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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NFCs, bitcoins, silver, gold, whatever. If the only way people can cash out is to get someone to buy what they’re selling, there’s always going to be an element of grift to it. It’s just some are more grifty than others.
I mean that applies to literally everything
Everything that you make an investment in has some measure of liquidity.
Shit, I gotta stop paying with NFC.
Gold is a solid store of value. That’s about it. It isn’t a terribly good investment as it just doesn’t gain value very fast compared to inflation. But, as I said, it is a solid store of value, so if that is what you are looking for, it isn’t a bad option.
If you want to invest, you are better off with index funds held over the long term.
invested a lot in gold under the belief that in the event of like complete societal collapse
If that happens, a better investment is to make yourself as self-sufficient as possible. Have a way to generate power (solar + batteries), acquire water (well water), sewage (leech field), stored food (just extra cans of food you normally eat), acquire food (a rifle and somewhere deer exist), security (that same rifle).
None of that is unreasonably expensive or hard to get. But all of those are what you would want if you are worried about societal collapse.
Gold as a long term investment isn’t great unless it’s one small part of your strategy. This is largely because the value of gold isn’t just going up and up like with other possibilities out there. In the event of a societal collapse people are going to be bartering with food or useful items, not gold.
I don’t think society across the whole planet will collapse, short of a nuclear war in which case gold won’t help one bit
Much more likely that certain areas will experience famine, war, disease, and reduced access to medicine.
Really the best bet is to be able to be mobile if an area has a significant decline you can move to where it’s better
If you’re looking for something to buy now that will have value in say 1000 years, gold’s a pretty good choice.
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.
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.
Yeah, gold isn’t worth anything unless a community agrees to assign a value to it, which probably won’t happen in an apocalyptic scenario. If you really want to be prepared, you need to stock up on things that are actually useful:
- non-perishable, nutritious food (preferably something that has a lot of calories in a small serving so you could carry it on you)
- drinking water!! you would have to change it every once in a while though, so you wouldn’t be drinking germ soup if a societal collapse actually happens
- durable, good quality clothing for various climates/weather conditions (due to climate change and the possibility that you would flee somewhere, you should preferably have clothing suitable for other climates than just the one you’re used to)
- miscellanous supplies, like tools for building shelters, farming, making & maintaining different items, destroying things like trees or rocks to make space for building/agriculture or more likely, obtain materials. Things to protect yourself and your loved ones from the elements, like a good tent, sleeping bags, etc. Flashlights, powerbanks, batteries, water purifiers, multitools…
- knowledge. No matter how much stuff you have, it’s no use if you don’t actually know how to do things. Learn canning, blacksmithing, sewing, gardening, fishing, carpentry, foraging, and so on.
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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.
Start eatin’ yer spinach
You don’t need (and can’t afford) a suitcase full of gold unless you’re obscenely wealthy and can probably just charter a plane anyway. There are hundreds of accounts of e.g. Jews fleeing Nazi persecution (and Nazis fleeing the allies post-war) carrying wealth for bribes or starting over or what-have-you in the form of gold jewelry worn on the person or gold coins.
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 asmrBut in a societal collapse owning land doesn’t matter, because land ownership is much more dependent on contracts, which don’t mean jack shit without a society and a government, and if you have to flee because of a war or a natural disaster, you can’t just stuff your forest/house/farmland/whatever in a suitcase and sell it later.
When was the last complete societal collapse?
Gold is a good hedge against inflation. When was the last hyperinflation in your country?
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.
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I remember reading Walden and thinking that even many many years ago this dude failed to be entirely self sufficient and still had to head back to town for random shit. It’d be so much harder nowadays.
It is not as stable as most currencies and market etfs (I can’t remember the right term, but stuff like VOO) generally have more reliable and higher returns than gold (ie XAU) over the long run
VOO started about 15 years ago. Over it’s life:
This is not specific investing advice for anyone here. I cannot offer that without knowing your specific situation and I charge for that, and once I give the advice you’ve paid for you’ll think I overcharged because it’s really simple (but reliable).
It isn’t a scam. It is an asset like buying land in the middle of nowhere. It will in general match inflation but underperform most other investments. In the very long term I would expect that with global population stabilizing and declining, the value of gold will also stabilize and decline.
Bitches love gold. Just sayin.
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)
You’re probably not the only one out there. Maybe someone else would see it differently and pound your head in for less. That frees up the sandwich and anything else in your possession.
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Wait, what kinda sammich we talkin’?
A nice M.L.T. - a mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich when the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe…
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
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.Yeah, bit of land staked off, 5 goats, 5 cows, 15 chickens, fencing and 100 acres of agriculture would do you much better.
Fungible, portable, valuable. Gold isn’t a scam, as far as the concept of wealth and hierarchy isn’t a scam.
Fungible, portable, valuable.
It isn’t fungible. Anyone who has tried to trade physical gold at anything close to the market rate can tell you that. And no retailer is taking a dribbling of yellow sand as payment.
It isn’t portable. You can’t produce a finite denomination of it easily or transfer it electronically or even carry it in a wallet economically.
It isn’t intrinsically valuable. It produces nothing consumable in the way an oil well or corn field or machine shop can. It’s a speculative asset with the potential to be turned into something more useful. But it has no practical use or purpose in a raw state.
Gold isn’t a scam, as far as the concept of wealth and hierarchy isn’t a scam.
The means by which commodified gold is packaged and sold to gullible investors is very often scammy. And the sales pitch promising future returns on investment are inevitably larded up with rosy predictions unsupported by current data.
The socialized mythology around gold (especially relative to peer commodities like copper or oil) radically inflates its sales price in bubble economies. But there’s no reason you’re going to see better investment performance than a purchase of real estate or commercial equity. And there’s certainly no reason you would want to buy and hold gold long term if you had an opportunity to build or invest in an actual value-accruing business.
At best, a long gold play is a hedge against deflation and economic decline. At worst, its a fad that cycles in popularity relative to cryptocurrency or beanie babies.
