Massive Inflation Due To Perfect Storm of Events, Including Cyber Terrorism

While I’m living my life and dealing with gardening and imps and meditation skills– the world continues to roll on wards…

One of the reasons why cultivating resilience is so important for households is being demonstrated right now with massive shortages and price hikes on many products. Things like meat, lumber, gas– which is at the highest it’s been in price in 7 years!– even chlorine, are shooting up in cost. The reasons are many, but our JIT (just in time) delivery services and highly efficient and integrated dependent systems is why.

Everyone is doing remodels and housing is at a premium, while several lumber mills in Oregon were burned down in forest fires (side note: how’s that for karma?) with the result being that lumber costs have ballooned, to the tune of 400% to 700% with some products!

Meat has both a labor shortage AND have been hit with ransomware attacks, causing those costs to go up.

Produce, clothing, and some products have had labor shortages and shipping issues due to the pandemic hitting many parts of the world hard– still.

Gas went way down during the pandemic, but demand shot up as people left their homes in droves when things re-opened, and the petroleum industry have also faced ransomware attacks.

Staffing shortages are a problem, so to bring people to work, wages are going up, which increases costs to services associated with that form of labor as well.

Obviously, it’s very easy for our entire economy to be pushed to extremes while the world is being pushed to extremes. We have a pandemic that made everything shut down and then open up again, Russian-backed ransomware cyber attacks which are putting many private companies on notice (to the point governments are FINALLY addressing this on-going issue) and extreme weather and political behavior are further stressing the systems we’ve set up to keep our lives together as a collective on the planet Earth.

None of us has much power over any of this. We can vote and speak out, even demonstrate– but in the end, we aren’t making the decisions. All we can do is prepare for periodic but regular transient disruptions. That will be the ongoing theme of the next decade as Decline continues it’s inevitable progress. As things fall apart, extremist political behavior will become normal as some humans search for other humans to blame in a “kick the dog” kind of mentality– whether they’ll target the ones actually in power rather than those below them on the social hierarchy remains to be seen, and I’m not optimistic on that front.

Apparently, the pandemic has caused a lot of people to reassess their lifestyles. The grindstone work mentality is being seriously questioned by the salary class of workers, while the wage class finally got long term paid vacations and are asking for living wages en masse. But having a home where they feel safer is the biggest reason a lot of people are re-thinking their normal and deciding to do things differently. Those with some money are moving to more rural regions, and even gays becoming farmers is a noticeable trend!

Once again, I feel incredibly fortunate. We’re able to ride this out quite well thus far, and I’m hoping for even better in the future. In the meantime, I am keeping an eye on all the incredible events playing out right now as history rolls forward.