Starving the Monkeys: Fight Back Smarter

by Tom Baugh

  Properly prepared, hyperinflation is your friend. And by proper preparation, I don't mean gold. Gold is a fool's game, and relies on others to be willing to accept that gold in trade. Gold only matters if the institutions which accept it themselves stay intact. When it comes down to millions or more of starving monkeys, I only want to hear about things I can use.

  Gold is only meaningful if civilization stays intact, and then only as a hedge against inflation. In that world, anything of value will do. I choose to use as this hedge property and tools and machines which I can use to get things done and to get the things which I want. If the dollar deflates by one half, gold is twice as valuable in terms of dollars, but so is the tractor or the welder. The only factor which would skew this is whether more used tractors or welders hit the market, but in that case not many people are going to be taking gold in trade either.

  An old snipper banking lesson passed down by the tribe goes as follows: "Owe the bank a thousand dollars and it owns you. Owe the bank a million dollars and you own the bank." Now what if ten thousand of us, or a hundred thousand, or a million, each owed the banks a million dollars? I think you see my point. The monkey collective has taken this to heart, as the entire economy is turned upside down to find ways to bail them out of collective foolishness. And yet, only one or two of them would have simply been swept to the street.

  Find as many sources of credit as you can, and be prepared to tap them all for things which you need. Low-interest fixed rates are the best, followed by medium-interest fixed rates, followed by low-interest adjustable rates, then medium-interest adjustable rates.

  Have a fixed-rate mortgage on your house? Don't take the Financial Fool's advice and pay it down. (Don't take my advice, either. Remember that this book is just for entertainment purposes only.) If things hit the fan in the worst way, then you want to be snuggled into the nest of monkeys when the collective waves its hand and absolves them all. Otherwise, you will be the sucker who sank all his cash.

  Financial Fool also advises everyone to cut up their credit cards, as if they are the tool of the devil. This financial shaman couldn't be giving a single worse piece of advice than that. The only time I have been in serious financial trouble was when I aggressively paid down my mortgage and had few credit cards, and those at low rates. When the contracts dried up as they sometimes do, that emergency cash gets drained pretty fast. Especially when you have to start traveling to work or look for work.

  Better is to have the credit cards, and with large available balances. There is no practical difference between accumulating debt on a credit card for six months versus draining a six-month supply of cash. Any reasonable interest rate isn't going to accumulate enough in six months to make any difference whatsoever. And if you get stuck for longer than that, being able to keep charging makes a nice buffer at any interest rate.

  Is a credit card company making you a low-interest rate short-term offer? Take it, if for no reason than to buoy your credit rating when you pay it off and encourage them to make another offer later. When you get stuck by economic circumstances, you will know sooner than the credit card company and can usually pop one of those babies into your bank at a rate lower than your purchase rate. Drop your credit card accounts and you will have a tough time getting more when you need them.

  Financial Fool advocates an employee mindset, and as such, he identifies himself as part of the collective. From time to time, he tries to enforce this mindset by having his suckers call in and announce how they have destroyed their flexibility by paying off all their debt. He fails to ask them what opportunities they had missed by being afraid to follow up on these for their single-minded purpose of debt reduction. Oh, and to solidify the scam he casts it all in shamanistic terms. Somehow, I think God is OK with you buying stuff on credit.

  Financial Fool does, however, make an excellent point about credit, particularly unsecured credit such as credit cards. For some reason, it seems perfectly valid for the collective to think that it can shirk its obligations. When it does, the collectivist monkey expects a credit card company to take a fraction of what they owe for frivolous purchases of knick-knacks. If this truly is the case, then why not, if you get in trouble, offer them a fraction of what you owe for money you took to buy a country place or a tractor? Somehow, the collective thinks this practice evil, but looks with sympathy on the wastrel.

  I'm certainly not advocating stiffing anyone, and don't borrow any money which you don't intend to put to good use and repay. But, if it hits the fan, I would much rather be sitting on stuff which I need and can use, and a bill for unsecured credit which I can't pay. This situation is far superior to being caught unprepared, and needy and useless.

  This is where hyperinflation comes to the rescue. Remember that fixedinterest rate? Give hyperinflation long enough to run wild, and you will be able to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars for fixed-interest paper debt in exchange for a chicken. Have the same hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank, under identical circumstances, and it will be able to buy, drum roll, a chicken. Which transaction would you rather make? I personally would rather be letting hyperinflation eat away the money of the monkey suits who caused this mess, rather than having it eat mine. Even better if during the interim I can use the stuff I bought with the monkeys' money.

  But what about that variable-interest rate? This is where the seemonkey do-monkey comes into play. Even at high purchase rates, true hyperinflation will strip it out. The monkey collective, itself trapped at variable rates, won't allow the government to allow the rates to rise very much, lest they themselves be liable. By fitting into that monkey-shaped slot, your debt gets inflated away along with theirs. Almost worst case, the government will back the debt with paper money which inflates away anyway. Worst case, the government nationalizes the debt, and you get to hide yours in with all the monkey faces.

  The only catch is a rare set of circumstances which could hurt, in which the economy collapses, but the monkeys resist printing money. Ohhh, that hurts when I laugh. If such an astronomically-unlikely alignment occurred, then you would be facing a large debt with no means of paying it back. But you would still be sitting on that useful stuff and so you might at least be able to feed yourself for a while. And as long as you prioritized which debts you would defend and which you would let go, there is still a great chance of hanging onto your house. Even if your credit rating gets holes shot all in it. Don't fear, though, the monkey collective will simply see you as one of their own and swing into action to protect the millions of themselves by hitting the "ON" switch on the printing presses. It's just that you won't be behind the machine feeding it value anymore.

  With this mindset, you will tap credit whenever you need in order to obtain those things which you and your subconscious mind have determined are necessary to secure your new definition of success. Your credit rating, rather than a yoke of approval, becomes instead a tool which you use to implement that success. Freed from that mental chain forged in your mind by the monkeys, you will find yourself no more willing to follow your credit rating over the cliff than you would a runaway tractor. A credit rating is just a tool, nothing more. Abandon it if it threatens your success.

  As you look around in your life, you will see other arbitrary measures like the credit rating. These are there to be abandoned when they no longer have utility to you, but are used by the collective to judge and shame you if you abandon them.

  Married? Consider divorce if the tax advantages or entitlement advantages merit it. Your relationship with your beloved need not change at all, but now you can impoverish her and put her and the kids on welfare as you charge them exorbitant rent. Maybe you can get a big black cape and top hat and wear it as you collect. Perhaps you can even play a little game where she negotiates with you for an extension. "Bwaaa haaa haa," you can chortle as you make your demands and she quivers before you. Spices up the weekends.

  Why not? Some members of Congress maintain or have maintained primary or side fami
lies this way. And we've trained entire generations of the poor to act like this, so why not you? Plus, her new-found poverty will make her look even more monkey-like and thus qualify her for whatever goodies the monkeys might legislate for themselves. Maybe the kids will get free scholarships this way, too. But in all cases, scrupulously obey the law, and fraud no one. We aren't criminals or cheats, by definition. Merely use what they have created to feed themselves to feed yourself instead.

  Nice car? Don't need one. The only people who these impress are the monkey suits who are trying to scam something out of you. The producers you will find and trade with see through the car behind the wheel. If you already have one, and enjoy it, fine, keep it. Financial Fool advises unconditionally turning it in for a clunker, and, oddly, this is the one circumstance in which he advises you going into debt if you have to in order to pay it off. Curious. I wonder if he is in the used-car business on the side, as a trade-down is almost always a losing proposition, as is any trade-in.

  Nice house? Smaller houses need fewer furnishings, and less maintenance. To a point, they consume fewer utilities, also. And make you less attractive when the monkeys come to pillage. Clothes for the kids? Shop the charity stores, particularly in areas which used to be well-to-do. Hurry, though, these stores are going down fast if this book gets popular.

  Find a way so that you don't need stuff, and if you do need it, find a way to stretch your cash. Before long, that cubicle will seem like it was a part of another life as you get more and more independent of the collective.

  Some of you will be rubbing your greedy little hands, thinking that if you hang back, you will be able to scoop up some of the best goodies for yourselves by staying plugged in. "The monkeys will have to get their pellets from somewhere," the reasoning goes, "so they will be willing to pay me more for them."

  If you are thinking this way, have you been reading this book at all? Do you really think the monkeys are going to let you profit from what they will classify as hoarding? Look what happens in any disaster to those who plan ahead to profit from the shortages, and you will see what I mean.

  More sinister, all collectives, in their pangs of collapse, universally turn to slave labor to meet their needs. And, universally, they all enslave, and thus cripple, those most capable of saving them from their plight. Does this mean that there will be concentration-camps where workers, particularly the productive, get herded to work as slaves for the monkeys?

  Not necessarily. Thanks to us, they don't need anything that crude. While writing this section I happened upon a story about a "killing chip" which some Texan, uhh, I mean Saudi, hoped to patent in Germany. This device is a little injectable pod which contains a GPS receiver and a cyanide capsule. The intent was to inject these in freed terrorists or the politically unreliable so that if they get out of hand or start causing trouble, then poof, the capsule could release its poison into the victim.

  Don't worry, though. This device is eco-friendly as it presumably uses an ultra-low-power chip. Extends battery life a lot. By the way, as of this writing, the patent was denied by the Germans because there was "no assurance that the information in the chip could be protected, notwithstanding health risks." You don't say. At least the patent was denied. Thankfully, there won't be that pesky intellectual property idea slowing this thing down any. Technically, when the Chinese start making this thing by the, say, six billion, they won't even get any challenges in court on those grounds. Sweet. If for no other reason than this, by the way, you really need to learn something about physics.

  Now imagine yourself trying to scarf up the last of the goodies as the last producer in action on the planet. As your bankroll mounts, perhaps even slightly faster than hyperinflation chews it away, you are going to become more and more skylined to the monkeys as they look for someone to blame. Guess who gets the first killer chip implant to make sure you stay in your cage? Or, at least, who gets the blame for the hyperinflation?

  Monkeys won't be the only ones who notice you, though, as you grasp for the evasive profit that we have chosen not to make. Concentrationcamps or killer chips aside, you don't want to be the last producer standing. You don't even want to be recently on the list to take off to this virtual Galt's Gulch I'm talking about. When that day arrives we will be waiting the few weeks or months for the billions of monkeys to starve. And you want to be safely tucked away wearing your monkey suit as you trade with your productive fellows. You really want those guys to already know who you are.

  But not all of you can escape. Some of you are trapped by circumstance, but not always trapped as much as you have been taught to think that you are. Even from within your cubicle cage, with its neutral-colored clothcovered walls, you can still fight them. Fight them by fading into the background. Spout their nonsense and attend their meetings, while you read this book and recommend it to your fellows. Denounce me and these words, spreading these words to others, while you take them to heart and plan your escape. Deny them the fruit of your mind, and keep that for yourself and family and the future which will soon be yours.

  Not consumed with chasing the pellet, we have time to watch and see who is still making pellets while the monkeys fight each other for the last of them. To us, that guy looks a lot like a monkey. And we can tell the difference between the man who is trapped and the traitor who provides for them. Understand these words, and you will pass the tests when you come to us. Or when we come for those of them who are left.

  And when The Widow bounces off the rocks at the bottom of that ravine, her lolling head is going to come to rest on the broken spines of these traitors who tried to sell us out, just before we took it all apart.

  And relax, this is just fiction, isn't it?

  Chapter 16, On International Relations

  For an individualist to fully appreciate the way of the monkey, it is important to understand international relations. Most businesses today, even small businesses, are global. And so, at some point you, your business or service may very well run into international issues. Plus, the international issues we face, and how we handle them as a nation, are a reflection of the values of the collectives which we have nurtured over the decades.

  Unfortunately, the monkey collective weaves its webs of intrigue internationally, as well as around those of us here. In international affairs, the collective works through a variety of agencies. If you ship anything overseas, or receive anything from overseas, you will probably bump up against some of these officials. Keep in mind, however, that organizations such as the Department of State, or Department of Commerce, or even the CIA, were created to protect the interests of Americans. However, you as an entrepreneur will quickly find that these organizations merely exist to impose another layer of collective nonsense which you must struggle to overcome.

  This will come home to you on a personal basis when one of these calls, or worse, shows up at your office to introduce themselves to you. And to help you, of course. The only time the NSA, CIA, or the FBI have been in my office, the low-level representatives of each have been refreshingly unattractive, unlike selected members of their management. I think that ugliness is a good thing. I would hope that the state department would follow suit and make sure that all of our diplomats and ambassadors were as ugly as Franklin. Then they might have a chance of being worth a damn.

  I have this lingering uneasiness about good-looking people in key decision-making or international contact roles. Sure, it makes a nice image at parties, but the idea of Biff and Muffy Pinkypants representing our national image fills me with dread. I would much rather our ambassadors be shot-up former Marines who are missing parts, including things which are obvious as you reach for a crepe. This staffing decision would say a lot of things, all of them good for us.

  Traditionally, our national soul as envisioned by the founding fathers had nothing to do with building schools or digging wells for our enemies. When we blew something up, it stayed blown up, a combination of circumstances which often taught a great lesson about dickin
g with us. Neither were we all that interested in picking fights, having better things to do with our day. But, we were ready to pick up a pipe if there was some dumbass who really needed its application. You want a well or a school? If you are willing, pick up that shovel or this hammer, we'll show you how to do it, but otherwise you're on your own.

  This ethic changed once we decided we were wealthy enough to afford some niceness and charity. The forces of nice, the upper strata of the monkey collective, found themselves neatly insulated behind what would become generations of accumulated wealth. This wealth had arisen from the days before niceness when everyone had better things to do, such as inventing machines to make things like eating easier. In their new-found inherited luxury, the monkey elite had to first ensure that the populace would serve as directed.

  So, about seven score years ago, our forefathers had to enlist a social cause which a) no longer served the interest of the forces of nice which had created it in the first place, and b) was in danger of burning itself out naturally. To that end, the forces of nice hired a genocidal ethnic-cleansing socially-retarded smooth-talking intellectual President from Illinois with a psychotic wife. The collective imbued in him messianic properties which resonate to this day, and gave him a mandate to murder and burn a good chunk of the nation which happened to have other plans for liberty. The collective then set him to his task with urgency, before the essential social crisis evaporated all by itself. More on that topic soon enough.

  Scroll forward about a half-century for the next major blow against liberty. The social order and institutions refined during our private war of ethnic-cleansing came into their own when the collective decided to mingle in a spat between two opposing groups of our closest friends. That particular war introduced us to the lovely idea of forcing national service onto our children at the point of a gun or a gallows. And of fighting one set of friends who happened to live farther away than another set of friends, creating artificial demons in the process. Demons who would soon become real in response.