No Stupid Questions

Fungible, portable, valuable. Gold isn't a scam, as far as the concept of wealth and hierarchy isn't a scam.

It's... Not really a scam so much as a thing for weird cranks who think the apocalypse is coming. If you have gold then you have gold. And gold will likely hold its value for a long time because it's a rare resource. Unless we find some alchemy that turns common materials into it, it will likely stay that way. So if you buy gold at market value then you can always sell it later at market value, and that market value is almost guaranteed to be higher than when you bought it.

The people who are really into it though are the weird cranks. And I'd imagine certain stocks or even bonds are arguably better returns in the same time span.

If you invest in gold that is not physically in your posession, then yes.

If society breaks down, who is going to honor that piece of paper that claims you own gold in some banks vault? You don't even know where that gold actually is...

Would you trust this guy's advice?

When the world collapses, nobody's going to care about gold.

Stock up on bottlecaps instead.

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes. Tune all of that nonsense out… But don’t fret if you own a tiny bit, either.

I kind of like Warren Buffet’s ramblings on it:

Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.

You could take all the gold that's ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 67 feet in each direction. For what that's worth at current gold prices, you could buy all -- not some -- all of the farmland in the United States. Plus, you could buy 10 Exxon Mobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take?

If they ever get around to capturing an asteroid to mine, your hoarded gold will suddenly be worthless.

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.

Societal collapse? No gold won't save you. Tools and how to use them will.

Maybe during hyperinflation though.

Gods not a terrible investment but it doesn't have a short term ROI just a REALLY long term one.

I hate Bitcoin but its probably a better investment (and just as useful) than gold.

I'm a fudd though and ONLY buy stable stocks that yield reliable dividends though. ETFs, S&P stuff.

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.

Gold is not going to save you. I'd we get to the point that gold becomes currency again, that will be the least of your worries. Those are just prepper fantasies.

If you are considering investing in gold as an asset, sure that's legit.

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.

In the event of a collapse like you describe, I'm going to need something I can eat or wear, something tangible I can trade. If you can get enough people together that agree gold is a valuable bearer instrument then you've got a government. That's not really a collapse.

The only gold worth a damn is the stuff in your hands. Gold speculation is not a hedge against financial crises

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 case of complete societal collapse ? Yes.

But if you have to flee from your homeland, gold is a universal currency.

It is an ok hedge on inflation, but it is pushed a lot by scam adjacent businesses to push up consumption.

People buy gold cos it just keeps going up. But here is the truth. Gold doesn't go up, the dollar goes down.

There are a lot of delusional people in here posting about their personal shower-fantasies of what they would do in the apocalypse. You can safely discard all that. If it gets so bad you need guns and tools and... blacksmithing supplies? you are so utterly fucked that gold and bartering will be the last of your concerns. People will be fucking eating each other. You simply cannot run to the woods and start living off the land, you will starve and die without acres of ready land already producing food. Real-life isn't like a survival video game, there is no tech-tree that you can climb and start producing food.

Read some Cormac McCarthy for a more realistic view of the end of the world. (Then have a therapist on hand for the after-effects.)

For a financial collapse, gold would probably retain value, a society still needs something to base the value of its trading on, we can't just all carry around sacks of grain. How much value gold will retain is very hard to predict, but people have been using it for so long that it's already survived several widespread disasters and is still in use.

In a societal collapse your best investment is between your ears. If you can build/grow/... things you don't need to worry about losing value.

Generally speaking, precious metal commodities are a hedge investment; they aren't a primary investment themselves, but they're a hedge against a loss in value of other investments, like stocks or bonds. If you are investing in gold as a hedge against inflation wiping out stock market gains, then yeah, it's pretty solid. You probably don't want to hold on to it forever though; if you'd bought gold just prior to Carter taking office and the stagflation of the late 70s, you be pretty much break-even with things like index funds.

As far as total societal collapse, you would need to have the physical bullion, not just have precious metals in your investment portfolio. And even then, gold might not have a ton of value in a subsistence society. People might trade for it, but if I had food to trade, I don't think I'd be trading for gold, since I can't eat gold. The people that will clean up in a subsistence environment? The Amish.

There was a video essay by Folding Ideas (From "the line goes up" fame) about a weird documentary narrated/hosted by Idris Elba, and If I am remembering it right it was basically a propaganda/ad film targeting people like peepers and that are skeptical of the government and such. So I believe there is at least a push to make gold more marketable and in fashion, like De beers did for diamonds.

I don't know if I am allowed to link to outside content (because the rule of no reposting outside content) but in any case it should be easy to find for anyone interested.