Society Falls – Debt Survives?

On a blog dedicated to self reliance there was recently a very controversial (for the readers of that site at least) post. Someone said that if they knew for certain the collapse of our economy and society was definitely imminent wit in the next X-months they would max out all their credit cards and lines of credit, even open new ones and max those out, all to buy supplies and equipment they believed would be helpful to survive the aftermath of the collapse.

This comment brought a lot of very terse criticism from fellow blog readers. Most comments slammed the author as being a cheat, a thief, a wanting dead-beat, etc. To his defense (MasterPo presumes the author is male) he kept reiterating this was an end-of-the-world-as-we-have-know-it strategy and not a SOP way of life he leads now nor advocates people to lead now.

But it didn’t help. To many even the at the fall of the nation to run up debt with no intention of paying it off, even to purchase items for your family’s survival, was immoral and unethical.

MasterPo isn’t going to comment on this point of view. Not at this time anyway.

However, there is another angle to this story.

In addition to those slamming the author as a rotten person for purposely running up debt, several responders also commented their belief that even after such a cataclysmic event such as the author described there still would be people coming to try to collect on that debt!

That’s a pretty shocking thought!

That after the collapse of our society and economic, with aaaaalllllll the problems and chaos that will ensue, there still would be people pursuing repayment of debt!

MasterPo acknowledges that “collapse” can manifest itself in many different ways. Dropping immediately to a ‘Road Warrior’ level of apocalypse isn’t necessarily an absolute given. When the old Soviet Union collapsed, while there definitely was some uncertainty and turmoil, on the whole Russia did not become a barbarian wasteland (probably due in large part to the support of the rest of the world). So, in spite of the current global economic situation, there is a strong likelihood that if the U.S. suffered some kind of collapse the degeneration into total anarchy would be staved off (for the most part) presuming other countries lend a hand in a kind of worldwide “too big to fail” effort.
In that case then yes, the debt would remain open on someone’s books and eventually some kind of effort to seek repayment would be attempted to enforce.

On the other hand, if a “collapse” did result in more or less living in a ‘Mad Max’ society (at least for a while) then debt as we have known it becomes irrelevant, even absurd. One would hope (though not guaranteed, there are a lot of mindless zombies out there) if such a cataclysmic event happened the individuals operating on behalf of the creditor organization themselves would be more pre-occupied with their own survival than to worry about seeking repayment!

As previously stated, MasterPo isn’t weighing in (yet) on the morals of such an approach other than to analyze what the possible implications of having massive debt on a post-collapse society.

May we all never learn the real answer.