This is an attempt to explain why Gold and Silver are well worth buying to prepare for societal collapse. I use the example of an imaginary chicken farm.
Why is Money valuable? Because it allows for the "concidence of wants" without which trade is impossible.
Imagine that the dollar has finally collapsed and that we live in a Mad Max dystopian nightmare.
In the center of this brave new world you run a chicken farm (appropriately defended by traps, barbed wire and kick-ass FReepers with sniper rifles).
This month you have costs - you need to hire a guy to mend the generator and a midwife to help with your daughter's pregnancy. How are you going to pay them?
They have what you want - but do you have what they want?
Unless you have some money there is no "coincidence of wants".
The generator guy and the midwife have no use for a hundred chickens! They need to replace their working materials (bearings, WD 40, medical supplies, etc) and upkeep their cars by trading with people who live eighty miles away.
But if you have money you can trade with them.
Carrying on with the example of a chicken farm - it's market day. You have a hundred customers who want to buy what you've got - but do they have what you want?
Fifty of them have wheelbarrows of devalued fiat currency and bad attitudes. You don't want their bundles of useless scrip.
Forty of them will offer some form of barter: alcohol, batteries, hunks of homemade cheese, their young, nubile bodies, etc.
You are faced with the time and expense of evaluating forty different barter offers, many of which you will have absolutely no use for.
And ten customers offer you money: Gold and Silver. These are your favorite customers: their real money fulfills the requirement for a coincidence of wants. You can take what they offer you, and use it to buy the services of the midwife, the engineer, etc.
In summary: trade relies on the coincidence of wants, which itself relies on money.
At the moment we can still use fiat currencies for trade, because fiat still (sort of) works like money. But we won't be doing that when we've passed into Zimbabwe mode.
Hope this was helpful.
Disagree with all those on the gold/money if there is an economic collapse which in turn causes a societal collapse. People survived for thousands of years without money, people live in remote areas all over today without money. I can hunt, I can fish, I can build a shelter, keep my vehicle running, generator running both of which are useless without fuel which will eventually run out or be very scarce.
Money is good in a civilized world but not in a society that has collapsed. You barter and you trade services hopefully with armed support because when “they” have received what they need they don’t need you anymore.
Market Day? Really where are you planning on surviving? In a societal collapse there are no rules, there are no laws. If you live in a city if you offer gold for services, you’ll be shot and they’ll take your gold. You bring a chicken in where people are hungry, they’ll take it. People will kill for and take what they want.
After the collapse, if you happen to live through it and some communities start to emerge that have the means to protect themselves then money of some sort may start to mean something.
I’ll take my guns, fishing rods, food and know how up in the mountains over money any day in that scenario. A 5th of Jack Daniel’s would be worth more to many vice an ounce of gold.
Outstanding job. Money’s been around for a long time for a reason. You nailed it.