Bruce’s Poor Man Survival Bulletin
A Digest of Urban Survival Resources
For Independent Minded People!
ISSN
2161-5543
"Success
is getting what you want. Happiness is
wanting what you get".
- W.P Kinsella -
wanting what you get".
- W.P Kinsella -
In
This Issue:
1.
Flea
Markets-the last real vestige of a free economy
2.
How to buy used canning equipment
3.
Paul Mason – the ‘nerd’ DIY Guy
4.
Tips for curbside composting, Can you really
handle self sufficiency
5.
The government is here to ‘protect
you’
President Obama insists he's a free-market guy. But you have to wonder
whether he understands how a free economy really works.
Fred Barnes
Fred Barnes
My wife and I enjoy flea markets,
antique shows, church bazaars, estate sales and such. They are one of the few areas of true free
enterprise left in the country. Thrift
stores in many states have become a waste of time. Organizations like Goodwill pay their CEOs
6-figure salaries while some ‘challenged employees’ earn as little as 22 cents
an hour according to a recent 60 Minutes segment.
Besides
that, these so-called thrift stores have begun skimming all the good stuff off
the top and selling them online, cheating their customers leaving only tons of
overpriced Target store rejects which usually have defects.
It’s
also irritating to see many states collect sales taxes on used
merchandise. Another case of a
double-dipping government or as my friends say, the “G” stands for gouge the
citizen.
Most
dealers at flea markets will wheel and deal and many of those folks that I know
have been setting up at these venues for years.
There are many famous flea markets which have bit the dust in the past
few years due to commercial expansion such as the old Park n Swap market near
Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix. I went
there every single week when I attended ASU and loved to watch area Native
Americans craft jewelry and leather goods.
Indeed,
I frequently purchased wholesale lots of turquoise jewelers from these artisans
and resold them to shop keepers in my home town of Cleveland in order to make
extra cash for school (thank God for the GI Bill)!
Nanny State Regulators
If
you regularly attend flea markets and collectibles shows, you may be familiar
with fly-by-night operators who travel around the country selling stolen,
counterfeit and pirated goods. The retail industry is lobbying legislators to
pass regulations to help reduce what it calls "organized retail
crime," which includes theft by shoplifters and employees for resale.
In a Boston Business Journal article titled, "Retailers return to State House to push bill that would crack down on organized crime," I read with great interest that legislators had stripped out certain elements of a bill - "such as a proposed ban on the sale of certain items in flea markets,..."
I could not find the original bill, but found this article about legislation in Indianapolis enacted last year that subjects flea markets to the same rules as pawn shops.
According to the article, flea market operators must be licensed if they sell certain types of products and are required to collect information from anyone who sells them such items, similar to regulations already in effect for pawn shops.
"The law requires flea market operators to collect a thumb print from the seller, and keep records of the person's driver license or other photo identification. It also requires a ledger be kept with a description of what the person looks like and the license tag on the vehicle they were driving. Finally, the law requires that "regulated items" cannot be sold until 10 days after the information about the seller and the item is submitted to a police database."
What do you think of the push to crack down on the sale of stolen and counterfeit goods at flea markets? It's not just a matter of harm to manufacturers and retailers - product safety is at issue, such as the case with baby formula. But on the other hand, flea markets are the ultimate free market enterprise.
In a Boston Business Journal article titled, "Retailers return to State House to push bill that would crack down on organized crime," I read with great interest that legislators had stripped out certain elements of a bill - "such as a proposed ban on the sale of certain items in flea markets,..."
I could not find the original bill, but found this article about legislation in Indianapolis enacted last year that subjects flea markets to the same rules as pawn shops.
According to the article, flea market operators must be licensed if they sell certain types of products and are required to collect information from anyone who sells them such items, similar to regulations already in effect for pawn shops.
"The law requires flea market operators to collect a thumb print from the seller, and keep records of the person's driver license or other photo identification. It also requires a ledger be kept with a description of what the person looks like and the license tag on the vehicle they were driving. Finally, the law requires that "regulated items" cannot be sold until 10 days after the information about the seller and the item is submitted to a police database."
What do you think of the push to crack down on the sale of stolen and counterfeit goods at flea markets? It's not just a matter of harm to manufacturers and retailers - product safety is at issue, such as the case with baby formula. But on the other hand, flea markets are the ultimate free market enterprise.
Find a listing of US & Canadian flea
markets here:
PM’s
Roundup of Useful Resources…
How to Buy Used Canning
Equipment
Whether you're looking for used canning jars, used canners or other second hand canning equipment, know what to look for or you'll be wasting time and money buying inferior or even dangerous equipment.
Whether you're looking for used canning jars, used canners or other second hand canning equipment, know what to look for or you'll be wasting time and money buying inferior or even dangerous equipment.
NEVER use credit cards or credit again.
Financial Highway has been
warning of the dangers of credit cards with posts such as Why
Credit Cards Can Be So Devastating and Your
Credit Card is Not An Emergency Fund. I am also a big advocate
of giving up using credit all together and if I ever buy another house I plan
to use cash, in fact I have Pledged to Never
Use Credit Again.
Credit is basically
borrowing money that you do not have and for anyone seriously wanting to be
frugal it’s absolutely nuts to even consider taking on more debt in any form,
if your car is falling apart, so be it, take the first tip in this article and
walk. if you need to get a new phone, get a $10 phone from Virgin and get by until you have the cash
to buy a more expensive phone. There really are no excuses when you think about
it!
Paul Mason the DIY GUY who focuses on do- it- yourself projects that are nerdy!
Find his how-to videos at the top of the page. Options include Home, About, That’s PS!, and The DIY GUY. If you want to check out Mason’s vlog click on The DIY Guide which will take you to hislanding spot on Geek and Sundry.
Nerd Crafting is where Mason puts all the crafts he can’t make himself. That’s PS! is where you’ll find Mason’s monthly nerd craft. This is also setup blog style, so all you have to do is scroll down the page to see all the different DIY nerd crafts that Mason has put together for your consumption. The most recent entry is a TARDIS sewing box, but you’ll also find things like plushies (Pacman, Chewbacca, etc.) and fantasy swords (Sting from The Hobbit anyone?) The posts come with video tutorials as well as text description and patterns so you can try your hand at them.
http://nerdcrafting.com/
Tips for Composting Curbside Without Smells, Flies or Pests
Curbside composting may seem a daunting prospect at first
— and have something of a "yuck" factor — but it's actually super
easy to keep your compost containers clean.
http://earth911.com/food/compost-curbside-without-smells-flies-pests/
http://earth911.com/food/compost-curbside-without-smells-flies-pests/
I happened to like this post
quite a bit. I can and should say that the more I learn about and practice
preparedness skills that I have a whole new respect for those people who REALLY
live the lifestle, homestead, and have an wide array of wilderness skills that
I’ll probably never have. Regardless, it…
Continue reading So you think you can handle self sufficiency…but can you really
handle self sufficiency? (link)
The Nanny State-We love our government
| California Police Arrest A Man
Videotaping Them In Public And Then Shoot His Dog After It Leaps
From Car |
A videotape
out of Hawthorne, California (15 miles out of Los Angeles) is raising questions
not only about police arresting a man for videotaping them in public but
shooting the man's dog when it comes to his aide. Warning: the arrest of Leon Rosby,
52, shown below, is a disturbing video with a graphic scene of the shooting of
his dog, Max.
The
Parting Thought – Not to worry in the land of the free!
Dear Unconcerned Citizen…
The government is never here to
protect you. And, as the US government yet again proved, all they can do is
cause damage. The free market takes care of itself just fine on the Internet.
The thought that some government agency can do what technology companies and
organizations around the world already do is ludicrous.
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) develops and promotes Internet standards (effectively the free market architects of the internet), cooperating closely with the W3C and ISO/IEC standards bodies and dealing in particular with standards of the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It is an open standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements and all participants and managers are volunteers.
"There has been a complete change in how people perceive the world," since Snowden exposed the NSA's massive surveillance efforts, and while "not a silver bullet," the chief technologist at security firm RSA notes, "anything that improves trust in this digital world is a noble aim."
The IETF held emergency meetings after Snowden let people know of the NSA’s activities.
From the Financial Times:
Key architects of the internet have
started to fight back against US and UK snooping programmes by drawing up an
ambitious plan to defend traffic over the world wide web against mass
surveillance.
The Internet Engineering Task Force, a
body that develops internet standards, has proposed a system in which all
communication between websites and browsers would be shielded by encryption.
So, while Napolitano is warning that we need government to protect the internet the free market on the internet itself is working to protect itself from government!
THE US GOVERNMENT: FURTHER DESTROYING THE US ECONOMY
While the US government claims to be trying to protect US based internet businesses they have actually been mortally damaging them.
From Breitbart.com:
An industry group, the Cloud Security
Alliance said last month that 10 percent of its non-US members have cancelled a
contract with a US-based cloud provider, and 56 percent said they were less
likely to use an American company.
Translated into hard dollar amounts, another
report this month from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
(ITIF) said US cloud providers stand to lose $22-$35 billion over the next
three years because of the publicity surrounding the PRISM program. The overall
distrust among consumers and businesses in other countries will affect US tech
industry bottom line as well. "The risk is that a country like Germany
will say you have to be a German company to provide data services in
Germany," Daniel Castro, author of the ITIF report told AFP. "I don't
think that helps anyone. We do benefit from free trade and the robust
competitiveness in the tech industry."
According to the report, the US dominates
cloud computing market both inside the US and around the globe. US firms could
see loses between 10-20% of the international market over the next few years.
Castro explained that the NSA dragnet
"will likely have an immediate and lasting impact on the competitiveness
of the US cloud computing industry if foreign customers decide the risks of storing
data with a US company outweigh the benefits."
Anarcho-Capitalist. Libertarian. Freedom fighter against
mankind’s two biggest enemies, the State and the Central Banks. Jeff
Berwick is the founder of The Dollar Vigilante, CEO of TDV
Media & Services and host of the popular video podcast, Anarchast. Jeff Berwick.
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