Reply #22: Dark Ages

[dcfirefighter]

perhaps we can go buy some hooded cloaks and becomes keepers of the Ancient Ways, a set of cloistered keepers of knowledge. I'll learn brewing and distilling. Someone else needs to learn hepatic medicine.

Actually, as long as you can get a group of people to defend themselves from the barbarian hordes, and you can find someplace with a 3-4 month growing season and 20" of rain or a steady river (and note that various first nation's peoples have lived sustainably in conditions far worse than this):

1) Water isn't that hard to purify: emergent plants do a pretty good job of it, even with heavy metals.
2) Food isn't that hard to grow.
3) Food isn't that hard to store: pickled, dried, smoked, cured, or with a bit of 1800's technology, frozen.
4) Cotton, Wool, Hemp, Linen aren't that hard to grow
5) Clothes aren't that hard to make
6) Buildings aren't that hard to build
7) People aren't that hard to entertain
8) Someone needs to know medicine.

When the post apocalyptic smoke clears, a few suggestions for a new society:
1) no one owns the earth, or even parts of it. If you want to exclude others from using a bit of it (or soil a bit of it), you must compensate the rest of us.
2) no one owns anyone else, they have a right to the products of their own labor.
3) people can trade, and confer ownership rights to, the products of their labor.
4) when you vote, make sure the winner has a Majority, not merely a Plurality. Use something other than first-past-the-post.
5) barter is ok. gold is barter. if you want lots of commerce, you need more money than precious metals provide. use scrip. don't let people loan what they don't have.