4 ms·

Who is going to shop at an online junk retailer (and make no bones, that is what Overstock is) after the financial system collapses?

jacquesm 11y ago
Precisely. It's not as if people won't have bigger problems than this if and when the financial system collapses, after all, how will you pay for the goods. "Oh, look: 45% off a set of pans & pots at overstock.com, just one moment honey, how do we pay for it, the financial system has collapsed."
- rtl49 11y ago
  Obviously you pay for it using your gold stash, carefully planned with denominations small enough to purchase cookware. Overstock will accept your payment via carrier pigeon, and the product will arrive via caravan within the next several months.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Post apocalypse I think we're going to be down to mail-order rather than that we'll use the internet, unless those carrier pigeons will be used to implement tcp/ip as well. I'm half tempted to figure out what the amount of gold is that a carrier pigeon could carry. Storing $10M in cash would guard against a short duration (3 months?) collapse of the banking system, storing it in gold is to guard against something of a completely different order.
  - jordanb 11y ago
    In the event of the apocalypse I think cheap cookware will be more valuable than gold. Consider all the things you can do with a pot post-apocalypse: * Cook in it, clearly * Use it as a shovel * Sit on it * Drink out of it, or eat out of it * Use it as a toilet (might want two pots) * Use it to collect fruits and berries you gather * Use it to collect rainwater * Conk people/animals/zombies over the head with it * Sharpen the lip by rubbing it against some rocks and use it as a knife * Use it as a helmet during the radioactive hailstorms That's just what I've come up with in a few minutes of thinking. Other than conking you can't do any of the above with a gold brick.
  - smcl 11y ago
    Perhaps the ordering procedure can be performed by plain old TCP/IP-over-pigeon: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt
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ars 11y ago
Presumably they would sell other things in that case. Once you are a store you can sell basically anything. Right now they focus on certain things, no reason they can't switch to something else that's in demand.

jacquesm 11y ago

Precisely. It's not as if people won't have bigger problems than this if and when the financial system collapses, after all, how will you pay for the goods. "Oh, look: 45% off a set of pans & pots at overstock.com, just one moment honey, how do we pay for it, the financial system has collapsed."

rtl49 11y ago
Obviously you pay for it using your gold stash, carefully planned with denominations small enough to purchase cookware. Overstock will accept your payment via carrier pigeon, and the product will arrive via caravan within the next several months.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Post apocalypse I think we're going to be down to mail-order rather than that we'll use the internet, unless those carrier pigeons will be used to implement tcp/ip as well. I'm half tempted to figure out what the amount of gold is that a carrier pigeon could carry. Storing $10M in cash would guard against a short duration (3 months?) collapse of the banking system, storing it in gold is to guard against something of a completely different order.
- jordanb 11y ago
  In the event of the apocalypse I think cheap cookware will be more valuable than gold. Consider all the things you can do with a pot post-apocalypse: * Cook in it, clearly * Use it as a shovel * Sit on it * Drink out of it, or eat out of it * Use it as a toilet (might want two pots) * Use it to collect fruits and berries you gather * Use it to collect rainwater * Conk people/animals/zombies over the head with it * Sharpen the lip by rubbing it against some rocks and use it as a knife * Use it as a helmet during the radioactive hailstorms That's just what I've come up with in a few minutes of thinking. Other than conking you can't do any of the above with a gold brick.
- smcl 11y ago
  Perhaps the ordering procedure can be performed by plain old TCP/IP-over-pigeon: https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt
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ars 11y ago

Presumably they would sell other things in that case. Once you are a store you can sell basically anything. Right now they focus on certain things, no reason they can't switch to something else that's in demand.