32 million dollar for a 8cm wide porcelain cup

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Skybird

P.S. You know what I would do if I would, by chance find in the garden some ancient golden gems and necklaces of archaeological interest? I would keep it secret, buy an equipment and would melt it all into nugget or bars, then sell it.

DON'T YOU DARE, THAT THING BELONGS IN A MUSEUM

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Betonov

DON'T YOU DARE, THAT THING BELONGS IN A MUSEUM

Says the great monopolised looter and crminal, the state. I say: natural law: finders, keepers. They can get it from me if it is so precious to them. They will need to pay me for it, however, and I will set the price at what it is worth to them, and me. Either a price can be agreed on, or not. The minimum is the material price of the gold, and then plus X.

The only exception is that the previous owner still lives and can be found. Then it is his. But a state never is a legitmised owner of anything. Whatever a state claims to own, it has plundered and stolen and expropriated. Land. claims for what is on the land, and within the ground.

So in the end even archeological findings come down to: property rights again. Anything else is just a mixture of sentimentality and vague dreaming about something one does not wish to define precisely, living by the illusion that the naming a material value of something would devalue its attributed immaterial value, which is a very subjective quality. But you do not and cannot sell the memory you link to and the emotional value you therefore attribute to that gold coin that has been possessed by your family since long, you only can demand price for the material value of the gold and the value the collector attributes to it, for whatever his reasons may be.

Becasue very few people assembled and drove the price up, while the majority just shakes the head.

Did you shake your head when a few people drove the price of gold up?
I did, but I was very very happy they did.
What about that idiot who tried to corner the silver market recently? that was funny.

Which is no contradiction at all. I always said gold became an accepted currency because people voluntarily negotiated its value on a market and came to the voluntary agreement to see its value as relatively high

What on earth makes you think it was voluntary?
Do you somehow think the diamond racket works on a voluntary basis too?
You seem to labour under the illusion that governments and institutions are unable to manipulate markets.
Funnily enough the trade for porcelain played a major role in one of the massive failures of the silver standard.
I would have thought someone who is such a fan of metal standards would be aware of the patterns it produces.
Then again if they was aware of it they wouldn't be such a massive fan would they?

P.S. You know what I would do if I would, by chance find in the garden some ancient golden gems and necklaces of archaeological interest? I would keep it secret, buy an equipment and would melt it all into nugget or bars, then sell it. Because if the gold is left in the forms they had given to it two thousand years ago, the monopolised criminal called the state claims possession of it, and must not even pay me a finder's fee.

Errrrr... if you find some ancient jewelry its yours, however if you find a buried box of jewelry that was hidden you have to sell it to the state at current market value if its original owners and their descendants cannot be traced.

I say: natural law: finders, keepers.

Don't you mean roman law, or later common law? you know the things which set the standard for finding lost things.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Let'S keep it treasonable. Take TSHTF scenarios as one of these: collapse of fincial and then economic system, or collapse of civilisaitonal order due to for example cosmic disaster like meteor strike, or pendemic global disease. Let'S not focu on the single guy in the woods who would sell his survival for that special edition of volume 1 of Asterix comic.

Hey! Asterix is serious business don't you know?!

Those are more than reasonable scenarios, essentially focusing on the collapse of communications and infrastructure which leads to the collapse of the current economic system and social order. I'll come back to these scenarios later.

Becasue very few people assembled and drove the price up, while
the majority just shakes the head.

I would hesitate to use the term 'very few', indeed Sothebys would also hesitate. Certainly in the current market it's generally accepted that in order to profit from these items you have to be rich already, but equally you can say that for any item which increases in worth over time. After all, there are more than a couple of people out there who have brought a painting from someone who was a nobody, for a cheap price, and then find themselves sitting on a windfall when that same nobody makes it big, and/or dies (a sad fact of life being that an artists work will always increase in value after their demise). Certainly in the grand scheme of things it's a very small number compared to the vast population of the planet, but nevertheless it's not as small as you seem to imply.

Which is no contradiction at all. I always said gold became an accepted currency because people voluntarily negotiated its value on a market and came to the voluntary agreement to see its value as relatively high, for many purposes that were so convincing (market saturation but also: being rare, pragmatic handling, non-corrosion,. irrelevance of the form the gold comes in, etc), that almost everybody agreed to it, and agreed to give up early tokens like rare seeds, tobacco, furs, seashells, feathers etc in favour of using gold and silver as trading objects.

This is true, and eventually that lead to fiat money through the increase in gold in value beyond that which was feasible in usage as an every day form of currency, that and the fact that it's a lot easier to control the value via governmental intervention. Have no fear, I am not about to espouse the merits of fiat currency, particularly since that conversation would end in infractions being handed out. However, you can see a progression from token currency, to gold and silver and then to fiat.

You are right, one cannot eat gold, but that is totally irrelevant. The argument I would make here is that in case of a civilisational or economic breakdown, gold will lead you much further and can enable you to barter for much longer time into the disaster, than a cup of porcelain, chewing gum, or whatever. If you do not think so, then you argue against over 3000 years of history filled with breakdowns by wars, empire'S falling, economic disaster, hyperinflations.

Gold will win through in the end, when civilization recovers, but by that time you'd probably be dead. There might be a time in the immediate aftermath that gold would be worth something in terms of how people remember that it's worth something, but when the cold hard reality of the new existence sets in, then gold will be relatively worthless in comparison to more useful materials such as coal, iron, food, water, medicine and wood. When society has rebuilt itself into a position where it's able to conduct mass trade then gold might come back into its own, but you'd need to sit on your gold until then.

I would not accept a precious porcelain cup as a trading good in a TSHTF scenario, becasue if it really were so precious, I could not barter it myself that easily without loosing all my wealth in form of that cup, when just wanting to trade a litre of milk, or book a ferry passage over a river. A grain of gold is worth something after all, a grain of porcelain is dirt.

A grain of gold is only worth something if a person can use it in turn to gain something else. If a ferryman has no-one around him who will accept gold as payment for goods then he won't accept the gold.

Yes, its worth what people agree to see in it, in value. And indeed gold has been bartered for copper and iron ore. That'S becasyue money (based on a commodity) is a trading good just like any other. Hasn't this been repeated by me many many times in the past months? But tell me, the formalization of using a metal as an official currency by minting it into coins or bars - have they recently used gold, or iron for it? And why did they made their choice, what do you think?

In terms of recent use of metals in coins, I think they use more copper and zinc than they use gold. Of course that's because it's the coin itself is the object of value, not its contents. Naturally if it's made of gold then the contents AND the coin become of value. However, the fact that gold and silver are currently too expensive to actually use in a low denomination coin means that things like copper and zinc are used instead...in fact I think it's been quite a few decades, if not centuries, since gold was used in a coin, the only one I can think of in the UK is the old gold sovereign.

I am not certain that you correctly understood where the value of gold lies in a disaster scenario. Maybe it comes to your mind when thinking about whether you would be able to barter longer with paper money, or with gold nuggets, rings or coins. With which of the two would you hold out longer? And if you remove the printing on those bits of paper, what are you left with in bartering value then? Compared to a gold coin you melt into a nugget again?

It all depends on the worth of the object in the situation. Although the reusability of gold does give it an advantage over paper and composite metal coins, I won't argue that. However, it would need to be a relatively minor disaster in order for gold to not initially lose its value.

In a non-economic-only scenario, absolutely. Still, gold would be given up later as an accepted trading good for bartering, then paper notes.

Indeed, eventually the evolution of finances would begin again, however for someone of our ages, I suspect that this will occur beyond both of our lifetimes. In which case what use is this Gold that we have kept?

And if it is for suviving the crash of a fiscal and economic system and preserve the material values you own in form of stockpiled fiscal buying power (savings for example), then the majhority of people is better served and it is more prgmatic for them to focus on changing their values into gold instead of paintings, or little cups.

Again, it depends on how hard the system would crash. Little cups and paintings perhaps certainly are not as useful as gold, but equally the likes of medicine, food and drink are more useful than gold, and in the aftermath of a SHTF scenario the worth of an object will be based upon how useful it is, not how much it shines or is deemed by society to be worth.

The wide acceptance of gold as a trading item stands beyond dob t, since millenia. The acceptance of this or that painting, sculpture, or procerlain cup at least is in doubt in the long run. Also, if you ruin the canvas or paint, the value is gone. If you melt the ring or necklace, it still has the value of gold attributed to it. And as said several times now, the pragmatic handling of gold is easier than that of sculptures, bottles or porcelain cups.

Oh, certainly, if one were to drink the whiskey, then its worth is gone, until we find a way to extract it from urine then it's a new renewable resource. In a manner of speaking Gold is the same, otherwise it wouldn't be worth much since there is only a finite amount of it on this planet, however the fact that gold can be melted down and reused does give it an immediate advantage over the likes of paintings and other objects, but only within a certain situation.

Twain wrote that famous story about the million pound note. He could as well have written one about a 36 million dollar porcelain cup. You know how the stroy goes, the hero gets all for free because a one million pound note does serve very badly as a currency token. In reality, that hero would find huge difficulties in finding partners for any deal he wants to do regarding his ordinary life. Most people do not have 35,999,98.01 dollars as exchange when you want to pay 1,99 for your coffee.

This is true, which is why the fiat currency acts as an intermedary for the deal, one cannot barter Ming cup with Ming cup (although I would wager that such events have occurred in the past) but equally without the ability to break the gold down to its smallest quantity, you would find yourself in a similar situation if someone gave you a bar of gold. You would need to convert this bar into a grain in order to actually use it to buy a 1,99 coffee, which means you would need to melt it down, which means you would need a furnace capable of over a thousand degrees celsius.

And if you are in free fall, you better have a set of wings.
Let's not take exceptions from general rules as the rule itself. If you think in the coming fiscal breakdown you better serve your interest when buying bottles with alcohol instead of gold in any physical form, do it, and see what you hold in your hands still when the show is over.

Would that I were able to buy either! No, no, in the coming breakdown (TM) I will likely be too dead to buy anything, but death stopped worrying me a long time ago.

If you think that in a war scenario where you must flee from a terribly murderous enemy or want to escape from a tyrannic police dictatorship and need to bribe border guards or a forger to give you forged papers or let you pass the border, you are better served with a cup or a bottle of alcohol instead of grains or tiny pieces or copins of gold, prepare for that - but do not complain over the disillusionizing outcome.

This is a very specific SHTF scenario, and one that runs contrary to the ones described at the top of this page. The worth of the object that you would bribe the guard with will depend entirely on what the guard can use it with.

If you think that in case of a scenario of global civilizational collapse where passenger and goods traffic stops, next communication and media, next relations between neighbouring states, next internal orders within these states and interim dictatorship being brought to fall by looting gangs and replaced with tribal structures, if you think that in that scenario you can barter for as long as with porcelain cups or bottles of alcohol, the prepare for it, and we will thzen see if you hold out as long as I do with my nuggets of gold and silver. Not to mention the pragmatic difficulties you run into, and that I explained above.

Ok, let's run with that. Let's say that infrastructure and communications have collapsed. The first problems that people are going to have is getting food and water. Our water treatment systems will have failed, our food collection systems will also have failed. Crops will rot in sheds as they are harvested but no-one is able to convert them into food because the general populace has lost the knowledge. Mass butcheries will lie empty, devoid of workers to use them, or the electricity to power them. Meat will spoil in the heat without refrigerators to preserve them.
In this aftermath, will come the die-offs, first the elderly, infirm and those who rely on medications, such as diabetes and the like, then those who are unable to adapt to the new situation, and then finally those who the surrounding infrastructure is unable to support. A recent investigation by a Washington think tank, the 'Center for Security Policy' predicted that nine out of ten Americans will die within the first year following an EMP event across the continental US.
During this period, gold will be worthless, absolutely worthless to anyone who is looking to survive. Food, water, and medicine will be worth much much more than even an ingot of gold. If there is any form of trade it will be done via the barter system, not through any form of currency.

You have not understand the reasons why gold has been accepted that wildely as a formalised trading token by man since so long time, Oberon. I never said, never, nowhere, that gold has a given intrinsic value dicatted by a higher rwality, in itself, I never said that! I preach since long time that a gold currency is a commodity or good just like any other, which gets its value attriubuted by people in free negotaitons, and if mankind since so long time sees so much value in it, then that has reasonable and pragmatic reasons!

I'm not arguing with that, I suspect that within fifty to a hundred years after a major SHTF scenario that we will return first to tokens, then gold and then fiat currency. However during those years, that gold will be nothing more than a heavy object to carry around with you. I mean, you could perhaps use it as a weapon to hit someone over the head with it if you had enough of it, but until gold is used as a trading standard once again, which requires a certain level of stability that would be unseen for some time after the die-offs, then your gold is worth a lot less then my whiskey. Admittedly though, once my whiskey is gone, it's gone, although the glass bottle might be useful for bottling water or the like, so there's still some use to be had from it.

Copmolare that to an iron cpoin minted by the monopolise dstate, which in effect is nothing else but paper money. That thing has no value in itself that people would barter that easily. Melt that iron copin inbto a nugget, and see what yoiu get for that. That coin has its value not negotiated on then market, but it gets dicated by the state who fixes that value, and then devalues it all time long. That is the reason why collectors coins become precious: they get withdrawqwen, somewhat, fromt he state's infleunce tom dictate their value, instead their value is negotiated on the market by free collectors.

Indeed, but that's not really relevant to the point I'm trying to make.

In the end, this topic was just about that stories like that Chinese cup are about leaving reasonable borders of pragmatic life when attributing so much buying power to such an unpragmatic and ugly and fragile object. And I am certain that many see it like I do. And that is the reason why tiny porcelain cups will never find the needed acceptance to serve in the function of a formal currency. State-made money made of paper or iron, is no trading good on the market, it has no value in itself that would be traded on the free market, our whole fiscal system is basing on empty bubbles and illusions. Gold-money has such a value, no matter whether minted into coins, or not. Like these facts, disagree with them, it doe snot matter. Melt that one coin back into an iron nugget, and the other into a gold nugget, and see what of the two you can trade on the market, see how far you get. You must not tell me the result, I already know it.

I'm not talking about coins though. Although in a post-SHTF situation, one could perhaps melt down those iron coins and create tools for use in the fields, and since iron is a lot more hardy than gold then it would be much more useful.


Skybird, you read books fairly frequently I imagine. Have you read "One Second After" by William Forstchen? If you haven't then I really suggest you give it a go, it's one of the more realistic of the doomsday scenarios I have read, and although it takes place in America, I imagine that the situation could be transplanted into any real country that's bigger than Heligoland.
We both know how far civilization would fall back in the event of an asteroid impact or pandemic, we both know how many would die, and we both probably realise that we would be amongst the casualties. You because, IIRC you are living in an urban area, and me because of health reasons. Both our odds are reduced by these facts, you would likely become one of the 'Golden horde', being forced to loot your way out of the city and having to try to buy your way into a surviving commune by offering yourself as manual labour or a militia member, and I would probably starve to death or commit suicide. Either way, gold is not going to do jack for us.

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Says the great monopolised looter and crminal, the state.

No, says a person interested in history that sees beauty in the craft of our ancestors, the proof that they were able to manually produce things as accurately as a modern CNC machine, the story behind it and the simple romantic idea that perhaps it belonged to a direct ancestor of mine.

A person like me, that believes that life has a little more to offer than just live until you die.
Now leave artifacts alone because I will not tolerate the destruction of a work of art just because you yourself believe that the only value to an object is the weight of the material.

So no, the state didn't say that, I said it belongs in a museum

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Betonov

it belongs in a museum

Fine, if no-one else is going to do it, I will.



"So do you!"

[Betonov]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Fine, if no-one else is going to do it, I will.



"So do you!"

We all know how he ends up

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Betonov

No, says a person interested in history that sees beauty in the craft of our ancestors, the proof that they were able to manually produce things as accurately as a modern CNC machine, the story behind it and the simple romantic idea that perhaps it belonged to a direct ancestor of mine.

A person like me, that believes that life has a little more to offer than just live until you die.
Now leave artifacts alone because I will not tolerate the destruction of a work of art just because you yourself believe that the only value to an object is the weight of the material.

So no, the state didn't say that, I said it belongs in a museum

There is a simple solution. You want what is mine in a museum - you ask me to sell it to you. Or to the museum. I would melt it because i get criminalised if I try to sell archeological items, instead I am expected to give it up for free or for below its value. In German law, I am not even allowed to seach as a private person for archeological artifacts. If i can sell the item to the museum for the price of the gold plus X (to be negotiated) , there is no need for me to melt it.

That you claim it belongs into a museum, is no argument, because your interest does not allow you to loot my possessions or to expropriate me. Else you could declare an jnterest to examine my living place so that I could be kicked out and get expropriated for free. You see that l have a problem with that.

I also refuse to be payed less than the material value of the item, as a minimum, because the museum has not sufficient money, or you.

Have private sponsors then, donating money into a foundation, for example. I do not owe you or anybody else to accept material losses at my cost just because you do not have the money to maintain your interest, and when a public foundation cannot bring up the needed money for that museum, then the interest you claim obviously is not that high.

Of course, a wallet I find on the streets, must be assumed by me to have a living legal owner, and therefore I would not take it for myself, but I would pick it up and give it to the police, or call the person myself if there are ID Papers.

Morally I do not feel like beeing in the position to claim a reward, although now the law says that I can. But I wouldnt. Its not my wallet, and sl I have no claim for it or compensations, only for the costs it may have caused me to find the owner, if he wants it back, that is. If he does not want it back, and I had costs from finding it, It is my bad luck (if the found item poses no threat to others, because then it would be a case of originator principle).

a

[Skybird]

Oberon, I come back later. They are playing again.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Oberon, I come back later. They are playing again.

If it's the Bayern - Man U game I won't need to wait long, Bayern will slaughter Man U with 80 minutes to spare. And that's coming from a 'Scum' supporter.

I also refuse to be payed less than the material value of the item, as a minimum, because the museum has not sufficient money, or you.

funnier and funnier.
So you would refuse the payment on the market value of the particular item, but would be happy to accept the scrap value.

[Skybird]

I would hesitate to use the term 'very few', indeed Sothebys would also hesitate. Certainly in the current market it's generally accepted that in order to profit from these items you have to be rich already, but equally you can say that for any item which increases in worth over time. After all, there are more than a couple of people out there who have brought a painting from someone who was a nobody, for a cheap price, and then find themselves sitting on a windfall when that same nobody makes it big, and/or dies (a sad fact of life being that an artists work will always increase in value after their demise). Certainly in the grand scheme of things it's a very small number compared to the vast population of the planet, but nevertheless it's not as small as you seem to imply.

Speculating (or getting benefits from unexpected value rises), and putting savings aside as reserves for bad times and emergencies - ARE TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS.

Also, let'S say there were two or three hundred people interested in the auction at Sothebys, some in the hall, some others via telephone. These are met by several dozen million people in Britain alone who simply do not care one bit about that soup cup.

This is true, and eventually that lead to fiat money through the increase in gold in value beyond that which was feasible in usage as an every day form of currency, that and the fact that it's a lot easier to control the value via governmental intervention. Have no fear, I am not about to espouse the merits of fiat currency, particularly since that conversation would end in infractions being handed out. However, you can see a progression from token currency, to gold and silver and then to fiat.

No, FIAT money was not created by gold being overvalued, but becasue a gold-based currency is not available in unli8mited quantity, never. There my have been or may have not been a growth in general wealth, which only means that when the amount of currency tokens stays the same the prices must fall to reflect that growing welkath means a growing value of the currency of which then lesser quantity is needed to pay for a given item.
FIAT money was created when gold items were stored in safes inside banks, and the receipts then were handed around instea dogf the (heavier gold). Banks then learned that they could strart to make deals with the stored gold, because they saw that normally not all customers simultaneously demanded their gold back. By taking interests for leasing gold around, additional abstract value was created for which no material basis existed. By this additional value, the existing currency however was devalued already, sinc ehtis pratcice led to a rai8se in ciurculating paper receipts. The fractional reservre banking wasborn and installed by politicians. They saw that by this mechanism they could spend more money than there was existing, and that they could control and manipulate the price relations on the market by the amount of paper money money they created. Receipts for gold stored in safes were turned into banknotes, and the state secured a monopoly for printing these receipts/banknotes. Et voilá, there you are. Its the principle mechanism. Of course there were individual exceptions from this blueprint model. In America for example one or two states could not pay their tropps they sent into the civil war, they had run out of gold, and so the troops were payed with written bond certifications that the state owed the soldier so and so much, combined with the promise that after the war he would be able to change this sheet of paper for pure gold dollars. But it did not happen, instead said state(s) abandoned the former gold or silver dollar completely and introduced central banks and paper money. That way, the state could left it to not paying the troops with gold. I do not know what led the Chines ein the 12 century to start experimenting with paper money, thy usually are seen as the first to have tried it - but they failed, like all others after them failed as well. Probably the ruling elites wanted to spent more than their realms could economically afford, and so they looked for ways to get rid of solid currencies and replace it with a cheat money. Later, we saw the same with medieval kings who notoriously lowered the amount of gold and silver in their coins, for which it was prerequisite of course that before they had secured a monopoly on minting, because until then, just anybody could mint coins - it did not matter and had not to be controlled, since a coin of gold is a coin of gold, and its value was negotiated by market participants basing on its weight (in ounces) and the purity of the gold in it. Like consumers avoid bad producers today and their products, forgers faced problems to barter their inferior coins as well.

Gold will win through in the end, when civilization recovers, but by that time you'd probably be dead. There might be a time in the immediate aftermath that gold would be worth something in terms of how people remember that it's worth something, but when the cold hard reality of the new existence sets in, then gold will be relatively worthless in comparison to more useful materials such as coal, iron, food, water, medicine and wood. When society has rebuilt itself into a position where it's able to conduct mass trade then gold might come back into its own, but you'd need to sit on your gold until then.

I can only repeat: for gold you will be able to barter items you need for a longer time, than for most other items, and in a fiscal disaster like the one we are heading for, it is one of the most practical goods to safeguard your welath understood as an abstract ammount of buying/bartering power). In econo9mic troubles, after wars and disasters, governments repeatedly prohibited the private possession of items that enjoyed huge popularity ion the black market as in inofficial currency, cigarettes for example. Gold and silver have been more iften subject of such prohibitaiopns than any other item category, I think, inclduing cigarettes and alcohol, arts, or whatever. A currency that gets formed by the people in free market negotiation that decides the daily value, is a lethal competetion to any attempt of the state to implement power and control, again via state-monopolised money that sees its value fixed at the desk in the government's office. That'S also the reason why states then act draconically against black markets.

A grain of gold is only worth something if a person can use it in turn to gain something else. If a ferryman has no-one around him who will accept gold as payment for goods then he won't accept the gold.

Still, the general acceptance of gold in human history is beyond competition, compared to that of a grain of porcelain. a 31 gr (=1 ounce) coin of gold can be molten or cna be broken into poieces - the sum of the pieces nevertheless equals the vlaue the negotiating partner sees in gold, because gold enjoys wide acceptance amongst humans and cultures. Even if gold is not what yoiuj wanted to barter when when agreed to give away your huge heap of wooden planks, you know that you have great chnaces that you will find somebody soon or has what you really wanted, and who accepts to barter that object for the gold you have. That is the essence of what differer goods traded on the market, and goods traded on the market and additionally getting accepted as general currency tokens.

In terms of recent use of metals in coins, I think they use more copper and zinc than they use gold. Of course that's because it's the coin itself is the object of value, not its contents. Naturally if it's made of gold then the contents AND the coin become of value. However, the fact that gold and silver are currently too expensive to actually use in a low denomination coin means that things like copper and zinc are used instead...in fact I think it's been quite a few decades, if not centuries, since gold was used in a coin, the only one I can think of in the UK is the old gold sovereign.

Coins of that kind, our dollars and Euros, ARE paper money, coins are fiat money. Take away the state fixing its price, and you are left with cheap metal worth what 30 grams of that cheap metal are worth on the market. a 2 Euro coin, says the state, should be worth "2 Euros", whatever that should mean in fiat money philosophy. Melt that coin into a clump of said cheap metal, and it is nio longer worth 2 Euros, but just let'S say 5 cents.

Take a 1 ounce gold coin, and you see they give you the material value for it (plus minting costs, thats' why buying old in bars is cheaper: no minting), around 960 Euros in fiat currency. Melt it or brake it into pieces, and seer what you get for them. It will be around 960 Euros. With bars, the value tends to stay the same, with coins, if some collector sees a sentimental desire in wanting to possess it, the trading price can be higher then. But it is stupid to buy special coins and rare collection coins as a reserve to save for disaster times, because in a TSHTF scenario, when you need to barter them for other items you need, the additional costs you had to pay for and that reflected their colelctor'S value and special rarity will not be hionoured: you payed for it, but will not get payed for them in bad times, people will only give you what the gold itself is worth to them.

You are totally wrong about that the amount of gold available decides whether it is practical to use it as a currency. You can intoruce a gold stanard even if there is only one ton of gold. You only need to leave the fixing of the prices to the market, then the market will correct prices that way that the value relations of all trading goods to each others remain the same, more or less. It is the state messing this up, because politicians would loose importance if they do not make people believe that they must control the amount of money circulating, and controling inflation to not have it to low or too high. Criminal braindead idiots! If the amount of currency triples over night, in the following days prices will triple as well. If the amount of circulating currency drops to one tenth of its former volume, in prices the decimal will move one digit to the left.

Ther eis nothing wrong in having a reserve banking system, and storign your gold in their safes for a fee, and getting receipts, and trading these receipts. Do it, it does no harm.

The arch-sin lies in the FRACTIONAL reserve keeping. As long as there are no more receipts in circulation then there is gold covering them located in the banks ALL TE TIME, and the gold not being traded around parallel to the receipts (which would mean an increase of the circulating currency but prices NOT ADAPTING to that and no additional material value being present in the world), as long as you keep it this way, it nevertheless is effectively a gold standard currency, and when you stored ten ounces of gold in the bank's safe, in no way does it matter whether you have one receipt for ten ounces of gold, or five receipts for 2 ounces of gold each.

Think about it, the very monent a bank does not maintain full reserves for all receipts it gave out, but keeps only 99 ounces of gold where receipts for 100 ounces of gold had been given out, this bank is BANCRUPT. It cannot honour all it'S payback obligations, if the owners of those ten ounces of gold demand back all the 100 ounces they had agreed to store in that safe.

On an earlier opportunity I illustrated that the real world math is much much worse, and that banks must maintain only tiny fractions in reserve assets, and fractions of fractions, and fractions of fractions of fractions and so on. That is the reason why our fisacla systenm is destroying all the weklath and wonderful things we have build. We build it in super-speed except of letting it grow, and we build on quicksand. For these two reasons, our creation will not last.

[quote]
It all depends on the worth of the object in the situation. Although the reusability of gold does give it an advantage over paper and composite metal coins, I won't argue that. However, it would need to be a relatively minor disaster in order for gold to not initially lose its value.
The history of mankind over the past thousands of years have judged over that already. By empirical experience we can say that the probability is most in our favour if we need to barter for items, help, food, shelter, escape in a state of emergency. Not iron coins. I can only reiterate: gold has not been given the wide acceptance to serve as a value safe for no reason. Gold and silver showed to be better qualified to serve that purpose, than any other items being used before. In the cosmos, indication are that gold is anything but a rare element out there. If we would run space travel programs worth the name, and would have access to other world'S rssoucesd, we probablöy would be drowning in gold, and today would use it to piant toys for children with it. Then , something else would take over the bartering function of it. But that is science fiction, and does not lead us anywhere, for us there only is that gold that were have access to. Also we find no value in recalling that the Indians in Central and South America had so much gold that it was nothing precious for them at all, whereas for the Spaniards, it was, obviously. Not mkly where the Indians drowning in gold, they also had a different and less developed, economic system, which was part of why their society already were in trouble when the Spaniards arrived. I follow those theoreticians claiming that their society would have collapsed anyway even without the Spaniards, the Spaniards only were a catalysator speeding up the development. Now some people want to spank me again, I can imagine.

We live in the global world of today, and we have had the global hsitory of people int he way it has been. And that is why gold for us is what it is. .

Indeed, eventually the evolution of finances would begin again, however for someone of our ages, I suspect that this will occur beyond both of our lifetimes. In which case what use is this Gold that we have kept?

Let's keep metaphysical phrases out of this. In the end, we all die. So why living, why doing, wokring, sitting, resting? Lets just sit still and wait until we stop breathing.

Again, it depends on how hard the system would crash. Little cups and paintings perhaps certainly are not as useful as gold, but equally the likes of medicine, food and drink are more useful than gold, and in the aftermath of a SHTF scenario the worth of an object will be based upon how useful it is, not how much it shines or is deemed by society to be worth.

Most Jews fleeing in the night from the Nazis, to Scandinvia or Switzerland, did not carry paintings and big boxes of medications, but rings, jewelry, necklaces.

In fiscal downbreaks, gold is easier to hiden, than huge quantities of big things. It also can be traded on the black market with less attention-raising, than a big painting by Monet.

Oh, certainly, if one were to drink the whiskey, then its worth is gone, until we find a way to extract it from urine then it's a new renewable resource. In a manner of speaking Gold is the same, otherwise it wouldn't be worth much since there is only a finite amount of it on this planet, however the fact that gold can be melted down and reused does give it an immediate advantage over the likes of paintings and other objects, but only within a certain situation.

The point is gold and the like trumps in more emergency situations where you need to barter for something you need, than most other items.

This is true, which is why the fiat currency acts as an intermedary for the deal, one cannot barter Ming cup with Ming cup (although I would wager that such events have occurred in the past) but equally without the ability to break the gold down to its smallest quantity, you would find yourself in a similar situation if someone gave you a bar of gold. You would need to convert this bar into a grain in order to actually use it to buy a 1,99 coffee, which means you would need to melt it down, which means you would need a furnace capable of over a thousand degrees celsius.

Or you buy gold in such small quantities from beginning on. Or use these new sheets of pressed gold, where you can break off 1 gr-pieces as if it were chocolate. But all that is details not touching the core of the mater here. That gold does not lose bartering value compared to gold in general when you change the form in which you got it, and its wide acceptance to be used as an intermediary as you say (damn, I wanted that word on several occasions by now), that is two of the most important factors of why we talk about gold here, and not about any other token.

This is a very specific SHTF scenario, and one that runs contrary to the ones described at the top of this page. The worth of the object that you would bribe the guard with will depend entirely on what the guard can use it with.

For most guards you will be more convincing with gold, than with seashells. By probability, it s a good bid, trust me. Not in all cases, but in more cases than if you would use a truckload of wine or a sack of seashells.

Ok, let's run with that. Let's say that infrastructure and communications have collapsed. The first problems that people are going to have is getting food and water. Our water treatment systems will have failed, our food collection systems will also have failed. Crops will rot in sheds as they are harvested but no-one is able to convert them into food because the general populace has lost the knowledge. Mass butcheries will lie empty, devoid of workers to use them, or the electricity to power them. Meat will spoil in the heat without refrigerators to preserve them.
In this aftermath, will come the die-offs, first the elderly, infirm and those who rely on medications, such as diabetes and the like, then those who are unable to adapt to the new situation, and then finally those who the surrounding infrastructure is unable to support. A recent investigation by a Washington think tank, the 'Center for Security Policy' predicted that nine out of ten Americans will die within the first year following an EMP event across the continental US.
During this period, gold will be worthless, absolutely worthless to anyone who is looking to survive. Food, water, and medicine will be worth much much more than even an ingot of gold. If there is any form of trade it will be done via the barter system, not through any form of currency.

Gold will become worthless, yes, I never denied that the worth attribtued to it is fluctuating and depending on the situation. But as an intermediary you will be able to barter with it for longer time than with paintings or the like. Civilisational collapse is a process, it does happen just withion some hours. It takes weeks and months. And in the opening phase of this drama, what do you think you will be able to "buy" needed items like weapons medicine and equiment with for longer time: fiat money, diogital money, truckloads of fine arts - or jewelry, gold? Many people then still will be in the process to unlearn their former value system, and so called primitive cultures and tribes will be much better suited to deal with the new realities than us civilisation junkies who never learned to master life with the fewest and easiest tools and ways only.

From some point on, gold will be worthless more or less, and a knife is precious. But that describes a state of civilisation that has so ow a development level that associated qualities of higher development level do n ot play a role anymore anyway.

So what do you want to tell me here? that becasue from some point, if thigns really get bad, gold will be of no use anymore and thus it is of no use already right now and also not of any use on the way from now to then? Ypou can barter your gold for ammunition, or medications. but when you have run out of both - what then? And is there any argument in this to not buying ammunition or medication before?

Hardly.

I'm not arguing with that, I suspect that within fifty to a hundred years after a major SHTF scenario that we will return first to tokens, then gold and then fiat currency. However during those years, that gold will be nothing more than a heavy object to carry around with you. I mean, you could perhaps use it as a weapon to hit someone over the head with it if you had enough of it, but until gold is used as a trading standard once again, which requires a certain level of stability that would be unseen for some time after the die-offs, then your gold is worth a lot less then my whiskey. Admittedly though, once my whiskey is gone, it's gone, although the glass bottle might be useful for bottling water or the like, so there's still some use to be had from it.

But where is there any argument to doubt the value and function that gold serves NOW and in the forseeable future? Maybe tomorrow I get hit by a meteor. That then gold will not be of any use to me, I know myself.

But a nice hyperinflation, a breakdown of the EU and a growing hostility between european states again. Maybe the need to flee. A continetal pandemic spreading so fast that states' authority collapse and people all by themsleves must try to flee and get through to somewhere. That are the kind of scenarios I think about, not the overtkill monsters that will just crack up this planet in overkill and render all and everything useless effort in vein anyway.

Indeed, but that's not really relevant to the point I'm trying to make.

But that argument I made there is fundamental for the point I want to make. There is no waleth possible without people being able to appreciate the vlaue of money. And money there will form up always, in every society advanced enough to form complex prouction cycles and speclaied procution sharing. Abuse the m oney, and you destroy the basis of creating wealth;, misunderstand the nature of money, and your temporary wealth will run through your fingers like sand; despise the value of a good and healthy money, and you despise your own productive potential and creativity in the end.

To use your nice word again: Money is nothing else than one commodity amongst many others that get traded and bartered, the only thing that sets it apart is that it is agreed to be used as an intermediary more often than other goods, resources or commodities. Its price and value gets and MUST BE negotiated by free people on a free market. Not by a state, that destroys the meaning of money only.

Speculating (or getting benefits from unexpected value rises), and putting savings aside as reserves for bad times and emergencies - ARE TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS.

Wow, ...thats worth another bigger wow
CAPSLOCK definitely struck there.

Both are exactly the same thing, both are a gamble based on possible future fluctuations in value.

But where is there any argument to doubt the value and function that gold serves NOW and in the forseeable future?

It is called the market, value changes on a daily basis, or by the minute if you want to be really picky, gambles are based on what you foresee or guess you can foresee.

[Betonov]

It's not like you worked for it.

You found it. There was no expedition with a plane ticket and a team of mercenaries. You were planting lettuce in the garden and you were lucky.
If you get €1000 for it it's my monthly wage but it took you only 5min to earn it. So tell me again how the state is trying to swindle you by giving you money for something you only stumbled upon.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Betonov

It's not like you worked for it.

You found it. There was no expedition with a plane ticket and a team of mercenaries. You were planting lettuce in the garden and you were lucky.
If you get €1000 for it it's my monthly wage but it took you only 5min to earn it. So tell me again how the state is trying to swindle you by giving you money for something you only stumbled upon.

So what? You think you have a claim for something that I found before you?

Did I work for it? Well - does it matter? Even more, I may be a treasure hunter, I may have made invetsments into a search, buying equipment and such. But againb, that also is not important.

That you work for a loan does not give you any claim for something that I own, because you do not work for me and I do not owe you a wage. And when i find something and there is no legal owner who owns it since before (like my example with the wallet), then it is mine, no matter whether you have a job or not. If the owner of the wallet died after loosing it, and he had kids or a wife or next of kin, then it is part of their heritage, and it belongs to them when I find it. But if there is no such people, in case of the owner having died the wallet then is mine.

That's life, Betonov, and things could as well happen the other way around. We are not all the same, life owes us not to treat everybody the same. The moment you stumble over a piece of unowned, unclaimed land, and put a fence around it and by that act alone turn it into somethign that has been changed from its natural state - it is yours.

Finders, keepers.

And just in case you think so, the terms "justice" and "social solidarity" have no room in all this. Both are only overkill battle terms to silence resistence to socialist collectivism. But that can only be had at the cost of eroding the meaning of both terms. It is not soldiariuty by me if I get forced to it, then it is just force and pressure, not solidarity, because solidarity must be voluntarily decided upon by me: I decide and nobody else with whom I want to show solidarity or not. Justice has something to do with the causality in linking deed and consequence by a concept of responsibility. It is not just if somebody makes a claim for somebody else and what he latter allegedly "owes" to the first (in transfer payments, in taxes,m in social solidarity). That is not justice, but declaring slavery and ownership by one man over the other.

You want the gold statue I found in the woods and that is 2000 years old? Well, buy it from me. It weighs 120 ounces, so I calculate around 3600 Euros, and since I see it is dear to you, I add 200 Euros, because I think you will pay it, since that statue's form is of more interest for you, than for me. If you do not buy it for 3800 Euros, I melt it and sell it to somebody else for 3600 Euros. that will make you think twice about those 200 Euros.

Nothing immoral there, Betonov. Nothing that I would owe you because of your job. I was lucky when finding that statue (if not having systematically searched for it), I must not be proud since I accomplished nothing - but I can enjoy my luck. Like you can enjoy to win the pot when throwing a coin into that one armed bandit machine. - Or I did systematically search for this statue, or anything else like it. Then I worked for it, and was successfull, and the find is the fruit of my labour and efforts and investments. Then I can additionally be proud for what I have accomplished, too. And your job, you ask? What the heck has your job to do with all this? Nothing!