The problem with using gold for survival is that it has negative value. It is heavy.Don't carry all of it at once! LOL Someone would just steal it from you.
It won't defend you , and you can't eat it.
Nah, you can buy your way out of a lot of things, ask OJ.
If you think of any survival situation, gold is always more of a problem than a solution. Take a sinking ship, for instance. Do you really think that gold will aid your chances of swimming to shore?
I don't recommend using gold as a floatation device, I recommend it for a lot of people to own in case of a national catastrophy that hyperinflates the U.S. dollar, in which case the international price of gold (which would rise in a case like this) would be a standard for the American people to trade for food and necessities until order can be restored. If a national catastrophy struck, I live in a neighborhood where there would be people able to help other people and exchange goods for something they knew would not lose value, like gold. Just because there would be a disaster doesn't mean that everyone everywhere would automatically go for their neighbor's throats. Gold will be a big help to get a lot of good communties back on their feet. It's a lot easier to trade gold for food than, say, to trade a couch for food or whatever.
Or consider a riot/battlefield condition. Will gold aid in your defense, or are other metals such as brass and lead (hint: bullets) more appropriate?
Gold will go farther in my community. If you live in East LA, I recommend a heavy supply of brass and lead.
Or consider that you are lost in a desert with no water around. Will someone trade their last drop of water for your bags of gold?
Nomads are very well prepared to live in desert conditions and would trade water for gold.
Likewise, gold is bad for economic survival. It's very inconvenient to carry around to trade for things, and getting "change" from transactions is problematic.
No it's not. One ounce equals 300 loaves of bread. 300 loaves of bread has enough calories to feed a human to carry an ounce of gold across the nation. That's very good weight to energy ratio. Engineers would kill for that in a machine.
It's difficult to lend out multiple times, so banks soon find that they have little or no financial leverage, too. That fact dries up loans, bringing business cycles to their knees.
I'm not worried about business cycles. This world is going to be tested and business cycles will be the least of our worries.
Then too, gold is subject to the vagaries of world supply. A new "strike" that finds a plethora of gold can quickly devalue your own gold holdings through no fault of your own.
The big Inca Peru strike didn't hurt gold much in the 1500s. Spain lived on that gold for years, it was a lot of gold.
But the worst thing about gold is that it is an ugly, yellow metal. People are forever trying to trade it for paper currencies just to get rid of the stuff.
Enough people don't think it's ugly and will pay 300 loaves of bread for a tiny ounce of it.
Everyone talks about gold as it is valued in Dollars. Even people who claim to like gold go around getting excited if the ugly yellow metal brings in a few more pieces of fiat currency in market trades one day over another.
Our fiat currency currently has value, because our government and military says so. What happens if our government has some kind of extreme crisis? Bye, bye dollar, gone to the asheap with 99% of every other fiat currency ever issued.
Why would real gold-bugs care how much paper currency gold could be traded for? Don't real gold bugs disdain paper currencies?
I love money. But when I look at it, I know that through inflation or disater, it will be worthless some day. Not so with gold.
Methinks they doth protest too much.
You won't see me protest. If you want to give me all your green, I'll take it.
In reality, gold bugs are simply people who are stuck holding on to an ugly yellow metal, and what they really want is for some new sucker to come along and offer them more precious Dollars for their sickly supply of metal.
My investment in gold is for security, not capital gains.
One ounce equals 300 loaves of bread Nope, I've got the bread and that little yellow coin is not acceptable to me. I'll give you a loaf for it. If you can turn that coin into currency, the 300 loaves will be $375 and they are yours for the taking.
See, my bread has an intrinsic value. If I want rice, I can trade my loaves of bread for rice. If I desire wood for warmth, I can trade my bread for my friend's wood. I can trade some of that wood for another neighbor's coat. I can trade some of my excess rice for a butchered chicken. Essential products have value. Paper currency has value, because it is divisible, measurable and easily exchangable. Gold is shiny and yellow.
If you are on the brink of starvation, my loaf of bread is worth 10,000 ounces of your yellow metal.
"Our fiat currency currently has value, because our government and military says so. What happens if our government has some kind of extreme crisis? Bye, bye dollar, gone to the asheap with 99% of every other fiat currency ever issued."
Actually, our fiat currency has value for two huge reasons: we've got the world's largest economy and the world's mightiest military.
Gold has neither. Gold has been outlawed in the past. FDR banned Americans from owning gold during the Great Depression. Everyone had to turn their gold in or get jailed (or shot).
With the stroke of a pen governments can ban gold. It took until Nixon repealed FDR's gold ban in the 1970's before Americans could invest in gold again. That's a pretty unstable investment.
There is no army that is going to come defend gold. When it gets outlawed, then you're out of luck, and that very thing has happened here in America already.
On the other hand, the mightiest economy and the mightiest military backs the paper Dollar. Those are huge advantages that gold will never have.
Gold is for suckers. It is ugly and people laugh at you when you try to pay for your meal at a restraunt with it.
The fools who are stuck with that ugly yellow metal are forever trying to dump it off on the rest of us in exchange for our paper fiat Dollars.
The truth of the matter is that gold bugs want to exchange their gold for our Dollars because Dollars have real value. No one laughs at you when you pay with Dollars for your meal at a restraunt.
Everyday new gold is being mined and added into circulation, but the old gold never disappears. At least with investments such as land, you don't have to worry about the market suddenly becoming flooded with new property. They aren't making anymore new land, after all.