumptions. If they pass too quickly, find the written version and search for the lie it contains.

43. Learn how to disagree with kindness.

44. Accept the fact that most people are confused and are just barely hanging on to their last shreds of self-esteem. Understand that state intellectuals like this condition, as it makes people easier to keep in line – a little shame goes a long way.

45. Don’t waste your energy on the political crisis de jour. Busy your mind with more substantial things. Daily political dramas are a time-sink, and the statists like it. Stop following their script.

46. Use jurisdictional arbitrage to deprive the state of your money. Work with friends if the setup costs are too large for you.

47. Learn to defend yourself, your family, your neighbors and your town. No state means no military. Until you take this upon yourself, your plans will always have a gaping hole in their middle. There is no free lunch here either. Get weapons and be mentally prepared to use them. Decide in advance how and when you would use them – do not leave it to the emotion of the moment – that will make a shipwreck of the whole venture. Learn how to use them safely.

48. Do something nice for your neighbor. The people who live near you are a far more important part of your environment than any other.

49. Help people who suffer undeservedly. No state means you are responsible for charity. Sure, it will be much easier when the state isn’t stealing all your extra money (or chasing you in hope of theft), but do what you can now and get used to the process.

50. Watch over your friends. Notice when they are having a bad day, show some kindness and concern. If they are overloaded, carry some of their burden. We all have bad times, and your bad day may come too. Help one another. Restore one another.

This originally appeared at Free and Unashamed and is reprinted with permission.

July 7, 2009

Copyright © 2009 Free and Unashamed