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Re: Google map of "Occupy" protests
ER — (archived)

Human communities may fracture under stress, but they rarely crumble to nothingness. The fall of Rome taught us that. Some form of feudal structure quickly arises to fill the void left by the passing of Empire.

There are many centers of organization around which new political centers can coalesce. There are corporations, state and local governments, criminal gangs, law enforcemnt organizations, unified communities, militias, even corporate farms.

There are still quasi-feudal farming companies in central Florida, dominating vast communities of migrant and Negro labor. Occasionally some are even busted for slavery by the Feds. Not the Confederate model, of course, but the you-can't-leave-till-you-pay-off-your-bill-at-the-company-store, boy. No, I'm not making this up. Guard dogs, bulls with shotguns, barbed wire, the whole tobacco road schtick. Unregulated entrepreneurial innovation at its finest.

People with ammunition and gasoline that can get other people to grow food can survive, although it may take a little arm-twisting to do it. Feudalism has kept civilization going with the warlords in China, the shoguns in Japan, the latifundistas in South America, and the current tribal chieftains in Somalia, Yemen and Afghanistan. Once established, there is not even a need for coercion or slavery. People, after all, will work for food. And there is always more people than there are jobs, even after the apocalypse. That keeps them docile.

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