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Or 1848: “Prospectors spent 17x more on picks and shovels than they recouped by finding gold.”
by jzb 3y ago
Or 1848: “Prospectors spent 17x more on picks and shovels than they recouped by finding gold.”
- RetroTechie 3y agoIirc some got lucky & struck gold. Most didn't, and moved on empty handed. But businesses that did prosper long-term, were the ones that catered to the gold seekers: sellers of equipment, food stores, bars & room-for-rent type facilities. So you could say that (on average) the 'meta-suppliers' did better long-term than the gold seekers themselves.
- lesuorac 3y agoWhats the definition of long-term? A lot of mining towns became ghost towns (i.e. Cerro Gordo [1]) and in those situations even the merchants are out of business. It's not like we stopped mining silver though; the prospectors moved on to other areas. Like if TPUs replace GPUs then Nvidia is looking at a decrease in growth. The horse shoe sellers go out of business just as fast as the horse shoe maker does. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Gordo_Mines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Gordo_Mines