Survivalism and preparedness are now big business. With this year’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the recent Haitian and Chilean earthquakes, and the devastating 2004 earthquake and tsunami, we’ve seen some disasters of unprecedented scale. Then add in a spring of tornados, floods, and fires and you have a population that has gotten a non stop TV diet of ruined homes and destroyed lives. Don’t forget to include a worldwide recession that contrary to what you’ve been told, never really ended and is poised to take another dip if things work out just right (or wrong, depending on your point of view).
To finish it all off, get a few nutcases screaming about Judgment Day in May or October of this year, and 2012 looming towards us, and you’ve got a population as unsettled and worried as I’ve ever seen it. And where there is anxiety, there are those ready to take advantage of it. Some see an opportunity to market skills, some see a business opportunity, and some see an opportunity to separate suckers from their cash.
This is happening in a number of venues and by a variety of methods. First, there is the information market. Send in X dollars and I’ll tell you how to build a retreat, create a food storage program, how to beat the (coming) market crash, and a hundred other things.
First, the information they are selling is often available in the public domain if you look for it. You might feel comforted by being instructed by someone that ‘knows’ what to do, but half the crap I’ve seen sold to new preppers is compiled from public sources! Further, many of the survival ‘bibles’ being offered for sale were written up to forty years ago in some cases and are badly out of date in many areas.
The information sale might also be in the form of a subscription that gets you into the inner sanctum of the webpage. Or by visiting a website, you are adding to the traffic that supports the ads in the margins (just like the ones NOT in the margins of this blog.) But one way or another, you are paying for the information, and someone is making a profit off of you.
Then there is the instructional market. For a few hundred or a few thousand bucks, someone will teach you how to rub sticks together, or how to knap flint, or how to shoot and scoot like Rambo his own self. Thousands of dollars to learn skills that may be self taught (e.g. primitive fire making) or learned at the local level (e.g. marksmanship at your local rifle club). In most cases, it’s a poor return for your cash.
Before I go any farther, let me state that I haven’t any particular grudge against websites that offer survival information, or people that run instructional courses. It’s just that very often the consumers (that’s you and me) have no way of assessing the value of what we’re receiving for our money. Sadly, for every honest merchant of information or goods, or teacher of skills out there, there seems to be ten times the number of rip off artists and poseurs.
Speaking of rip off artists, that brings us to the mercantile aspect of the survival ‘industry’. In the past few years, I have seen prepping become an insane growth industry. Unfortunately, much of the growth has been in the form of unscrupulous people offering suspect goods. There are multi year food packages worth a quarter of their price. Night vision that doesn’t work. Gear of all kinds, made shoddily, that looks good in the catalogue but falls apart the first time you use it. I'm sure you can fill in examples of your own.
Just try to look at the current environment in information and goods as another challenge to survival. Be as stingy with your time and money as possible. Make sure you’re getting real value out of your preps, and not being preyed upon. Survive in a marketplace that’s out to kill your pocketbook and your chance of being properly prepared.
It’s common sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment