(International Man)—It’s no secret that governments tend to be fond of passing laws that obligate their citizenries to the government. In fact, most countries operate a system of direct taxation, which, in itself, allows a government to enact a host of laws obligating the individual to the government, complete with significant penalties for failure to comply.
And, of course, governments, when deciding what sort of general behaviour should be tolerated by its citizenry, tend to legislate less for recompense to those whom a citizen may have wronged and more for recompense to the government itself, even if it has not been wronged in the slightest.
Generally speaking, the larger the country, and the older the country, the more extensive the laws.
Of course, in a country that claims to be a democracy, the idea is supposed to be that the will of the people is followed by its elected representatives, which suggests that the people actually have a say in how they are governed – that their government may only impose such laws as the majority agree on.
Well, there’s nothing unusual in that concept. In fact, all contract law is based on the principle that a contract is created that two or more parties agree to. And, with the passage of further laws, the contract would be updated.
However, if I were to ask you to show me a copy of your current contract with your government, I’m guessing that not only could you not produce one, but that it never occurred to you that you should expect one.
That being the case, the only way that we could cobble together a contract would be to list a set of general principles under which you are presently governed. We can use US Law as an example, but much the same laws are common in many other countries.
For the sake of convenience, we shall use the terms “Servant” and “Master” to describe you and your government.
JD’s manually curated links for God-fearing MAGA patriots
- The Servant may not leave the Master’s property without permission.
In order to travel outside the US, you are required to present your government-issued, identifying document for approval for you to leave, even briefly. The decision as to whether you may leave is unilaterally for your government to decide.
- The Servant may not receive income of any kind without disclosure to the Master.
All income that you receive, whether it be through wages or the sale of goods or services, must be reported to your government.
- The Servant shall pay a large percentage of all income to the Master.
The amount taken from you will be determined unilaterally by your Master.
- The Servant may not own anything that the Master disapproves of.
The Master shall have the authority to declare any commodity or good unlawful.
- The Master shall have the authority to fine or imprison the Servant.
If the Master determines that the Servant has violated any of rules #2-4, he shall be entitled to fine the Servant or lock him in a cage for a period of time to be determined by the Master.
- The Master shall have the authority to monitor the Servant at all times.
The Servant’s activities shall be monitored by the Master, through telephone, texts, emails, social media, and other forms of communication.
Of course, these are just the basics, but you get the idea. When looked at in these terms, it becomes difficult to maintain the self-deception that “I live in a democracy. My government exists to serve me, not the other way round.”
Interestingly, in most countries, a contract such as the above does exist under the guise of “Law.” And yet, this is not a contract that the Servant agreed to. It existed before he was born, and he was obligated to adhere to it merely by being born in a given jurisdiction.
Moreover, the Master has the right to change the contract, to the detriment of the Servant, at will and may do so unilaterally. The larger the country, the greater the degree to which the Servant is unable to take part in the discussion as to whether a proposed change in Law has his approval.
Not surprising, then, that the larger the country, the more numerous the laws are likely to be and the more imposing they are likely to be on the Servant.
Still, the relationship of Master and Slave exists most everywhere on the planet, to one degree or another.
And it’s understandable if the reader concludes, “Yeah, well, it’s the same no matter where you go. Whattaya gonna do about it?”
And yet, that’s not exactly true. It’s not the same everywhere.
There are countries, for example, that have no direct taxation of any kind. The individual, therefore, is not required to disclose his income to his government.
Similarly, in countries where there’s no tax on property, the government doesn’t have the power to confiscate property for failure to pay a tax.
Also, there are borders between some countries that are “porous.” Nationality documents are, in some cases, merely waved at border agents and, in some cases, dispensed with entirely.
Most governments declare some items to be illegal, but the First World appears to have a lock on regulating or outlawing virtually every commodity.
And, of course, the monitoring of the populace is quite unequal. The more sophisticated the technology in a country, the greater the surveillance. This does not mean that you have to live in a hut in the jungle to escape surveillance; it means that many countries simply cannot afford to fund or choose not to fund maximum surveillance.
The bad news is that, in any country, we’re enslaved by our government to one degree or another. The good news is that we can, at least at the present, vote with our feet and choose to reside in a location where we have greater autonomy – in some locations, far greater autonomy.
Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare…
The coming economic and political collapse is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen in the past.
That’s exactly why New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent guide that will show you exactly how to prepare. Click here to download the PDF now.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.