Changing digs and coming out of my cave... for a wee while atleast :)

ZTD

edinburgher wrote: »

We're not talking about the culinary benefits of investments and you know it!

You did.

edinburgher wrote: »

You can't eat gold

edinburgher wrote: »

Somewhere that I hadn't broadcast online.

Well since it would need to be outside the reach of a breakdown of society, being on a relatively small island (surrounded by even smaller islands) kind of sucks...

edinburgher

Ah, being overly literal, the gift that keeps on giving.

ZTD

edinburgher wrote: »

Ah, being overly literal, the gift that keeps on giving.

If I was being overly literal, I would have said "Yes you can."

Instead I'm merely being consistent - a criterion for one investment/investment class is a criterion for them all.

edinburgher

You're being a pedant, the point is that no traditional financial investment will be worth anything if society collapses.

ZTD

edinburgher wrote: »

You're being a pedant, the point is that no traditional financial investment will be worth anything if society collapses.

Learn history.


“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

― Winston Churchill

edinburgher

I'm aware of the role that gold played in helping to win freedom for some Jews escaping the Holocaust, it was at the front of my mind as I thought of the relative value of gold in the event of civilisation ceasing to function.

I don't equate the Holocaust with a complete breakdown of civilisation. It was a brutal attempt to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth and if you were a Jew, I'm sure that it did feel like the end of all civilisation. It was a vile, carefully planned genocide. The gold used to barter for safe passage/sanctuary etc. only had value because someone somewhere had confidence that it was a reasonable store of value and that the environment would continue to exist in which the value could be extracted/used to gain an advantage.

With the exception of perhaps a global pandemic, I don't know if we've ever had a true reset of civilisation of the scale that I imagined while making my comments. I find myself reaching to fictional examples as a result, but they are just that.

ZTD

edinburgher wrote: »

I'm aware of the role that gold played in helping to win freedom for some Jews escaping the Holocaust, it was at the front of my mind as I thought of the relative value of gold in the event of civilisation ceasing to function.

I don't equate the Holocaust with a complete breakdown of civilisation.

People who are preparing for great misfortune are not preparing for everyone's world to come to an end - only their own.

edinburgher wrote: »

With the exception of perhaps a global pandemic, I don't know if we've ever had a true reset of civilisation of the scale that I imagined while making my comments.

The global pandemics have not "reset" civilisation in that way. Even the Black Death messed with the values of civilisation (in terms of relative wages etc) but did not change their meaning.

The only even I can think of is the Indonesian caldera. Even then, perhaps those 10,000 individuals escaped relatively unscathed - you just don't know.

edinburgher wrote: »

I find myself reaching to fictional examples as a result, but they are just that.

It's better to prepare for non-fictional examples of trouble, especially given you're going to be spending your own non-fictional money. If you believe that extremely bad things are going to happen to you, you choose to major in one asset class - minors in another. If you think that just bad things are going to happen to you, then you major in another asset class. If "merely unfortunate" - then another.

But you don't dismiss an asset class on the basis that "you can't eat it" - especially if the scenario presented is when it achieves orders of magnitude advantages over other asset classes.

I don't think the world is going to end - if I did, I'd be positioned differently.

Like on Mars...

edinburgher

But you don't dismiss an asset class on the basis that "you can't eat it" - especially if the scenario presented is when it achieves orders of magnitude advantages over other asset classes.

I can, I have and I don't agree on the scenario.

Apologies to El for cluttering her thread.

Karmacat

Ed, I love the fictional examples (Falling Skies, as you know, for instance) but unless there really is an alien invasion, I don't think there'll be a complete breakdown of civilisation. Even in the Black Death, with around half the population dying, things kept going. Its all more fragile now, of course, so thats not a true comparison.

If there *is* a complete b'down, frankly I doubt I'd last all that long - unless I get taken on board by some organisation that understands how wise and knowledgeable I am :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: like Dan Forrester in Lucifer's Hammer (Larry Niven - read it if you get the chance).

While I've been ill, for the first time ever, I've been reading free zombie books on my kindle :eek: :rotfl:some of them are even fairly well written, and I have to confess, I started laughing at them, and then examining the plot points ... that kind of end of the world is quite fun, like learning to steal cars in Grand Theft Auto (or so my niece says) ...

If things go downhill far enough, I'm wondering if we'd regress to 100 years ago, pensions wouldn't be paid, wealth would be even more concentrated in the hands of the extremely wealthy as we heard from Davos today ... just starting to wonder, just this last week, if silver, at least, might not be a reasonable little investment.

My BOB, you'll be happy to know, gets me to a local hotel :j

edinburgher

Just starting to wonder, just this last week, if silver, at least, might not be a reasonable little investment.

If you really fancy a PM, at least gold has tax benefits and is more portable £ for pound

On a completely unrelated note, I have been noticing the media ramp up the stories of impending doom lately. I think this drip drip of pessimism can accumulate and lead to a loss of confidence. I'm not saying we should have masses of confidence in the global economy these days, but life usually goes on and I'm determined not to spend the next 5-10 years gloomy even if everything does decide to go for a crash.