The value of minerals is based on their scarcity (or companies agreeing to price-fix *cough* ~diamonds~ *cough* ). If Superman brought a large chunk of gold back to Earth, it would upset the market value of gold, thus devaluing the chunk he found as well as all gold on the planet.
You can’t just “print money.” That’s how you get hyperinflation. Same goes for rare earth minerals; bring home more and the value for all of them globally is reduced, creating a hyperinflation of minerals.
If Superman brought home a large enough chunk of gold, he could essentially crash the gold market and then it would be a practically useless shiny rock. He couldn’t even buy bread with it.
If Superman brought a large chunk of gold back to Earth, it would upset the market value of gold, thus devaluing the chunk he found as well as all gold on the planet.
ok, so just bring back the right quantity of gold so it doesn’t crash the gold economy. I’m pretty sure superman can manage bringing back 1 million dollars worth of gold from wherever instead of 1 squillion
This is why you can’t make money mining gold either. When companies mine gold it just drives down the price of gold so they get no money while also causing hyper inflation. This is why no one has ever bothered to mine gold.
The current gold market is valued at 34.243 trillion dollars.
I don’t know the scope of the damage here but lets assume it costs 50 billion to repair. That would be about 353 tons (US) of gold using current prices. The coat of this represents approximately 0.14% of the current global gold market.
cobysev@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The value of minerals is based on their scarcity (or companies agreeing to price-fix *cough* ~diamonds~ *cough* ). If Superman brought a large chunk of gold back to Earth, it would upset the market value of gold, thus devaluing the chunk he found as well as all gold on the planet.
You can’t just “print money.” That’s how you get hyperinflation. Same goes for rare earth minerals; bring home more and the value for all of them globally is reduced, creating a hyperinflation of minerals.
If Superman brought home a large enough chunk of gold, he could essentially crash the gold market and then it would be a practically useless shiny rock. He couldn’t even buy bread with it.
SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
It would still be extremely valuable, though
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 days ago
ok, so just bring back the right quantity of gold so it doesn’t crash the gold economy. I’m pretty sure superman can manage bringing back 1 million dollars worth of gold from wherever instead of 1 squillion
Mandarbmax@lemmy.world 1 day ago
This is why you can’t make money mining gold either. When companies mine gold it just drives down the price of gold so they get no money while also causing hyper inflation. This is why no one has ever bothered to mine gold.
arrow74@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
The current gold market is valued at 34.243 trillion dollars.
I don’t know the scope of the damage here but lets assume it costs 50 billion to repair. That would be about 353 tons (US) of gold using current prices. The coat of this represents approximately 0.14% of the current global gold market.