7 ms·

What would you suggest people put their money in then? Gold? Guns? The problems you describe are problems for just about every currency right now. How much of

by BCM43 13y ago

What would you suggest people put their money in then? Gold? Guns? The problems you describe are problems for just about every currency right now. How much of your money do you have in cash, and how much is in the bank? Do you think you will still be able to use the bank in a situation like the one you describe?

3am 13y ago
Gold and guns would both be much better decisions that Bitcoin in a raging civil war. So would food, and transport to safe haven. Bitcoin would be insane. Even if you had extra money, that's what Swiss bank accounts are for. edit: to be clear, the utilities of these items is relative, think a DAG. gold > bitcoin. food > gold. transport to safe haven > food,guns. Maybe. Medicine > gold, also. Not trying to say anything special about gold, I mostly agree that it has very little use to justify its value.
- greghinch 13y ago
  I don't get this obsession with gold. Yes it's shiny and has historically represented value and wealth, but people apply it as the unit of currency society will fall back on in times of crisis, like a civil war. If there's fighting and chaos all around and infrastructure is cut off, clean water, food, medicine, and weapons are pretty much all that will hold any value.
  - gwright 13y ago
    Here is one explanation, but perhaps not the one you were looking for: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemist-explains-why-gold-beat-out-lithium-osmium-einsteinium http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemis...
  - jmathai 13y ago
    During a war, perhaps. But once things settle down I think gold will be the go to unit of currency. In a functional society no one wants to pay for their goods with food or water.
    - greghinch 13y ago
      Right but then wouldn't you just go back to standard currency?
      - cookiecaper 13y ago
        No, because things can be sufficiently stable that people are no longer in contest over the fundamentals like food and water, but not sufficiently to have a widely-standardized currency. Gold is useful because everyone, everywhere recognizes its value independent of any other entity. This happens simply as a function of gold's rarity and manipulability; if you're looking for a natural resource to stand in as a currency, gold meets the requirements better than other materials. This is so, and will remain so despite any human ongoings.
  - xerula 13y ago
    In absolute life-or-death situations, yes. But as soon as we move even a tiny bit past that point, history shows we seek universally recognized, convenient mediums of exchange. And for every culture that has access to them, precious metals have fulfilled this role since year dot.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - gaussianblur 13y ago
    Gold is special because of its universal value, and it is especially useful in refugee scenarios where your war-ravaged currency has lost value, but your asylum country still has a stable economy. Gold is easily concealed, transported, and exchanged. My father's family converted much of their assets to gold when fleeing to the US from Vietnam at the end of the war.
  - gknoy 13y ago
    I recall reading a series of blog posts written by someone who survived a south american economic collapse. (I forget what the URL was.) His perspective was that there is a VERY thin veneer on civilization, after which weapons, a fortified home, large cars, and absolute paranoia seem to be the best bet. Some highlights: - small gold rings are good currency: you can easily divide it, and you can carry small amounts on your person. For some reason, people valued that more than paper money. - a black market for guns (and ammo) will spring up; cheap POS guns will have ludicrous prices, so if you plan to have one, it's wise to have them before The Collapse - Don't open your door for anyone. - Be armed. Seriously. - Be prepared to seriously consider whether to drive _through_ a pedestrian, rather than risk that his friends will kidnap you as soon as you stop. - Neighborhood friendships are extremely valuable. .. that's all I can remember off the top of my head. I'm sure someone else can link the originals. Basically, though, it's comparatively easy to stockpile small pieces of gold jewelry ahead of time, and people will tend to accept it in trade. (Water/food/bullets/guns are of course even more valuable, but those aren't as transportable.)
    - bitcartel 13y ago
      Rather than cutting your ring into small pieces, check out this credit card sized gold bar which you can tear off into 1 gram pieces. http://www.combibar.com/products/50g-combibar-gold/ http://www.combibar.com/products/50g-combibar-gold/
    - zatara 13y ago
      http://www.ferfal.com/ http://www.ferfal.com/
      - white_devil 13y ago
        Exactly. I wonder how many here manage to pry their eyes open.
  - jlarocco 13y ago
    Gold is a value store. It's valuable because it can be traded for other stuff. It's the same as money - a stack of $100 bills is useless except to buy other stuff. The things you listed are valuable because they have direct utilitarian value for drinking, eating, defense, etc. Gold is valuable because it can be traded for things with utilitarian value.
    - bitcartel 13y ago
      Exactly. Gold is a universal currency, you can use it for barter pretty much anywhere on the planet. Gold coins (British Sovereigns) were supposedly part of the emergency survival kit given to US and British fighter pilots during the first Iraq war.
  - lmkg 13y ago
    I dislike gold as an investment vehicle, but it is a sensible investment during a localized civil war that does not impact the global economy. During a civil war, the local economy will be destabilized. This means that local production will drop off, and most things you want you will have to import (this includes the service of fleeing the country). In addition, your local currency will have become destabilized (possibly permanently), so outsiders won't find it desirable. Gold has a market outside your country, so outsiders would be willing to accept it as currency. Basically, what you want is a currency with a global value, because it won't be affected by local conditions. Gold satisfies this criterion, as does USD in many cases. I think most of the debate upthread can be summarized thusly: This criterion depends on a separation between local economic conditions, and global ones. In the US there is not such a distinction. If we suffer an economic collapse (whatever the cause), we're taking the world with us. As such, there is no currency with the properties that people are looking for.
    - greghinch 13y ago
      > If we suffer an economic collapse (whatever the cause), we're taking the world with us. As such, there is no currency with the properties that people are looking for. Yes exactly. And I hear too many people in the US say they feel like we are on the verge of some kind of massive revolution or civil war, which seems preposterous to me. Your average person would rather just get by than get involved in a bloody, civil conflict. There is a growing economic divide in the US, as well as a somewhat large rate of unemployment (mostly made up of the young and self-entitled, and older folks who's skills have become fairly obsolete), but compare it to countries where there have been actual civil wars in recent times and we're nowhere near that level of destitution and disparity. You need to get into multi-generational inequity, corruption, and despair before enough people will put aside their own relative comfortable complacency to get involved in armed conflict. So buying gold for the coming apocalypse is silly.
      - white_devil 13y ago
        Our economies are finally about to collapse under the weight of their impossibility, and that's likely to cause some kind of upheaval. That's not about Ethnic Group A hating Ethnic Group B, even though something like that may well happen all around Europe, for example. Economic rebalancing/calamity will come first though.
venomsnake 13y ago
I will coin two phrases now: 1. Venomsnake's law - every discussion on Hacker's news degrades to bitcoins. 2. Goldilocks apocalypse - every goldbug, bitcoin miner and similar depends on the crash of civilization in just the right way that everything will be the same but his economic decisions will put him on top with the pure strength of speculation. Whatever assets you have the federal government will be able to confiscate if the need is dire enough. Whatever protection the law gives you can be reverted. There is no safety. To be able to claim and hold to a property you rely on massive infrastructure. If the dollar and the federal government crashes - it will vaporize too.
- gfodor 13y ago
  To be fair, even gold (and as I'm loathe to put in the same category, bitcoin) speculators aren't really relying upon a full-out goldilocks apocalypse for their assets to appreciate, just a continuation of the current trend of currency devaluation of the U.S. dollar. I think you're right that if something really bad happened (read: worse than 2008 or 2001) then the men with guns would take your gold and your bitcoins (though honestly, they probably won't give a shit about the bitcoins) has they've done before and will do again.
- pyre 13y ago
  Not if you're a subsistence farmer out in the boonies with a bunch of hidden, unregistered guns. :P As for gold though, it takes a long-term view of the apocalypse. In the immediate aftermath, no one will care about gold. Guns, food, etc will all be at a premium. It might take a decade or so for people to care about gold, and even then enough of the population will probably be dead that gold can be had by looting for jewellery that no longer has an owner.
aaronblohowiak 13y ago
"put their money in?" are you seeking an instability-hedged value store or trying to maximize the utils for given items? Water and fuel.
cinquemb 13y ago
>The problems you describe are problems for just about every currency right now. How much of your money do you have in cash, and how much is in the bank? Do you think you will still be able to use the bank in a situation like the one you describe? I believe cyprus had to find out the hard way as well sans civil war. They had internet, but no access to bank accounts (still very limited to this day). And I doubt the the 25%+ in spain and greece are much better off… Call me a nut but at this point, people who have the means should put their money in things they can live off of sustainably or at least partially (PV's, rain water catch, DIY small greenhouse) because things are not getting any better globally and we seriously can't expect the printing press to get us out of this. Oh yeah, DOW closed above 15000. quelle chance.
ctdonath 13y ago
Gold is a good high value density financial medium. Regardless of the objective value, it always has been and always will be in demand. It's best for carrying value from one side of an economic crisis to the other, and taking advantage of some good deals that crop up in the meantime. If anything the high value density makes it hard for anything but large transactions. Guns? Well, ammo really. Guns are plentiful in the USA and are extremely durable. Ammo is more suitable to currency type usage, being handy during the crisis, comes in small units comparable to coins, and the value of each is around a dollar making it convenient for smaller commonplace transactions.
ericd 13y ago
Guns, Cigarettes, and Everclear should all be fairly value dense in that scenario. Gold should do well too - the value that people assign to it due to life-long indoctrination plus its immutability as a valuable substance through history should help it do much better in those scenarios than fiat currencies whose backers have obviously disintegrated. Food, water, and fuel would obviously be valuable too, but they're harder to carry a lot of.
rthomas6 13y ago
>What would you suggest people put their money in then? Gold? Guns? How about: potable water, non-perishable food, gasoline, batteries, tools (including weapons), and other commodities that will be scarce and have intrinsic value during a crisis?

by BCM43 13y ago

3am 13y ago

Gold and guns would both be much better decisions that Bitcoin in a raging civil war. So would food, and transport to safe haven. Bitcoin would be insane. Even if you had extra money, that's what Swiss bank accounts are for. edit: to be clear, the utilities of these items is relative, think a DAG. gold > bitcoin. food > gold. transport to safe haven > food,guns. Maybe. Medicine > gold, also. Not trying to say anything special about gold, I mostly agree that it has very little use to justify its value.

greghinch 13y ago
I don't get this obsession with gold. Yes it's shiny and has historically represented value and wealth, but people apply it as the unit of currency society will fall back on in times of crisis, like a civil war. If there's fighting and chaos all around and infrastructure is cut off, clean water, food, medicine, and weapons are pretty much all that will hold any value.
- gwright 13y ago
  Here is one explanation, but perhaps not the one you were looking for: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemist-explains-why-gold-beat-out-lithium-osmium-einsteinium http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/15/131430755/a-chemis...
- jmathai 13y ago
  During a war, perhaps. But once things settle down I think gold will be the go to unit of currency. In a functional society no one wants to pay for their goods with food or water.
  - greghinch 13y ago
    Right but then wouldn't you just go back to standard currency?
    - cookiecaper 13y ago
      No, because things can be sufficiently stable that people are no longer in contest over the fundamentals like food and water, but not sufficiently to have a widely-standardized currency. Gold is useful because everyone, everywhere recognizes its value independent of any other entity. This happens simply as a function of gold's rarity and manipulability; if you're looking for a natural resource to stand in as a currency, gold meets the requirements better than other materials. This is so, and will remain so despite any human ongoings.
- xerula 13y ago
  In absolute life-or-death situations, yes. But as soon as we move even a tiny bit past that point, history shows we seek universally recognized, convenient mediums of exchange. And for every culture that has access to them, precious metals have fulfilled this role since year dot.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gaussianblur 13y ago
  Gold is special because of its universal value, and it is especially useful in refugee scenarios where your war-ravaged currency has lost value, but your asylum country still has a stable economy. Gold is easily concealed, transported, and exchanged. My father's family converted much of their assets to gold when fleeing to the US from Vietnam at the end of the war.
- gknoy 13y ago
  I recall reading a series of blog posts written by someone who survived a south american economic collapse. (I forget what the URL was.) His perspective was that there is a VERY thin veneer on civilization, after which weapons, a fortified home, large cars, and absolute paranoia seem to be the best bet. Some highlights: - small gold rings are good currency: you can easily divide it, and you can carry small amounts on your person. For some reason, people valued that more than paper money. - a black market for guns (and ammo) will spring up; cheap POS guns will have ludicrous prices, so if you plan to have one, it's wise to have them before The Collapse - Don't open your door for anyone. - Be armed. Seriously. - Be prepared to seriously consider whether to drive _through_ a pedestrian, rather than risk that his friends will kidnap you as soon as you stop. - Neighborhood friendships are extremely valuable. .. that's all I can remember off the top of my head. I'm sure someone else can link the originals. Basically, though, it's comparatively easy to stockpile small pieces of gold jewelry ahead of time, and people will tend to accept it in trade. (Water/food/bullets/guns are of course even more valuable, but those aren't as transportable.)
  - bitcartel 13y ago
    Rather than cutting your ring into small pieces, check out this credit card sized gold bar which you can tear off into 1 gram pieces. http://www.combibar.com/products/50g-combibar-gold/ http://www.combibar.com/products/50g-combibar-gold/
  - zatara 13y ago
    http://www.ferfal.com/ http://www.ferfal.com/
    - white_devil 13y ago
      Exactly. I wonder how many here manage to pry their eyes open.
- jlarocco 13y ago
  Gold is a value store. It's valuable because it can be traded for other stuff. It's the same as money - a stack of $100 bills is useless except to buy other stuff. The things you listed are valuable because they have direct utilitarian value for drinking, eating, defense, etc. Gold is valuable because it can be traded for things with utilitarian value.
  - bitcartel 13y ago
    Exactly. Gold is a universal currency, you can use it for barter pretty much anywhere on the planet. Gold coins (British Sovereigns) were supposedly part of the emergency survival kit given to US and British fighter pilots during the first Iraq war.
- lmkg 13y ago
  I dislike gold as an investment vehicle, but it is a sensible investment during a localized civil war that does not impact the global economy. During a civil war, the local economy will be destabilized. This means that local production will drop off, and most things you want you will have to import (this includes the service of fleeing the country). In addition, your local currency will have become destabilized (possibly permanently), so outsiders won't find it desirable. Gold has a market outside your country, so outsiders would be willing to accept it as currency. Basically, what you want is a currency with a global value, because it won't be affected by local conditions. Gold satisfies this criterion, as does USD in many cases. I think most of the debate upthread can be summarized thusly: This criterion depends on a separation between local economic conditions, and global ones. In the US there is not such a distinction. If we suffer an economic collapse (whatever the cause), we're taking the world with us. As such, there is no currency with the properties that people are looking for.
  - greghinch 13y ago
    > If we suffer an economic collapse (whatever the cause), we're taking the world with us. As such, there is no currency with the properties that people are looking for. Yes exactly. And I hear too many people in the US say they feel like we are on the verge of some kind of massive revolution or civil war, which seems preposterous to me. Your average person would rather just get by than get involved in a bloody, civil conflict. There is a growing economic divide in the US, as well as a somewhat large rate of unemployment (mostly made up of the young and self-entitled, and older folks who's skills have become fairly obsolete), but compare it to countries where there have been actual civil wars in recent times and we're nowhere near that level of destitution and disparity. You need to get into multi-generational inequity, corruption, and despair before enough people will put aside their own relative comfortable complacency to get involved in armed conflict. So buying gold for the coming apocalypse is silly.
    - white_devil 13y ago
      Our economies are finally about to collapse under the weight of their impossibility, and that's likely to cause some kind of upheaval. That's not about Ethnic Group A hating Ethnic Group B, even though something like that may well happen all around Europe, for example. Economic rebalancing/calamity will come first though.

venomsnake 13y ago

I will coin two phrases now: 1. Venomsnake's law - every discussion on Hacker's news degrades to bitcoins. 2. Goldilocks apocalypse - every goldbug, bitcoin miner and similar depends on the crash of civilization in just the right way that everything will be the same but his economic decisions will put him on top with the pure strength of speculation. Whatever assets you have the federal government will be able to confiscate if the need is dire enough. Whatever protection the law gives you can be reverted. There is no safety. To be able to claim and hold to a property you rely on massive infrastructure. If the dollar and the federal government crashes - it will vaporize too.

gfodor 13y ago
To be fair, even gold (and as I'm loathe to put in the same category, bitcoin) speculators aren't really relying upon a full-out goldilocks apocalypse for their assets to appreciate, just a continuation of the current trend of currency devaluation of the U.S. dollar. I think you're right that if something really bad happened (read: worse than 2008 or 2001) then the men with guns would take your gold and your bitcoins (though honestly, they probably won't give a shit about the bitcoins) has they've done before and will do again.
pyre 13y ago
Not if you're a subsistence farmer out in the boonies with a bunch of hidden, unregistered guns. :P As for gold though, it takes a long-term view of the apocalypse. In the immediate aftermath, no one will care about gold. Guns, food, etc will all be at a premium. It might take a decade or so for people to care about gold, and even then enough of the population will probably be dead that gold can be had by looting for jewellery that no longer has an owner.

aaronblohowiak 13y ago

"put their money in?" are you seeking an instability-hedged value store or trying to maximize the utils for given items? Water and fuel.

cinquemb 13y ago

>The problems you describe are problems for just about every currency right now. How much of your money do you have in cash, and how much is in the bank? Do you think you will still be able to use the bank in a situation like the one you describe? I believe cyprus had to find out the hard way as well sans civil war. They had internet, but no access to bank accounts (still very limited to this day). And I doubt the the 25%+ in spain and greece are much better off… Call me a nut but at this point, people who have the means should put their money in things they can live off of sustainably or at least partially (PV's, rain water catch, DIY small greenhouse) because things are not getting any better globally and we seriously can't expect the printing press to get us out of this. Oh yeah, DOW closed above 15000. quelle chance.

ctdonath 13y ago

Gold is a good high value density financial medium. Regardless of the objective value, it always has been and always will be in demand. It's best for carrying value from one side of an economic crisis to the other, and taking advantage of some good deals that crop up in the meantime. If anything the high value density makes it hard for anything but large transactions. Guns? Well, ammo really. Guns are plentiful in the USA and are extremely durable. Ammo is more suitable to currency type usage, being handy during the crisis, comes in small units comparable to coins, and the value of each is around a dollar making it convenient for smaller commonplace transactions.

ericd 13y ago

Guns, Cigarettes, and Everclear should all be fairly value dense in that scenario. Gold should do well too - the value that people assign to it due to life-long indoctrination plus its immutability as a valuable substance through history should help it do much better in those scenarios than fiat currencies whose backers have obviously disintegrated. Food, water, and fuel would obviously be valuable too, but they're harder to carry a lot of.

rthomas6 13y ago

>What would you suggest people put their money in then? Gold? Guns? How about: potable water, non-perishable food, gasoline, batteries, tools (including weapons), and other commodities that will be scarce and have intrinsic value during a crisis?