"To Stand Against the Willfully Blind 99.9% Is to Survive in 2000"

Comment:

"Your neighbors do not take y2k seriously. When they do, it will be too late for them to do much about it.

For you to do anything effective about y2k, you must look at the environment around you and think, "This is surrealistic. It cannot survive." You must imagine a world without an electronic payments system and think, "That's reality in less than a year."

It's not easy to do this. 99.x% of the world cannot do this. It is beyond their emotional capacity.

Among those few who have tried to do this, most could not take it. They have dropped out. They have burned out. They have short-circuited. Whatever. You may be married to one of them.

This blindness, this emotional burnout, is the only reason why you can buy 50 lbs. of pinto beans and 50 lbs. of rice today for $60. It alone is why you can buy tenth-ounce American gold eagles. If as few as 1% of the households of the United States saw things the way I do, you would be shut out of the coin markets.

In a nation with water and sewers at risk, where not much information is available to verify compliance, and most of what is available testifies against compliance in 2000, the urban real estate market should be glutted with "For Sale" signs. It isn't.

For you to get out in time, you must be able to weigh evidence rationally. You must be able to discipline your emotions by a rational assessment based on evidence. Very few people can do this.

Evidence does not point one way. The phrase, "all the evidence shows," is rhetorical, not logical. But there can be a preponderance of evidence, and today it shows that most of the world's systems will not be compliant on 1/1/2000.

To survive a breakdown in the banking system, let alone the power grid, you must take an emotional stand against your governments, your church, your friends, your in-laws, and maybe your spouse. You must think or say, "What is your evidence?" every time you hear "it's not a big problem." You must recognize that the vast majority of people always said, "no big problem," and will say it until the bank runs begin or the toilets won't flush.

You will remain alone until the people you warned show up on your doorstep, hats in hand, saying, "Now we'll listen. In the meantime, feed us." You will get agreement only when the new converts want something from you. And if you don't provide it, you will be hated. Maybe killed.

In short, prepare to be alone for a long time.

But what if I'm wrong? Then y2k was always trivial. Rest assured, it will not be fixed. It's systemic. It's everywhere. It has burrowed into the world's systems for four decades. It is impossible to fix anything that is everywhere and interconnected. There is only one way that I could be wrong about y2k's consequences: y2k is inherently trivial. It is not a threat. It never was.

Then why has American industry already spent $70 billion to $80 billion (Koskinen's estimate) to fix it? That's a lot of money, equal to Bill Gates' net worth ($79 billion).

You are alone on the y2k issue. You will remain in your solitude until no one can do anything significant to defend himself from its effects. Rejoice in your solitude. To celebrate, buy another sack of beans. Cap it off with a bottle of Tobasco" link at

http://www.garynorth.com/y2k/detail_.cfm/4621

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), May 08, 1999