"Well hedged people are people with options. What it means, is if you want to survive in a volatile emerging market, you need lots of choices. The more choices you have, the more robust you are and the less vulnurable you are to attack and intimidation by the state."
- Source: Frans Cronje SAIRR.
It has been mentioned in previous discussions that in order to ensure the longevity of your community, you can not solely rely on the main production options of your community, you need to ensure also that you have several forms of income makers to help the community generate a constant form of income. Sometimes harvests fail or ideas you worked out don't take root and then fail, thus your community always need to have extra potential options. This is what is aptly called your "Plan B".
Adding to this plan B however is an even greater PLAN B - a more universal plan. If you've calculated that you can not put all your eggs in one basket with your community ideas, be it a diversified crop growing plan or blended farming method of animals and crops or adding specialized services ranging from artisan products such as hand made furniture or Mechanics or Electrician and such, you clearly also need to take a step back and consider the bigger picture.
Stepping back - if your community is the microcosm whereby all members of the community work in unison to ensure the continued success and existence of the community as a whole - this means you have brainstormed potential idea to trouble shoot future financial failures. This is is great, however you also need to conside the bigger picture. Any community stands the potential risk of imploding from the outside. When your local council or your state or provincial government is poorly managed and close to falling apart, your next Plan B is imperative to grow and strengthen in order to prevent your community from potential catastrophy.
When stepping back, you get to see a greater community that you are co-existing with. Your local town or village, fellow farmers or other small communities and even the labourers who work on a seasonal or hourly wage - these folk too, share the same issues as if you are all latched into the same conundrum. When local communities equally suffer due to the failures of the local municipalities or councils or provincial or state governing bodies, you very quickly find your little community's successes dependant on the capability of your community to bond with your greater community members.
Take a simple service such as roadworks or even the maintenance of drainage systems on public service access roads. Any community can rest on their laurels and state that any issues outside their property does not concern them. Yes, you might be prepared to personally repair the potholes on the section of road that leads from your community to the main road. Your community might be prepared to clear the road side from overgrown weeds and grasses to lower the risk of potential wildfires or even go as far as to clear your personally allocated section of canals where water is been provided to your community property.
If the weak see success as a one sided issue - you only breed contempt and fan the flames of revenge. This is where the wise idea of a plan-b is most efficient. Providing a plan-b means you use a vital part of your communal ties to strengthen your intercommunal links. This ranges from having ties to the local church and volunteering and donating to them. This could also be a manner of offering help to others less fortunate - if others suffer from the same general problems such as potholes or overgrown brush or blocked canals, your plan B should be to build a trust with your fellow community members - by helping each other, you in fact lift the region as a whole and therefore lower potential issues of contempt further along in the future.
It is a well known fact that during times of distress and where there is anarchy and threats of violence, the communities who help each other, out stand a better chance of overcoming those cases of potential damage to property, threat of lives and loss of value, livestock and painful setbacks.
A PLAN-B is crucial when local government stands to overrun your communities long term goals and plans so your best plans should be motivated not only to be beneficial to your community members, but also have positive effects on the greater community. When you show your benevolent side to those less fortunate, you also prove to them that you are not what others falsely claim you to be. Your generosity enables them to understand through action what others have tried to convince them of with harmful words.
Looking around your community, try to observe where those short comings that affect the greater community as a whole could work to your communities benefit, in the short term it would seem a foolish action, in the long term it has the power to break down walls of prejudice and bond you all together in a cohesive unified entity that as a whole is all the more stronger together.