We’re supposed to buy gold? The planet will never return to gold/silver money as a base. Uranium makes more sense.
In his book, “Looking out for #1”, he recommends “...anything that might be in demand at a time when people refuse to take worthless paper in exchange for a loaf of bread.”
“The planet will never return to gold/silver money as a base.”
That isn’t the point. Individuals will always accept gold and silver in exchange for goods and services.
At this point, I would suggest purchasing bags of silver quarters, and (if still possible) owning actual gold coins whose value has been assayed and vouched for by some third party. Silver for the small transactions; gold for the large ones.
By the way, it woulnd’t be enough for governments to return to a gold standard. Ideally, they would have to pass legislation requiring banks NOT to engage in fraud; i.e., requiring banks NOT to practice fractional-reserve lending.
As Murray Rothbard wrote in his classic pamphlet “What Has Government Done To Our Money?”, when a bank lends out more money than it has gold reserves on hand (the essence of fractional-reserve banking), the bank is IN FACT insolvent and bankrupt. It’s bankrupt from the get-go. When customers doubt the solvency of the bank, they simultaneously demand their money back (a “bank run”). This bank run merely makes apparent an already existing state of bankruptcy. It doesn’t cause the bankruptcy.
Rothbard also insists that a system of “free banking” would work better than a government monopoly over the creation of money. Under free banking, banks themselves would be responsibile for minting their own coins, as well as creating “warehouse receipts” (i.e., paper currency) for their storage. The market would decide which banks were trustworthy; third-party “consumer report” companies would rate banks and their coinage, keeping consumers alert as to which banks might be devaluing their own coinage by printing and distributing more receipts than they have gold to back them up.
Rothbard claims (rightly) that “money” is (and must begin its existence as) another commodity; unlike other commodities, however, it is demanded for its ability to exchange for other things rather than demanded for itself; aside from that, however, the same market forces that apply to other goods and services apply to money. Rothbard cites some examples of successful free banking in Scotland in the 18th century.