I think the idea is that gold is a universally desired good that can be exchange for money or anything of value in any situation or place.
So if you decide to flee the country, five pounds of gold is $150K and can easily be carried in a small backpack. Let's say you keep it in 1 troy oz pieces, so you have 80 of them worth about $1800 each. You can go to any nation on earth, and whatever currency they have, they will be happy to sell it to you for gold. Yes, only in $1800 pieces. That's fine, you can exchange it for whatever local currency is being used as you need it.
You can do this anonymously and privately. You don't need to worry about whether the US dollar has collapsed. Gold does go up and down, but it never goes to zero, and tends to do well in crisis situations and maintain value over the long term. It is not - or shouldn't be viewed as -- an "investment", it's insurance. It costs money.
Moreover even if you do not flee the country, having assets that you possess - true bearer assets -- is superior than assets others hold for you in a custodial account. How secure is your 401K? Secure until congress passes a law to take some of it. How secure is your bank account? It is as secure as someone who can convince the bank to freeze your account or close your account. So having a bit of gold or cash as a type of hedge for unlikely events makes sense to a lot of people.
You have to keep in mind that for a household living in Silesia, between 1880 and 2000, they would have lived through one hyperinflation, two world wars, two revolutions and three uprisings, and four foreign invasions. They would have been ruled by Prussia, Poland, Nazi Germany, Soviet-controlled Poland, finally free Poland. Each of these had their own currency regimes and currency reforms. That household would have been well off having a bit of gold tucked away. They would have been able to trade some of it for food during the Weimar collapse, and to transport some wealth through the dark days of communism -- maybe even bribing someone to let them escape the country with something more useful that worthless zlotys in whichever nation they landed.
Great example with Silesia. Funny thing about "worthless zlotys" is that "zloty" is the name of a currency, as well as literally meaning "gold". In this historical case, the latter would have certainly been a more stable store of value.
I understand the rational thinking of gold exchanges. You missed the detail about this being confusion on preppers. If the world has gone to shit (nuclear war, zombies, etc), then gold just isn't that useful. If it was silver, you could at least melt it down and kill the vampires with it.
You're attempting to use logic in a place where there is none.
I don't really understand your point; the fact that preppers have gold and gold didn't help against zombies seems easily explainable by preppers not actually preparing for zombies, but instead far more realistic events including short term social unrest.
I don't see the value of gold if there is widespread chaos. Like a walking dead scenario, gold and diamonds are almost worthless. Guns, food, medical care is what's worth something in that chaotic environment. Of course we aren't defining the environment here.
1) it’s fun to TALK or THINK about some crazy synthetic situation like a walking dead scenario, but not many folks are really thinking about it literally.
2) it’s a lot less fun to talk or think (and may be dangerous to even try) about more realistic issues - like if you’re on the wrong side of the situation in Bosnia or Rawanda.
3) it’s the same kind of general process though, and some of the same tools can be useful to defend, escape, or repel.
And gold and diamonds got a LOT of people out of harms way that otherwise would be dead - at least from the 2 folks I knew that got out of Vietnam with their families when the south fell (and are probably alive today) only because they were able to bribe their way onto the boats using gold.
But is this what preppers are really prepping for? Maybe I'm just too far into the conspiracy theorists and what not, but my personal experience with preppers are way way way futher than fears of social unrest.
Preppers aren't just a bunch of American right-wingers locked up in remote cabins with large stockpiles of food and valuables (although those people certainly exist).
Most of us prepare for short-term disruptions that are far more likely than hordes of undead roaming the streets. If widespread societal collapse should actually happen, then having a strong local community, and knowing how to co-operate and communicate with one's neighbours is far more important than having enough canned tuna to last to Ragnarok and back. That being said, having survival skills and basic supplies can come in handy in a wide range of situations.
Personally, I'm preparing for more basic things like long power outages, extreme weather and supply chain disruptions. Sure, we got food, fuel and supplies for a few months at home, and it's been very handy during the pandemic, while being snowed in for a week a few winters ago, and when being without power for two days last summer -- I could keep working like any other day, and didn't lose any income.
Yes, that includes some cash. It's been handy a few times when the card terminals at the store wasn't working. Storing large piles of it seems an unnecessary risk, though.
Near as I can tell it’s a generalized fear they are attempting to address this way, and don’t often really fully understand it or why they are even doing it.
If you think of it however as not needing to be rational, but more or from an evolutionary perspective ‘folks in the past who had similar types of fears and discomfort might have survived prior insane disasters that no one else expected to ever occur’ it might make more sense.
It doesn’t have to be rational. It doesn’t even have to help them survive or be successful most of the time. If it works even a little better and they survive when everyone else died because of their insane paranoia, those genes will propagate.
Not exactly. It was an analogy for the «mindless hoard» of the conformant - the "silent majority" -, promised a dull excuse for a life, but free of care inside a social system, which «comes to get you» with that promise wanting to assimilate you; more specifically the system would have been consumerism (as in "live to have and purchase"), installed over anti-intellectualism (as was already a very evident trend half a century ago). The revealing moment was the scene in which "ghouls/zombies" drive shopping trolleys.
Romero confirmed the depiction was that of "the revolution", where "the awake" realizes the vast majority is assimilated, but discovers "humanity" inside himself and decides that it is worth fighting to defend it, as the core hidden topic in the original work which provided the inspiration: Richard Matheson's I am Legend.
All of that installed in the social crisis of confusion, incompetence and violence seen as the core aspects of the '60 in the USA.
...Since we are discussing about cash, and surely you wanted to be on topic, I assume you meant to state "ghouls also renounce to privacy", worsening the scenario Romero originally depicted. Well noted.
...And this parent post seems to mean, with self-harming rhetoric, that the «veiled analogy» depicted a context of anti-intellectualism - as just written explicilty nearby. Yes, well noted.
The writer probably wanted to subtly refer to relevant Danish-American actress S.J. (a cryptic critique of the frugal accomplished Northern Europe?) in her statement "If I pay bucks for a movie ticket, I do not want to go there and think" (quoted from memory). Too subtle, let us not speak in riddles! (Even that «transphobia», presumably to be read as "fear of [monetary] transactions" - privacy, availability, inflation, currency as a token without intrinsic value: with such obscurity, little of the message can pass.)
So if you decide to flee the country, five pounds of gold is $150K and can easily be carried in a small backpack. Let's say you keep it in 1 troy oz pieces, so you have 80 of them worth about $1800 each. You can go to any nation on earth, and whatever currency they have, they will be happy to sell it to you for gold. Yes, only in $1800 pieces. That's fine, you can exchange it for whatever local currency is being used as you need it.
You can do this anonymously and privately. You don't need to worry about whether the US dollar has collapsed. Gold does go up and down, but it never goes to zero, and tends to do well in crisis situations and maintain value over the long term. It is not - or shouldn't be viewed as -- an "investment", it's insurance. It costs money.
Moreover even if you do not flee the country, having assets that you possess - true bearer assets -- is superior than assets others hold for you in a custodial account. How secure is your 401K? Secure until congress passes a law to take some of it. How secure is your bank account? It is as secure as someone who can convince the bank to freeze your account or close your account. So having a bit of gold or cash as a type of hedge for unlikely events makes sense to a lot of people.
You have to keep in mind that for a household living in Silesia, between 1880 and 2000, they would have lived through one hyperinflation, two world wars, two revolutions and three uprisings, and four foreign invasions. They would have been ruled by Prussia, Poland, Nazi Germany, Soviet-controlled Poland, finally free Poland. Each of these had their own currency regimes and currency reforms. That household would have been well off having a bit of gold tucked away. They would have been able to trade some of it for food during the Weimar collapse, and to transport some wealth through the dark days of communism -- maybe even bribing someone to let them escape the country with something more useful that worthless zlotys in whichever nation they landed.