I work in the mining industry and all of my coworkers are so excited about the price of gold and other precious metals hitting record highs. They say that this will result in all of us becoming wealthy. Bless their hearts…
This is great news, my Beanie Baby collection is about to bounce back.
stupid fuckers, buy bottlecaps
My girlfriend often laughs at my bottle cap collection. But I tell her that when the apocalypse comes I’ll be the one laughing!
The imaginary money you invested in gold is worthless if civilization collapsed, so it’s in the rich person’s interests to keep things going so they can pull that investment back.
It’s more likely we are heading to another US recession, hopefully not as bad as the 1930s
If only there was a digital version of gold, that had a permanent record of everyone’s ownership right back to the first nugget of gold, that would be untouchable/secure in a collapse/near collapse scenario. Something that you could bring with you wherever you go in the world, yet no need to physically bring anything with you.
Man I would be investing in that so hard right now.
Yes, the thing that doesn’t work in case of an internet or power outage. Yeah, that’s a good idea to use in societal collapse.
You mean Bitcoin, the imaginary thing that literally could be destroyed at any moment in time and the rich people use to manipulate their prices and game more money all the time? You mean that type of thing? Honestly gold is way better than investing in that.
Destroying Bitcoin would mean destroying the internet. Money will be the least of your problems when that happens. The price of Bitcoin being manipulated is not something that is inherent to Bitcoin. Anything that gets big enough will attract the big boys and they will try to manipulate anything for a little gain. Bitcoin being transparent, unmanipulatable and portable actually makes it better than gold though.
Major internet outages and blackouts, including across entire countries and continents, happen all the time. Your crypto is worthless numbers on a ledger when that happens.
🤣 every once in a while I read an extra special comment that makes me want to go buy more. This is definitely one of them.
Reads like a bot comment.
Sorry to disappoint!
What? we could easily keep the internet and have no crypto
Yes lol. But I’m way past the point that people’s opinions of it have any bearing on my decisions.
I’ve had this conversation a million times. You don’t understand Bitcoin, and that’s ok, I don’t mean it as an insult… it’s complicated. I can say that with 100% certainty based on your comments. This just means that there is more for me, at a cheaper price.
Yes there is manipulation going on, you’re not wrong. But where you are veering off track is where you throw out the concept because of it.
Money is manupulated. Constantly. That’s what happens with money. Bitcoin is no different.
Do you understand that Bitcoin has been around for 16 years, has never had an error or security breach (all cases of losing money are due to malicious actors or careless users), can send billions of dollars across the world for literal pennies, has over a TRILLUON dollars of market cap.
Please don’t get stuck in the early days mindset. If Bitcoin was “destroyable” it would have happened long ago, as the threat it poses to fiat based sovereign currencies is huge.
I know I’m not changing any minds, but you can’t say you didn’t have the opportunity. You’re standing in your own way.
Gold is good to invest in too now though! No shade on anyone who does that, just missing a better opportunity.
If this is really your perspective then tone down the condescension. BTC is only viable due to the poor policies of the Trump administration.
Gold has utility. BTC has no usability beyond being a cryptocurrency. I can make things with gold.
Is there any value in being the hardest form of money in existence, objectively 🧐🧐🧐
Edit: the condescension is helpful in the long run. People hate Bitcoin/hate people who invest in Bitcoin are very unlikely to invest in Bitcoin. Therefore more for me, again!
Lol ok. Enjoy bud.
Yes, it is durable, portable and compact. We can all agree on the fact you can make things with it.
Is there any value in something that holds no real utility or real value?
There is tons of utility! Intrinsic value, not like gold no…but utility, absolutely.
Comments like this must go so hard if you’re stupid.
Dunning-Kruger strikes again.
That thing sounds like it needs a functioning internet and communications system. If society collapses I wouldn’t bet on the blockchain being usable.
And gold? A huge percentage of which people hold non-physically?
It’s almost like you can come up with arguments that NOTHING is safe without a functioning internet and communications system.
So…what’s the difference here?
Do most people have bars of gold sitting around? No. Do most people have gold jewelry like wedding rings and earrings and necklaces? Yes. Can those bars of gold sitting in banks be easily melted down into coins in the event of a society collapse? Yes. Can Bitcoin be usable at all without internet and power? No.
I have gold and can transport it. We traded gold before we had an international banking structure. We don’t need electricity or the internet for the trade in gold.
Crypto has no utility. It cannot be transported as it isn’t a physical asset. It cannot be used for any other purpose eg you can’t make a hat out of BTC or ETH. Gold and crypto are not the same when it comes to their usability as a currency.
No they’re not the same, you’re correct. You’re totally incorrect that it has no utility. You honestly just don’t understand how it actually works. I really, strongly suggest understanding
I have spent 15 years following crypto. I promise you that I know how it works. The fact is the fanboys are the ones who are mistaken as so much of that scene is built by people who either know fuckall about currency policy or are scammers.
I’m sorry, what? Gold has value regardless of if there’s a government backing it or not. That’s the entire point of investing in it, as a buffer for when fiat loses its value.
The fact that you are being downvoted for this is pretty shocking.
No it doesn’t. Not anymore.
Not beyond its industrial uses, at least.
That’s incorrect. Gold still has value because it has utility.
Do you think most of gold’s current trading value comes from it’s utility, or it’s rarity?
Both, if it was more common it would hold less value. If it served fewer purposes it wouldn’t remain valued.
But clearly one more than the other, aluminum is extremely useful but not very rare and is worth about $1.25 per pound, it’s price is a fraction of gold at $63,000 per pound
The value of gold lies in the fact that other men may be disposed to work their ass off in order to have some shiny things to gift to women in order to have sex. As you can imagine, the power of gold amongst married couples drastically decreases.
Besides this… History shows humans always gave value to gold. For some reason we got very used into associating gold with value. As such, it is probably something good to have if economy collapses. But it doesn’t really matter if society collapsed.
The value of gold lies in the fact that other men may be disposed to work their ass off in order to have some shiny things to gift to women in order to have sex. As you can imagine, the power of gold amongst married couples drastically decreases.
Gold is actually useful for things other than jewelry.
What other relevant uses does gold have? Which ones of those are relevant to sustaining life needs?
Gold is supposed to represent something finite that’s hard to dig out of the ground. It’s like the antithesis of fiat currency that way. i think of it like a hedge against the dollar like with some cryptos. Thatt said I only think US civilization would collapse while the rest of the world moves on or divvies up its corpse.
That is valid for many other resources: iron, silicon, carbon, carrots whatever. Gold has always been attributed some special value, throughout history. That is ok. I don’t think US civilization is going to collapse, why would you think that?
Gold has always been valued because it has some important attributes that few, if any, other substances have.
It won’t tarnish or oxidize, so it will look just as shiny and beautiful a thousand years from now.
It is extremely malleable, easily crafted into any shape. It can be hammered thin enough to be a foil, or drawn into a wire as thin as a human hair.
It has a relatively low melting point, making it easy to cast.
It is extremely conductive, and is the conductive material of choice when price is no object.
There are other unique properties, but the point is that much of Gold’s value derives from being significantly, even uniquely, different from most other substances, giving it an intrinsic value beyond its monetary value.
… Which is why historically it is used as currency… kinda burying the lede there.
Bottle caps (fallout franchise), cigarettes, ramen packets (prison), sea shells (aka wampun in some Native American Cultures), salt (early scarcity) and gold are “valuable” because they are used as currency, where they are given value in excess of their actual ability to be used.
These attributes are not specific to gold alone, many other metals, jewels also share the same attributes of being able to used as currency due to their ease of division, relative scarcity and not rot aka “ability to store value” as the egg heads say.
Suffice to say, gold isn’t valuable because it is gold (I can eat a ramen packets, smoke a cigarette) it isn’t valuable because it is backed by. the government (we explicitly use it because it isn’t fiat) but rather it is valuable because IT WAS MONEY, because carrying 500 cheese wheels isn’t a thing irl.
I can point you to further reading, but just about all MacroEcon text books will cover this in the first chapter.
I was understand ALL of that, but the point is that Gold carries a significant value over and above its monetary value, and that’s part of the reason that it has remained among the most desirable, and most popular, precious metals throughout history.
How many things relevant in your life are made out of gold? I guess jewellery, computer and phone. Real things that matter to people the most are completely unrelated to gold.
The fact that it is a material that does not degrade makes it a good choice as a vector for value. It is good to be used as money for that reason. If you use iron as money it will eventually rust out and leave you broke.
The other properties of gold are quite irrelevant to the fact that it has been selected (over and over again through history) as a value vector.
My computer and my phone are preeeeeeeeeetty important to my life, though.
deleted by creator
Gold as a unit of currency is only about 2500 years old. Prior to that it was used heavily in jewelry and adornments. Probably because it’s not good for much else and it happens to be fantastic as a jewelry material. It’s shiney, doesn’t tarnish, and is easy to work with hand tools.
The association with wealth probably came about as a result of being associated with expensive jewelry.
To be clear, modern historians do not look for piles of gold to determine relatively how wealthy a society was. They look at their ability to produce grain and other things that facilitated trade. Because gold is only valuable as a mechanism to facilitate trade. To a civilization more worried about feeding itself than foreign luxuries, it’s quite worthless.
2500 years ago we didn’t have computers and cell phones. We do now, and they all use gold.
The very article linked to this post talks about civilizational collapse of the US similar to the Roman republic.
Turchin doesn’t track gold but he does track political and societal instability. He believes America has entered what he calls a “revolutionary situation,” where long-running systemic stress can no longer be contained. “It’s not a prophecy,” he said. “It’s modeling feedback loops that repeat with alarming regularity.”
Jup, many drugs have a market price similar to gold, so better invest into that, they can always be sold…
(Di$claimer: The information provided is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or advising on drug trafficking. No guarantee is given regarding the accuracy, completeness, or timeliness of the content. Any investment decisions are made at your own risk. The author assumes no liability for financial losses or other damages resulting from the use of this information.)
That’s the general idea, yeah. But gold investments are just a kind of construct where you legally own a certain amount of gold. Wether anyone respects your right of ownership when civilization collapses… we’ll see about that.
Brb buying bulits and grain
Now this guy has a much better idea of what’s going on.
The rest of you are kinda stupid and that also explains why you just try to fit in with the crowd.
What value? Can’t eat it, makes shitty tools. It’s shiny, but I’m not going to trade ny potatoes for shiny in a survival situation.
You can starve sitting on a pile of gold.
For gold to be valuable you still need social stability.
It’s more for when things have settled down a bit. Imagine you’re leading a group of people who secured a good territory and you’re growing more potatoes than you need. You may want jewelry made of gold to show how powerful and prosperous you are, both to your followers and to those outside. And you can give gold to particularily important followers, and to other leaders, in a very public ceremony, to show everyone that those leaders are beneath you.
Totally. I was more commenting on the theory of gold having this magical inherent objective value. Which it doesn’t, it’s a commodity like any other.
Honestly as a value store, land is probably better.
Land isn’t portable. Gold is durable, portable and compact.
Bottle caps are where it’s at.
I don’t think you understand what value means, and that’s okay.
Seems like maybe you don’t
Value is what you can get for something. If you can’t trade it for something, with anyone, it has zero value.
A dollar has value because you can trade it for a potato. In an apocalypse, you cannot trade gold for a potato if nobody wants it.
Value is a subjective thing.
And people value gold because it’s rare and inert.
Lots of things are rare. Doesn’t mean I’ll give you my potatoes for em.
At best gold becomes something desirable once there’s enough security for me to value having pretty things.
Instructions heard: Invest in seed potoatos for the spring planting.
Like I said, you don’t understand value and that’s okay.
I’m going to ignore you now because you’re annoying me with your below-average intelligence.
If that were true people would value me
What uses gold when you’re buying/selling potatoes, nobody will think gold is worth anything if society has collapsed it’s just a useless hunk of metal
It’s really sad seeing how collectively-stupid you people are.
I’m just glad I can see it for myself.
Lots of easy blocks tonight.
“Everyone is an idiot! The only real helicopter is me.”
Why don’t you explain it then instead of just calling people stupid?
Arguing with you people is a waste of time and energy.
At least I can communicate with people without resorting to petty insults
But I like petty insults.
Well now I’m not giving you my potatoes for your gold just out of spite.
Lots of easy blocks tonight.
Good idea
Yep! You can join them.
lol do you?
More than the average lemmyer, yeah.
X to doubt meme
He means regular money would be worthless as well as stocks and such. And as rich people own gold, but own much more of the other, he argues they would like to avoid collapse.
However, I don’t think they really can. Also, if it comes to recession very rich people tend to profit.
Some See Warning Signs of Civilizational Collapse
Yes. Everyone.
Whenever the pet rock starts to outperform the markets you know you’re in for a bad time.
Just late stage capitalism.
Late stage humanity.
Everyone is a data point.
“The fall of Rome, Spain’s imperial decline, the French Revolution, the end of Bretton Woods [the 1944 agreement establishing today’s international monetary system]… this is effectively a transfer of real wealth from the poor to the rich elites who protect themselves with gold,” Bertrand wrote. “We’re witnessing what may be one of the great pivotal moments in financial history yet it’s being barely discussed.”
It’ll never get old to me that the Uber wealthy know money is only valuable because everyone agrees it is. And when they accumulate too much, everyone else stops caring about it make Ng it worthless…
And their response is always to hoard a different thing that is mostly valuable only because people all agree it is.
Like, gold does have some actual uses, but none of this is being used for that. Just hoarded because people think others want it.
But shit gets bad enough, it’s like a zombie apocalypse.
You can have all the gold in the world, doesn’t mean someone will trade even a gun with a single bullet for it.
There’s just no real way to hold onto that insane levels of wealth it inequality, because it’s totally unnatural. It’s unmaintainable, but the people who benefit will try everything to keep it.
You can have all the gold in the world, doesn’t mean someone will trade even a gun with a single bullet for it.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t mind giving you a single bullet for free.
It’s the legendary metaphor of the all powerful dragon that sits on his mountain of gold
I could see wall street and other traders trading options on the gold under the dragon because it isn’t going anywhere and it’s safe from basically everything.
That market will crash if sufficiently skilled dragon hunters show up though, better ban dragon slaying.
I feel like the gold is more for using right before the worst case scenarios, in the end, they will have enough firepower, security, and other necessary provisions. After having that, just get a big enough following of people who think you’re the ideal candidate to be seen as a king for them and that’s what the rich will become in the next theoretical cycle of civilization.
that’s what the rich will become in the next theoretical cycle of civilization.
On the surface, it sounds plausible. But if you dig into how the resources you mentioned are produced, the ones which would allow them to become kings, there’s a plot hole. The production can only be done in centralized factories where many workers labour. And the inputs for those factories are done in other factories where many workers labour. As long as such resources are required to maintain these fiefdoms, the rulers power would be constrained by labour power. And we know from history that when enough workers are out of a job, when enough live in poverty, workers organize to stop working and take over the factories. Then they start producing for themselves, instead of the rulers. Then the rulers end up with no guns or other technology needed to enforce their power. What’s worse for the prospects of the future would-be-kings, is that the theory which tells workers how to organize and what to do in such cases has been written, and tested, and it works. And so I think we’re likely gonna see more of that instead of new monarchies formed by former capitalist elites.
Right…
They’ll try to use it for “security” but the fact is that just tells the people they pay one of two things:
-
There’s a bunch of gold where you work. And only you and your coworkers have guns
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There’s no more gold so you might as well leave.
There’s a pretty good show with a great premise called Billionaire’s Bunker that gives a third option, the billionaires would really hate that one, but it’s pretty good plan
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Yeah, many people, wealthy or not, do not understand what money is, or any other medium of exchange, and where their value comes from.
