I keep hearing unintelligent teabaggers yapping about how gold is the future! **invest in gold! **blahblahblah. Don’t they realize that if an apocalypseall rights reserved, TM, pat.pend. occurred, gold won’t mean anything at all next to guns, fresh water, food, and shelter?
Is there an intelligent reason to invest in gold at the magnitude ultra-right-wingers recommend? Or is it just more nonsensical Glenn-Beckish paranoia?
Sure. It was pretty intelligent if you had bought in 2005 and could sell it now. You would have made a handy profit. As far as being useful post apocalypse? Not so much.
The people begging you to buy, already own alot of it. They want you to be the rube to take it off their hands.
My guess: it seems simple, and appeals to people who like simple solutions. No complicated, abstract financial system, just piles of shiny stuff you can hold in your hand.
I don’t know if gold has ever become worthless after the collapse of a civilization. If paper or electric currency ever became worthless then gold would likely still retain some value as a medium of exchange. That said, I don’t think a lot of people who actually buy gold end up keeping the gold in easily accessibly places. They end up getting some sort of certificate saying they own gold.
Everybody knows that post-apocalyptic currency will be bottlecaps. Gold. Hah! Do you have any idea how heavy that shit is?
However, when say Rome fell they thought of gold as being a medium of exchange before the fall. Some post-apocalyptic goldbug will be faced with a bunch of fellow survivors who quite likely won’t consider gold anything but shiny metal. The idea that gold = money has already mostly fallen. And gold is rare enough that it doesn’t make a good sole medium of exchange for most people anyway.
It’s a commodity like any other. If you had bought gold a few years ago it would be worth a lot to you now. I’d flip out if I owned a few hundred ounces that I bought at, say, $400/ounce. Sadly, I don’t buy commodities and never invested in gold.
I hear more than ‘unintelligent teabaggers’ yapping about gold, considering how high it’s gotten. But buying it now would be buying at what is most likely the top of the market. Still, you never know…gold could still go up significantly, since it’s one of those commodities that people buy when they perceive that other markets are shaky.
Well, if they are buying it in anticipation of the Apocalypse then they are probably buying it for the wrong reasons. Still, there is nothing to say that gold will lose all it’s intrinsic value because of the collapse of civilization. People, being people, they will still want some medium of exchange, and gold is a medium of exchange that goes back fairly far in our collective history. It makes as much sense as a medium of exchange as bottle caps. 
Certainly. Had you done so 5 or 6 years ago you could cash in and make a large pile of money. As with anything. Is there any ‘intelligent reason’ to buy stock in Pets.com? No…not much today. Nor was there any compelling reason to have bought large quantities of Microsoft stock when it first IPO’ed. And a lot of folks thought Google stock wouldn’t be worth all that much either…or Apple, especially after they started falling out of favor and before they started introducing their iPod line of personal music players.
Gold has value even beyond what it looks like around your neck or on your finger, however. It’s also used fairly extensively in electronics.
All that said, though, there is no reason to invest heavily in gold NOW…at least not in my uninformed opinion (I don’t invest in commodities). I think we are getting close to the top of the market…though, again, what I ‘think’ is fairly irrelevant, since I have no idea. It’s hard for me to believe that gold is going to go up much higher than it’s current price, though…and to me it looks like a bubble that is ready to burst anytime. Once folks start dumping gold it could be a huge rush back to earth, and will be ugly for folks buying in at the top of the price point.
-XT
The gold investment isn’t for the apocalypse, it’s for the pending market crash.
The non-hybrid seed tubes are for the apocalypse.
I know some people who take the possibility of a real collapse in the near future pretty seriously. They already have the shelter, guns, and stockpiled food and supplies. The gold (physical gold in hand, of course) is in addition to all that.
Ultra-right wingers are very motivated by fear.
The gold selling people use fear to sell gold.
The ultra-right wingers respond.
LOL. Does anyone here actually know one single “ultra-right-winger”?
I see ads for buying gold all the time in “American Rifleman,” one of the magazines offered by the NRA. I also would often hear pitches for gold on G. Gordon Liddy’s show, both from him and from the commercial breaks. (I rarely listen to his show anymore - Liddy seems lacking in energy and coherence and I think his faculties may be dulling.) In any case, none of these advertisements for gold ever push any kind of “apocalypse” angle. Ever. The idea they always put forth is that gold is a good financial investment - they never imply that people should buy it to use as currency after the fall of civilization!
Sure. I’m considered a ‘right winger’ or a ‘conservative’ around these parts, and my dad thinks I’m a flaming liberal…so, based on that I actually know quite a few ‘ultra-right-winger’ types. 
I also know a couple of out there libertarian types who think the country and the economy are about to come to a crashing halt, and have stock piled food, water, ammunition, medical supplies (etc etc) and various ‘trade goods’…as well as gold.
Me, I’ve just identified all of the liberals in my neighborhood, so comes the revolution…
-XT
Sure. My father in law.
Also a number of my patients.
I inherited a number of gold coins originally owned by my great grandfather. They add up to a hefty few ounces, $25 face value, a lot more on today’s market. Wish I had more…
Well, personally, I think gold would be totally useless as a commodity if civilization ended. It’s just a metal that has been arbitrarily declared valuable by our society…it doesn’t really have much practical use to anyone. Yes it has uses in electronics but that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things in a post-apocalyptic context.
There’s a big difference between a major collapse in industrial capitalism, and the end of civilization.
It doesn’t have to be a sole medium of exchange to have value. Short of a total apocalyptic scenario where not only civilizations collapse but there are only a scant few humans left, I just don’t see gold ever being worthless. If we’re talking about a scenario where civilization goes to hell in a hand basket making currency worthless, durable items like gold and silver will still retain value.
The thing is, even in the very few applications where gold really is useful for more than ornamentation, you only need a tiny amount of it. How much weight of gold do you think there is in a foil a few dozen atoms thick? If we were going to be basing worth on usefulness, it would make much more sense to consider iron, copper, or aluminum the standard for exchange.
Almost everyone “buying” gold is buying “non-deliverable gold” aka “fools gold.” It’s only value is that people think it is of value. If the zombie apocalypse happens, the vast majority of gold “owners” will find it as fleeting and worth as little value as a greenback.
apparently nobody believes in a mad-maxian apocalypse, huh? The only ones who talk about collapse of civilization seem to be moronic libtards who ascribe their dumb imaginings to decent Conservative folks. Normal people understand that we can have economic breakdown, political turmoil, war and all sorts of bad stuff, but civilization will go right on going. It always kept on going in the past and it will always keep on going in the future.
This is exactly why I chuckle at those ads. While I think gold and other precious metals will still retain some value in an economic collapse, those with non-deliverable gold will find their promissory notes are just as worthless as currency.
Odesio
PS: I’m not one of those folks who thinks we need to go back to the gold standard nor do I actually own anything gold beyond some jewelry.