Caps > gold, the best universal currency post societal collapse
Comment on Gold hits $3,500 for first time as US dollar sinks to three-year low
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 1 day agoGold has been used as a store of value for millennia and it still will be long after the dollar, yen and euro are distant memories. If society were to collapse, gold would literally be the only universal currency, as it has been until fairly recently. The only thing that could change that would be ubiquitous space mining that would produce gold in such quantities as to render it worthless. That’s hardly going to happen after a societal collapse, though.
NJSpradlin@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Negative. If society collapse, I personally, and my family can’t eat gold. Period.
I’m not giving away precious ammo or food for gold. Either you’ve got something of value, or I’m not taking your gold. Period.
I’m talking about an extremely desperate situation, inherent to the whole “society collapse” phrase. I stand by this. Gold doesn’t mean shit. It only means something if people like you apply value to it, where there’s still some semblance of societal order and structure.
Auli@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Sure except gold has been a source of value for Milena and well continue to be.
phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Gold, silver, etc was not valuable until we had a society that had currency. In societal collapse we’re back to bartering and Gold is worthless except as a fancy trinket. The value of gold is a status symbol of having so much you can give away actual value for frivolous bullshit. The average peasant farmer can’t make use of it.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You do you, mate.
Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 day ago
Think of it this way.
Suppose you were smart and got 100 ounces of gold back when it was cheap. Say it cost you $50,000. That’s your supply.
I spent that money on a ton of quality copper tubing to make stills; a ton of hand tools; quality binoculars; lab equipment.
Which of us is going to have the longer line outside our trading post?
calcopiritus@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
That’s what investing is about. You have money, and want to make more money from it. What will you do?
Some people, like you, decide to invest it on producing a product, or invest on a company that produces products so they can produce more and give you a cut.
Other people, prefer to store that value in another form. Say buying gold with your dollars.
The thing is, that there’s no objective better option.
Both options have risks and rewards. And the reward is very closely related to the risk. There’s no such thing as low risk high reward. In your example, a risk would be new lab technologies developing that would make your lab equipment obsolete, which means that you just lost a lot of money. But if you manage to sell that lab equipment, you’ll probably make good money.
The thing about these news is: the reward of buying gold is decreasing (and risk increase). Why? Because its price is increasing, which means that if you buy gold today and sell it tomorrow, it’s likely that you’re gonna lose some money.
The fact that people keep buying gold even though the risk increase and rewards decrease, means that other options have an even worse risk-reward ratio. This means that people are pessimistic about the economy.
It’s not about one way of investing being better than the other. It’s about seeing people’s perception of the economy through their choice of investment.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ll pay some thugs an ounce of gold to steal your stuff.
Dagwood222@lemm.ee 1 day ago
lol!
First the thugs will kill you and then give me the gold because I’ll have lots of friends because I can provide people with things they need.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ll tell them you’re woke.