History rhymes

I just started rereading the book When Money Dies by Adam Fergusson.

A few things that struck me were the parallels between Vienna and the large urban areas in the US.

After WWI, the Austro-Hungarian Empire (also known as the Hapsburg Empire) was split into multiple parts with the intention that they would not be viable states. The motivation was to prevent them from ever presenting a viable threat to France and England.

The agricultural lands that fed Vienna were separated from "Austria" and given to the new, synthetic state of Czechoslovakia. That left Vienna in the position of debauching its currency to purchase food from "foreign" countries. It did not end well.

Another thing that struck me was the level of violence. Germany recorded 400 politically motivated homicides between 1919 and 1921. Bavaria, with approximately 9 million people, was the hot-spot for those murders and averaged about 60 politically motivated murders a year.

Michigan has a population of about 9 million and we see about 550 homicides a year. What is 10% more? Well, it is a huge deal if the incremental increase in murders is concentrated and only impacts elected officials, media and political flunkies instead of being spread across the general population.

That tends to get people's attention.

Austria and Greece persecuting under-vaccinated people

One of the reasons that the United States excelled in the 1950s and 1960s is that groups that were persecuted under the NAZIs and later fled the Soviet system had no other, viable option other than fleeing to the United States.

The United States, through shear dumb luck was able to skim the cream of the world's talent.

The smug apparatchiks of the European Union are creating the same situation. If I were the Prime Minister of Poland or Hungary or Russia or Governor of Florida or Texas, I would offer every citizen of Austria, Germany or Greece a voucher for a free house, provided they brought a skill and at least ten more productive years with them. Engineer? You are in. Physicist? In. Chemist? In. Can graft genes? In. Programmer? In.

Talent is mobile. Talent has the option of voting with its feet.

Fire-brick

This is the third time I have read this book. I know how it ends.

Most people suffer. A few thrive.

The thrivers hide their wealth.

"Homeostasis" means protection from exposure.

The thrivers find a way to meet the basic needs of survival by reconfiguring native or ubiquitous materials. By basic needs, I mean the ones that show up at the bottom two levels of Maslow's Hierarchy.

The reason for native/ubiquitous materials is that a debauched currency cannot by non-native materials. Need a new circuit-board from off-shore? Too bad for you. Need a grade of steel with an exotic alloying element? TFB. Even local materials will require wheelbarrows of dollars if it is something you cannot grub out of the ground yourself.

It occurred to me that the ability to make fire-brick from native materials would be in high demand and potentially lucrative. People will be cobbling together woodstoves from all kinds of inappropriate materials. People will need ovens and kilns and forges as industry starts on a more local level.

There are many sites on the internet that will tell you how to make excellent fire-brick from purchased materials like Greenstripe clay and perlite. Perlite is basically rock that has been turned into popcorn.

I am pretty sure that I can find local sources of clay/sand suitable for brick if I look around. 

Finding a material that will create regular voids in the baked clay with obtuse (or no) re-entrant angles is more challenging.

One option would be to work 45%-by-volume clay and 55% toasted millet seeds. Millet seed (also known as birdseed) is round and currently runs about $8 per cubic-foot. It is also a product that can be grown almost everywhere in the United States. It would be necessary to bring the green firebrick slowly up-to-heat to give the millet time to char and out-gas so-as to not shatter the brick.

The final result would be a matrix of heat-resistant ceramic saturated with spherical voids. Spherical voids have the happy properties of both insulating and arresting the growth of cracks.