I know people out there who have invested a lot in gold under the belief that in the event of like complete societal collapse or hyperinflation, they could use it for purchasing.
I have the hunch it’s a scam, but I haven’t learned enough monetary theory, business, or economics to understand why.
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When the world collapses, nobody’s going to care about gold.
Stock up on bottlecaps instead.
As a person who has an abnormal number of bottlecaps for hobby reasons, thank you for making me feel rich! Also, why would anyone else want these?
I think they’re referencing the game Fallout where bottlecaps are used as currency
It’s almost certainly a joke but bottlecaps in a post civilization society would make a pretty decent currency, more so than gold.
They’re light, easy to carry, hard to reproduce and therefore scarce. They’re also useless for anything else. So if you happened to have a lot of caps laying around they might find their way to becoming a currency.
Gold is heavy, requires a lot of work to make it useful as a standard, and has other practical uses. Caps are actually better.
Yeah but making them isn’t complicated just medieval smelting is needed which is basically the iron ages
Well, for one thing, the supply of googly eyes will run out and you will have to adapt.
We homebrewers will be the thousandaires of the end times!
You’re forgetting the crows that like shiny things
Complete societal collapse, hard to say what, beyond the basics, would be useful as a medium of barter.
But, in a society facing major issues, e.g., hyper inflation, or say, a US government default, yeah, gold is a pretty decent hedge bet.
The traditional safe haven has been government debt but that’s been seen as an increasingly risky bet where you could lose a lot of money to inflation or worse, government default/intervention.
So, while not ideal, gold at least seems a better bet than most other “safe” places to put one’s money.
Yeah, it really depends on the nature of the societal collapse.
I can imagine situations in which being able to press a gold necklace into the right palm might get you out of a tricky situation.
On the other hand it’s hard to imagine a situation where a horde of gold bullion in your safe at home would be very helpful.
I remember reading an article interviewing a man who lived through the early aughts Argentine Great Depression and he said the best horde of value was cheap diamond rings. You could trade one for a handgun, a couple of bags of groceries, even a motorcycle. He said they were even better than krugerrands. Something about how people trusted someone whose trading a family ring more then some profiteer.
If you don’t hold it, you don’t own it.
Investing in gold someone else holds is silly. Having a few ounces stashed away is just illiquid asset that should be a hedge against inflation.
You can have liquid, premium-free gold by buying an ETF/ETC. Whether you hold it or not is irrelevant in case of hyperinflation. Stashing it away may be useful only if you like to touch it I guess
Executive Order 6102
If it can be taken from you with the stroke of a pen, then it isn’t yours. Gold financial products are useful speculative assets but not for calamity insurance.
ETFs may be useless in case of a calamity (in that case I’d stash bullets and canned food, not gold) but they’re useful for hyperinflation scenarios because the financial system keeps working. See Turkey and Argentina
I think what they’re saying is that in a hyperinflation scenario, it is an option for the government to seize the physical gold backing the financial products people hold in order to continue paying to run the government now that fiat is worthless and they are having trouble with that.
Gold you have buried in your basement, they will have to work a little harder to get.
If there is complete societal collapse, then gold is going to be worth nothing, because you cant eat it. Bullets on the other hand you can use to take peoples food, or hunt for your own. So invest in bullets!
Now if you just expect financial collapse but not total societal then sure gold, silver, bonds are probably fine if you want “safe” stable ways to hold your investments.
In most cases, its just fear-mongering and gold has no more actual value than paper currency since they both derive their value from sentiment or perceived value. So if you show up at my house and offer me a small gold bar, you value at $10,000, and I value it at a potato, then your $10,000 is actually only worth a potato.
In fairness, if the US dollar collapses, say, but the euro is fine and you find a way to get to Europe, you’re much better off with a few chunks of gold that will be worth relatively what you bought them for than with wheelbarrows full of hundred dollar bills which are now worth less than paper.
I doubt you get far checking in a suitcase full of gold after the dollar collapses in such a colossal way
I doubt you’d get far even trying to carry a suitcase full of gold.
Bullets should be saved for protecting your community…trap and snare your animals :)
Naw use em to shoot people in the wasteland and take their things.
Ain’t no one safe in the post apocalyptic waste lands!
You can definitely make an argument that “proactive” protection is a strategy :)
I needed your stuff so I could have more stuff.
The thing about the value of gold in a society is that it is only valued within the society. If society collapses, there will be no group or entity that could value it. You’d need to wait until people start rebuilding. But then you’d need to be in a position to shape how currency is decided on and minted. Unless you’ve kept your load of gold secret, it’ll be hard to convince people to adopt gold as a currency without starting on more even ground.
Idk man… Humans like shiney baubles. Remember: Gold was a valuable commodity before we even had legit uses for it beyond decoration.
Because it was found by people in society. It was given value within an established society. I’m not saying no one will value it. I’m saying that until there is an established society, it won’t hold value. Then if you do end up in a society, you need to sway them to adopt gold as a currency while keeping your gold stores secret.
It can be used for barter, gold had enough of a reputation that you can get anyone to trade you for it if they have an excess of something.
Ever since we found gold we have valued it. I don’t understand the position of, “Oh, no one will value it!” We love the shit and it’s a store of value. How much value is dependent.
You can’t eat gold, and you can only trade gold for food if that person can trade the gold for something else. I’m not going to say there’s no chance of gold being valuable in a societal collapse scenario, but I’d rather wager with resources than a pretty, shiny metal. I don’t see how that’s a position that can’t be understood. Gold works as an intermediary exchange, but direct barter can always be counted on.
Gold is good as notation for big things, like an excavator and a dozen barrels of diesel. You can’t trade that shit for cucumbers and canned tuna.
You can use gold as an excellent long lasting conductor for electric equipment. You can make it very thin. It would make a comeback in basic dentistry, as you can actually eat it: it’s non-poisonous. Doesn’t tarnish. A smith can do a lot with gold.
Gold is a resource. That said, I don’t have any right now. Just some silver coins, and some packaged goods like knives and flour mills (business leftovers). Given the market insecurities now and gold’s all time high price, wish I did.
Because it was found by people in society. It was given value within an established society. I’m not saying no one will value it. I’m saying that until there is an established society, it won’t hold value. Then if you do end up in a society, you need to sway them to adopt gold as a currency while keeping your gold stores secret.
Compare gold to the other elements on the periodic table as a medium to store value and you’ll see why it is used for this task.
It is non toxic, it can be easily held and transported, it is non reactive (it won’t rust or combust), it is relatively rare, it is dense (a lot of gold fills a small space) and, well like others have said, it’s shiny. It can be easily moulded and forgotten about for millennia and still be the same way it was last used (look at Viking hordes as an example) few other things can do this, maybe diamonds? But they can not be recombined again like gold
To clarify, when people colloquially refer to “the collapse of society” they don’t mean that all forms of society would cease to exist, but refer to the failure of the nation state, or possibly the international order, and the long supply chains that go with it. Etc.
So society at various scales would still exist, in overlapping ways and jurisdictions. Basic units like neighbourhoods and firefighters and towns and regions would be organizing based on the old rules and adapting. People organize well in the absence of warlords, so that and extinction events are the threats to trade.
The value of trade goods might be indeterminate if a comet wipes nearly all of us out. Otherwise, many people love to dicker and argue about the value of things, so I’m pretty confident about rare raw materials like gold having both utility value and a reasonably inflated exchange value in a prolonged regional or international crisis.
The only gold worth a damn is the stuff in your hands. Gold speculation is not a hedge against financial crises
Let’s be honest though, in a complete societal collapse (not likely to ever happen) if I had sandwiches, and you had a block of gold. Your good is worthless unless someone else is willing to trade for it. You come with gold, say it’s worth something, I say meh, maybe 15 pounds for one sandwich, you say no way, you grow weak through starvation I say 20 pounds, you say no way, grow weaker and I say 30 pounds, you say I only had 15, you die of starvation and I bury your currently worthless gold somewhere in case it eventually has value again.
So zoidberg made out like a bandit!
The whole time I just pictured myself having a bunker full of in ground freezers with hidden solar panels and they are just chock full of shite gas station sandwiches to ensure they last 50 years. (Hopefully we sort out our agriculture game in a few months or we are just going to all die of malnutrition)
True, in total collapse gold isn’t worth much. However, total collapse isn’t very likely. Across all civilization collapses, it’s never come to that point
Also sandwiches are a terrible way to store value.
Also sandwiches are a
terribletasty way to store value.
Wait, what kinda sammich we talkin’?
Toasted thin brioche with garlic butter, light smather of roasted pepper jelly, prescuttio wrapping muenster cheese topped with heated salami and pepperoni, so it is moistened by the juices of the Italian meats but stills holds the crunchy, airy feeling in the bite.
Pickle wedge on the side. Choice of side
A nice M.L.T. - a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich when the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe…
Something something you can eat money something.
Yeah but so is having any currency
It is an ok hedge on inflation, but it is pushed a lot by scam adjacent businesses to push up consumption.
Invest in land: they aren’t making any more of it.
The Dutch: hold my beer
Hawaii’s Big Island be like:
24-hour lava flow asmr
The only things that will have value when society collapses are food, water, shelter, off-grid power, ammunition, and weapons.
Don’t forget “skills you can use to make yourself valuable to a small community”, especially the skills to grow and prepare food, locate and purify water, construct and maintain shelter, maintain and upscale off-grid power, and use ammunition and weapons.
It will be whatever the remnants of society deem valuable and convenient to use for condensed wealth. Probably bottle caps.
Unrelated, anyone else looking forward to fallout season 2?
Look at the zoomed out 5 year chart for its price and you tell me.
$1,839 -> $4,217
Yes, but:
https://www.macrotrends.net/4534/cpi-purchasing-power-of-the-dollar
Gold is just another asset, it belongs in any long term portfolio at least to a small degree, and if you take the possibility of market instability seriously, you might consider keeping some actual metal on hand. Though silver is somewhat more practical for that.
I assume you’re talking about physical gold.
Yes, it’s generally a scam. Some middle man is going to take a cut of what it’s worth before you enter the market - and they’re almost always going to misrepresent it’s value, especially if it’s not in the form of a stamped bar. Then you basically have to store it and shlep it and secure it and keep it secret, which will further diminish profit. Then you have to sell it, presumably as part of your retirement plan…or leave it to somebody who’s going to lose even more of its value when they want to unload it inefficiently.
If you’re not wealthy in the first place it’s only worth investing in as a hobby…because you have to factor in the value of your time and subtract that from its value, as well.
As far as it being a hedge against the collapse of currency? Bad idea. Skills and land you can defend are going to be the only hedges against that. Even if it had value post collapse…it would just put a target on your head.
The amount of time it would take for a post collapse society to regain enough stability to return to metal being needed for a currency is likely longer then you would be alive to actually benefit from the investment.
Short term only direct barter and labor will be worth anything. You only need a currency when you have a non volatile society.
It’s why the whole post apocalyptic gold value nonsense is nonsense. You NEED an economy to make currency have value. A post collapse society has no economy.
Yeap.
Like…depending on the nature of the collapse you might have a bunch of delusional former MAGA people in a region who all have a bunch of gold so they trade it with each other…but for the most part nobody would want it.
Lots of things can be used as currency. Gold was the OG because it is scarce, takes work to mine, is finite(ish), it doesn’t tarnish or corrode in air or salt water, isn’t attacked by acids except agua regia, meaning it doesn’t degade over time. It’s a really good medium for labor-value.
Problem is, it’s also a useful metal now, in semiconductors and electronics, so now it is being ‘consumed’ by industry in a way that isn’t readily recoverable except at product end of life, and even then it’s not 100% recycled, probably more like 10%.
So the global supply increases due to work mining, decreases due to consumption as a commodity, and is still treated as a currency equivalent.
Solid gold is easy to store, and will survive calamities, bank collapses, fires, floods, ect where other intrinsic value items don’t.
So it’s a good investment if you believe that you will survive the deletion of society, AND you believe that it will be tradeable post-collapse. Or if you just treat it like a commodity.
But post-collapse, gold isn’t intrinsically useful. In these events, other useful, consumable goods might be better for goods and labour exchange. In the early Australian colonies, there was no money, people bought, sold and got paid in rum.
Rum is a reasonable value holder, it can be preserved against degrading, it is ‘fungible’ and divisible in a way that gold coins arent.
Dried grains are a good currency too. Maize, wheat berries, etc, as long as you accept that your value will be contually consumed and replenished.
Whether a thing has value is largely determined by whether the society you end up in decides it has value.
The indigenous Australians would happily trade a gold nugget for rum or rope or steel tools, because their society had no use for gold, but did have use for steel.
Disclaimer: The only gold I own is in my phone and computer.
I’m acquiring a little gold. Not a lot, but enough.
What’s enough? When my family was escaping persecution, they managed to travel under the cover of night and stayed in people’s barns and homes during the day. They planned and managed these arrangements via transactions using gold coins, links or pieces of jewelry, or other relatively universal valuables. They also got away a couple of times using the same goods to bribe authorities.
A small number of generations of my family dealt with being told that their money or credit was devalued due to their religion, profession, or relationship to public figures. In those instances, the family members who fled survived, and most of the ones who didn’t flee died.
I don’t know that I have much faith in my ability to flee anything, so I’m not investing that much time or money into acquiring gold things. Found some old watches from my grandparents/great-grandparents that claim to have gold in them. Have a couple of my own little things and jewelry I’ve given my wife. All just things when the time to survive arrives. Which it might not ever.
I hope this somewhat answered your question.
Some (many? most? IDK) gold sellers are scammers. They will sell you overvalued stuff and insist it’s extra-valuable because of some feature they made up. They are the ones being loud on the web and making you hear about it all the time. So, if you hear an ad, and buy gold, you’ve probably fallen for a scam.
But investing in gold by itself is just like any other commodity. And just to say, the rule on that last phrase is valid for almost everything (it’s absolutely valid for stocks and investment funds).
