Rice and Beans -- by the tonnage if you were able -- first and foremost as a foundation that precedes absolutely everything else, including PM's and weaponry. That includes a place to store it, and the means to keep the knowledge of its existence hidden. Because force, public and private, will take it from you.
There is a normalcy bias, especially in developed countries, that causes that transient, perishable commodity called food to be
the most undervalued commodity on Earth. The faith that food will always be made available as supply is right on par with the majority's faith that fiat currency will always have at least
some value in exchange. Of all the market manipulations and distortions that have taken place over the past hundred years, no supply has been made more dangerously dependent on fuel+debt-currency, than food. Food value is in a reverse bubble. Agriculture has been manipulated, consolidated and concentrated to the point where starvation will be the ultimate genesis of most bloodshed. Not "jobs". Not "money supply", and certainly not best items to barter in voluntary exchange with others, as even that "market" won't exist as anyone imagines it will. FOOD.
In the aftermath of a major catastrophic financial implosion (the magnitude of which has NEVER occurred on Earth before) there will be absolutely nothing more important,
more skyrocketed in value, than food. That includes gold and silver combined, and SOLELY due to food's
real scarcity relative to the size of the population that will be chasing and competing for those goods. And if you have only enough to feed yourself and your family, and even then only for a short time,
that food will be priceless. Literally, it will not be part of "supply", as it will not be for sale
at any price.
There will be no amount of gold, silver or anything else that will tempt you in the slightest to part with it. And guns to take it from you? Those with guns would have to first know that the food even exists to be taken.
Not too many people think this through: Where is food coming from now, and how did it get there? How centralized are the market controls on that supply, as many eggs in relatively few consolidated baskets, and how volatile is that supply should one or more of its fundamental market dependencies be destroyed? If you're worried about what to barter with your neighbors, how much bigger a problem is that for a massive farm with enormous mega-dependencies on our Monetary Ponzi Schemes?
Family farms are a thing of history (but I also predict a solid thing of the future as well). Food really is no longer local. Not even close to being indirectly local, as it once was as a rule. And even though everyone knows, logically and consciously, that food does not originate in grocery stores and local farmers markets, our ingrained, deep-seated conditioned belief is
exactly the opposite. A normalcy bias exists now in almost everyone alive in our country today, such that grocery stores and local farmers markets really are "the sources" of that continuously replenished supply food that has always been so commonplace. How it gets there has never been our concern, any more than the average person with a car knows how the engine works -- so that part of it is never examined.
On the whole, our core faith that food will somehow continue to find its way to us as supply is taken completely for granted - even with people who really should know better. So food ends up being just one more thing on a bucket list of "possible barter choices". There may be shortages, the reasoning goes, but hopefully those will be short-lived (they have in the past, right?). So, the reasoning continues, perhaps it might be A Good Idea to fill up a few five gallon buckets with something or another. You know,
just in case. Otherwise, food may be expensive to obtain (relative to the value of the constantly eroded, ever-failing fiat currency), but at least, somehow, the supply will be there - "if the price is right". That's fine. As long as you have a store of Something Truly Valuable, you can always get food, right?
I think of gold, silver, and other goods in exchange as potentially
worthless if I don't have at least a personal store of food to back it up. But if you have enough food, it is potentially enough to get every other commodity in exchange at will - because it truly will be the most scarce, as well as the most required by everyone.
My kingdom for a bowl of rice.
Recommended Reading:
The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck.
