Gold is only valuable because…

…it’s shiny.

If there were a true crisis, I’d be much more interested in food than gold. And much more likely to accept skills trades if I had food to sell (or useful items like shoes, clothes, etc).

Paper money is only paper. And gold is only shiny.

What do you think?

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The Carnival of Personal Finance #129 | Cash Money Life: December 3, 2007 at 7:45 am
Mrs. Micah: Finance for a Freelance Life / Carnival Retrospective: December 7, 2007 at 4:12 pm

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mbhunter December 3, 2007 at 3:04 am: Thanks for the link.

True, you can’t eat gold. In a true crisis food will be more important, as will the ability to get away from large populations and protect oneself.

After the dust settles, though, people will still know what gold is worth, and it will be able to be used for barter.
Randall December 3, 2007 at 6:42 am: If society degrades to the point that we’re back to bartering gold again, I’m going to be much more interested in my supply of food and bullets.

As a means to barter, it’s only really useful in DIRE EMERGENCY CONDITIONS and (formerly) at the national level. I think there could be some desperately hard times, say like another 1920’s depression, but when the store down the street stops accepting paper currency, then the bomb has already fallen.
Jon December 3, 2007 at 10:07 am: I guess it depends what scale you’re talking about. I would rather have 1 cow than 1 ounce of gold in a crisis, but I would rather have 1 cow and 10,000 ounces of gold than 10,001 cows.
mrsmicah December 4, 2007 at 12:05 pm: 1 cow and 10,000 oz of gold sounds pretty good, Jon. Or maybe a couple cows.

As you say, MBH, gold probably will become valuable again after any such crisis. That would make it a decent investment if you were worried that stocks and paper money would be irrelevant. But that’s still just because it’s shiny. IMO.