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What did gold mean to the ancient Amercian Indians? Not much, it was a religious symbol, but for monetary goods, it meant nothing.
If the economy and the world collapses, and the population dies out to about a quater of its current size, gold won't mean a damned thing.
Learn a trade, provide a service that will always be in demand. Learn to brew beer, grow food, something like that.
There's your real stop gap against armageddon.
Wow, way to cherry pick about the only society that didn't value gold. You can barter on a small scale but it has it's limitations, something has to be used as money, barter simply can't work on a large scale. What are you going to do carry around barrels of oil in your truck to swap for a ton of grains?
And what's with this talk of half of the population dying off end of the world scenario I don't know who's talking about that, most people of simply worried about inflation with the worst case scenario being hyper inflation. If anything it would be similar to the Weimar Republic, 1980's Argentina or Zimbabwe. The only reason the dollar is holding up so well is because it's still the worlds reserve currency and as history shows it's only a matter of time before that ends.
And what non-reactive periodic table element doesn't that apply to? Gold is hardly the rarest element on the periodic table, nor is it the strongest or any -est you can think of.
Any economic system's only importance is maximizing the ease and equitable distribution of wealth and goods. That's it. Gold does not achieve that goal any better or worse than paper.
The only thing that is more rare that makes sense is platinum and there are too many industrial uses for that to be used as money, so what other element would you use?
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I suspect the vending machine owners are trying to make a profit KK, and sell the gold to you at a higher price than they paid for it. Furthermore, when you go to sell it, the dealer will also take a cut. The licensed dealers are the most likely ones to benefit from all transactions on average, unless you've been sensible enough to buy very low and sell very high. But if you buy now, the price is probably going to go lower at some date - that's what always happens to gold over time, it doesn't keep rising forever but goes in peaks and troughs.
I suspect the vending machine owners are trying to make a profit KK, and sell the gold to you at a higher price than they paid for it. Furthermore, when you go to sell it, the dealer will also take a cut. The licensed dealers are the most likely ones to benefit from all transactions on average, unless you've been sensible enough to buy very low and sell very high.
My stock broker makes a profit, my bank makes a profit & my credit card company makes a profit. You just don't see how much they secretly skim off you.
Gold is money, not currency . The only examples we should be using is those of the industrial reveloution ,starting in the late 1800s up to today. Let's use an example ,the gold rush in Alaska and NW Canada, as a starter. The Gold rush made millions for a lot of the early prospectors, but millions of what ? Not currency, which was worthless to the miners, in part because of the remoteness. They had little need for a currency , worthless paper issued by many Banks with nothing to back up it's value. There was no central Bank ether, only avenue of worth was real gold.The end result ,a goal for those who came there, under very harsh conditions was to collect as much as possible, then get out of there. So, when buying supplies, many just carried their gold in a sack.All notable merchants had scales, that's how you made purchases, by weight of the gold in your pocket. There were assayers,
Smelters, who turned gold into coin. For a wild night in the dance hall, you shaved off a little of coin for the evening, the house had scales.
So, gold became the money of the day, everyone was on the gold standard , the whole world as they knew it. PMs remained the final standard, then and now. More inflation higher gold prices too,then. Today we have very little inflation, yet PMs are at record highes, meaning the hedge was and is good the prediction is, gold will increase in value . There will come a day when it's value will come way down once again, but now. It's a wild ride, a risk one should not take lightly,...as many millions ( as in US dollars) is yet to be realized. However if the dollar falls and China takes over as world currency( they have a lot of gold reserves) we really don't know what will happen as the Dollar that has become the world standard for so long. We have little gold to back up the currency standard, only our worth as the largest buyer of goods and services.in the world.
What I am saying is in the end commodities are King , paper promises will become less in demand The Relm of the day, world standard, falls back on gold once again. It is also true that in very black conditions , barter will take over, it is true you can't eat the stuff!
My stock broker makes a profit, my bank makes a profit & my credit card company makes a profit. You just don't see how much they secretly skim off you.
The same goes for the many stores that advertise " we buy gold". They are using the high price of gold as a way to get people to turn in their partially gold items around the house.. For a huge profit . This has nothing to do with gold value, only using gold as a currency/money to buy more stuff.
Who said you have to buy or sell gold at a store? I use gold to trade with regular people. I have an employer/customer that pays me in gold. Why pay all those taxes, banking & transaction fees when you can just barter with gold?
Who said you have to buy or sell gold at a store? I use gold to trade with regular people. I have an employer/customer that pays me in gold. Why pay all those taxes, banking & transaction fees when you can just barter with gold?
And does he pay you based on what ? Market ? averages ? amount ? All sorts of ways to buy and sell gold. Ebay has become a great avenue.
Wow, way to cherry pick about the only society that didn't value gold. You can barter on a small scale but it has it's limitations, something has to be used as money, barter simply can't work on a large scale. What are you going to do carry around barrels of oil in your truck to swap for a ton of grains?
And what's with this talk of half of the population dying off end of the world scenario I don't know who's talking about that, most people of simply worried about inflation with the worst case scenario being hyper inflation. If anything it would be similar to the Weimar Republic, 1980's Argentina or Zimbabwe. The only reason the dollar is holding up so well is because it's still the worlds reserve currency and as history shows it's only a matter of time before that ends.
Its not cherry picking. Gold only becomes important when civilization reaches a certain level. Europe, Asia, etc had reached that level. Even with the Aztec empire, it wasn't big enough to require that level of monetary exchange. It was still a trade and garter system for basic sustaining goods.
And that's what I'm telling this poster, when the worlds civilization collapses, gold won't mean ****. It'll be about barter goods, and gold won't mean ****. If there is no one left to trade with, or you only run into one family, twice a year, gold means nothing.
And if tge poster I was referring to thinks it was survival in the 40s, he is failing to look at history. The pilgrims didn't even worry about gold for their first 10 years because it was about survival. Same at Jamestown.
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