Calorie based economy: What's permaculture's role?

Although I am new to permies, I'd like to offer an alternative point of view. I was going to post this in the Anyone here making money from permaculture thread, but didn't want to hijack the thread. So here goes...

Fiat currency (money not backed by gold or silver) is inherently subjective to the whims of governments and markets. In the US, the government started creating massive amounts of money out of thin air in 2008, calling it quantitative easing or QE. Long story short, we are now in QE3, with each QE succession printing more and more money, which is now in the neighborhood of $85 billion per month. Any ECON 101 class will teach you the law of supply and demand. The more dollars you print, the less each one is worth. We have printed (i.e. made up to pay our debts) much more than we can ever repay. The governments ALWAYS use creative accounting to make it seem not as bad as it really is. The actual debt of the US is staggering ($233,900,000,000,000 in derivatives alone...yup that's TRILLIONS). We would have already defaulted except that the US is allowed to print money, and every other country is not is because the dollar is the world's reserve currency. That is about to change. Soon. If the dollar loses global reserve currency status, the entire country will suffer HUGE losses in relation to what a dollar's purchasing power will be. 2008 will look like a walk in the park.

Getting to the point... every fiat currency in the history of the world has failed. When (not if) the dollar fails (some say as soon as July 1, 2014), what will be the role of permaculture? The human common denominator economy is calorie based which could also be called survival based. If we look at permaculture in a calorie based economy, IMHO it is the richest way to BE. Look at your permaculture as how many calories do you put in, vs. how many calories do get back? Stacking functions is even more important in a calorie based economy.

So here's the question: What role do you see permaculture playing in a calorie based economy? How do we prepare for that transition, and how is that preparation any different than living in a monetary based economy?

Like a good Eagle Scout, always trying to "Be Prepared"
J.J.

A "calorie based economy" is what the local food movement is all about. And how can you be more local than perennials in your own back yard?

I don't pay a whole lot of attention to preppers and survivalists, because their scenarios seem contrived to me. I remember the stories my father told me about the Depression, when nobody had any money. Talk about a "calorie based economy", that would be my grandfather accepting sacks of potatoes as payment for making a house call. A "calorie based economy" is really a specialization of a barter economy, where everyone does their trades in food items. And as long as there is a sense of how much food a pair of shoes or a plumbing repair is worth, it works.

How to prepare for the transition to a food bartering system? Learn how to grow the food, and maybe even as important, learn how to preserve it. If you've gone to all that trouble to grow stuff, don't be turning it under as "green manure", it has more value if you can pickle, dry, or can it.