In the wake of the financial crisis that doesn’t seem to go away and the ongoing political disaster that seems to characterize both “Republican” and “Democrat” administrations, it’s time to think for a moment about Reinventing America. In light of that we should think in terms of reinventing home business.

Will this collapse ultimately put us in the shape of the former Soviet Union?

What is your home business? Does it include skills for the local economy where you live?

Here are some thoughts worth pondering from a few years ago when – believe it or not – things didn’t seem as bad:

Examining the way the Russians coped and adapted gives some insight to what America can do. This is what makes the book important for distributists, because the answer to collapse is distributism. The development of local manufacturing, local food supplies, local currencies, local defense and policing, etc. will be the best adaptations to the new realities. The America that is cannot be much longer. The America that could be, could be in the end much stronger. But the transition will be brutal, as it was in the SU. And if Orlov is right, it will be much worse here than there. Much more traumatic, with a greater degree of chaos and anger. A nation that define itself in consumerism will have a tremendous crises when it can no longer consume in the same way, when there are no jobs, when there is no future, or at least no future that looks anything remotely like the past.

Everyone should learn to do a few things. One, they should learn to be useful. Skills conferred by the MBA or as marketing managers may not be useful. Learn to make something that would actually be useful to your neighbors in time of need. Two, we should all learn to grow things, and grow them without chemicals and pesticides that may not be available. And never, ever, throw any garbage away: compost, compost, compost. Recycle. Reuse. Grow a garden now to learn what works were you live and what doesn’t. In Russia, failure of the food supplies (other than high-quality bread) was a fairly common occurrence, so Russians learned to fend for themselves even in the best of times. In the collapse, garden plots of 1100 square feet sustained many a family. If a collapse comes, you will be surprised how much it is possible to grow in a home garden, once you get rid of all that useless grass.