The Goat Pen

AlabamAlum wrote:A post-apocalyptic world is likely to come up with its own currency after the barter-only phase passes. Gold would be a decent choice.

I tend to agree. During the depths of the Great Depression, my grandparents lived on a farm and bartered with neighbors. The whole community traded eggs for sausage, quail for tomatoes, milk for greens, etc. My Dad said they all had plenty to eat, but cash rarely traded hands.

I was up at that same farm just yesterday and picked some pears off a tree that is still producing after all these years.

But as far as gold goes, I seem to remember that the feds outlawed the hoarding of gold bullion by private citizens. If there is another Depression, they'd probably do that again.

My grandfather was a small farmer. 220 acres of sweet corn. He also had bee hives, and a laying hen house. He bartered some, too. He swore me to secrecy with grandma about trading 1 quart of honey (with comb) for a gallon of 'homemade' whiskey.

Professor Tiger wrote:

AlabamAlum wrote:A post-apocalyptic world is likely to come up with its own currency after the barter-only phase passes. Gold would be a decent choice.

I tend to agree. During the depths of the Great Depression, my grandparents lived on a farm and bartered with neighbors. The whole community traded eggs for sausage, quail for tomatoes, milk for greens, etc. My Dad said they all had plenty to eat, but cash rarely traded hands.

I was up at that same farm just yesterday and picked some pears off a tree that is still producing after all these years.

But as far as gold goes, I seem to remember that the feds outlawed the hoarding of gold bullion by private citizens. If there is another Depression, they'd probably do that again.

They had to do that then and they'd do it again. You can't tax gold bullion you buy and hoard in your house. The government doesn't get any continuous tax flow, a revenue stream for hoarded wealth that you miserly protect. Basically, there is nothing in it for the government. You buy and keep gold, the government gets fucked and poor people get nothing.

If you keep it in the bank and draw your .01% interest or whatever the fuck is the ridiculously low rate, the government can take 30% of that .01% interest as theirs each year, and they have a revenue stream. They can't touch your principle, just a portion of the interest.

Pretty much all assets (with the exception of precious metal hoarding) generate some kind of revenue stream for Uncle Sam. Could be property taxes on undeveloped land, vacation timeshare, and homes. Could be excise taxes or registration on cars/boats/RVs, a tax on your checkbook interest in the bank, everything. But gold? How can they get it if you hoard it? There is no "title" to gold bullion, not VIN number to trace, not Tax Stamp, no nothing.

Professor Tiger wrote:

AlabamAlum wrote:A post-apocalyptic world is likely to come up with its own currency after the barter-only phase passes. Gold would be a decent choice.

I tend to agree. During the depths of the Great Depression, my grandparents lived on a farm and bartered with neighbors. The whole community traded eggs for sausage, quail for tomatoes, milk for greens, etc. My Dad said they all had plenty to eat, but cash rarely traded hands.

I was up at that same farm just yesterday and picked some pears off a tree that is still producing after all these years.

But as far as gold goes, I seem to remember that the feds outlawed the hoarding of gold bullion by private citizens. If there is another Depression, they'd probably do that again.

1. Most of the world's gold is either in bank vaults or government vaults. Trading in gold coins would be dicey-to-impossible without a central authority to back the gold, because a) not many people can spot the difference between real gold and fake gold, so fake would abound, b) the amount of gold in circulation is relatively small - even when we were on the gold standard most coins were NOT gold, c) gold is heavy - it has to be transported and defended - both of which are difficult without some sort of collective authority to arrange for common defense and d) if there IS a central authority they would probably prefer to issue paper or something much easier to control.

2. In the Great Depression, the crisis was almost exclusively a lack of money. America still produced a ton of barter-able items. We had plenty of things like wood, steel, textiles, shoes, manufactured metal items (flat irons, door hinges, knives, etc.). The amount of that stuff that we no longer have the capacity to produce (at least at the cottage industry level) is staggering. Even during the Great Depression, you still had Uncle Sam making sure that people had things like electricity, fresh water, food fit for consumption, etc.

A post-apocalyptic world will most likely resemble the Stone Age (or modern day Afghanistan) - strong men/warlords will arise and reimpose a basic form of feudalism.

[youtube]K_MOt4_e3e8[/youtube]

Johnette's Daddy wrote:1. Most of the world's gold is either in bank vaults or government vaults. Trading in gold coins would be dicey-to-impossible without a central authority to back the gold

No.

The whole point of trading gold is that with gold there is no need for any central ANYTHING to back its value. It is valuable simply because it IS gold, no other reason. You keep gold because you have NO FAITH in ANY central authority or you don't feel that any central authroity has any authority over you.

Johnette's Daddy wrote:because a) not many people can spot the difference between real gold and fake gold, so fake would abound

This is a different conversation from the central authority one, but one that could be instantly fixed with having jewelers and metalurgists around and being plentiful. Once the jig is up and everyone realizes that everyone is out to SCAM everyone with fake gold, then EVERYONE will get the resources, equipment, and training on how to discriminate fake gold from fool's gold. That wont be hard.

Johnette's Daddy wrote:b) the amount of gold in circulation is relatively small - even when we were on the gold standard most coins were NOT gold

Exactly. Precisely. That makes the real gold all the more valuable because it is so scarce. Just a tiny amount of real gold would have massive purchasing power (as well it should.)

Johnette's Daddy wrote:c) gold is heavy - it has to be transported and defended - both of which are difficult without some sort of collective authority to arrange for common defense and d) if there IS a central authority they would probably prefer to issue paper or something much easier to control.

Rubbish. This is just a nonsense argument for a federalized government. You can PAY someone a tiny amount of wealth to protect (with their lives) your VAST amount of wealth. You don't need government to come along for common defense. You just need to hire very carefully.

The use of paper really only works with a central authority backing its value. The entire reason why people turn to gold is because they have NO FAITH in any central authority. So the paper would be worth nothing to them other than the value of paper on which it is printed. This is the biggest reason why the eceonomy of the Confederate States of America had a ZERO EFFECTIVENESS since there was nothing backing the paper that they printed (and far too few people in the South had any actualy faith that the government would last.)

Johnette's Daddy wrote:2. In the Great Depression, the crisis was almost exclusively a lack of money. America still produced a ton of barter-able items. We had plenty of things like wood, steel, textiles, shoes, manufactured metal items (flat irons, door hinges, knives, etc.). The amount of that stuff that we no longer have the capacity to produce (at least at the cottage industry level) is staggering. Even during the Great Depression, you still had Uncle Sam making sure that people had things like electricity, fresh water, food fit for consumption, etc.

(shrugs)

We don't produce it not because we can't, but because we won't. We don't have to produce it. Our factories and plants sit empty and abandoned (have been that way for 50_ years.) We have 13 year old Malaysian girls in Southeast Asia make all that crap for us. We know how to do it and we have all the infrastructure sitting around to do it again (if we had to) but we don't because the labor cost associated with the unionization of such well-formed manufacturing jobs, means there is no market for the raw goods produced. Basically, our dumb labor is paid too well in the United States to justify having them produce anything of value.

Johnette's Daddy wrote:A post-apocalyptic world will most likely resemble the Stone Age (or modern day Afghanistan) - strong men/warlords will arise and reimpose a basic form of feudalism.

It would look nothing like Afghanistan. Afghanistan is tribal and Islamic. In Afghanistan, the strong men/warlords incest their own daughters and rape the little boys. There are no factories or education or literacy or belief in Christ (things we have had in this Hemisphere since the Spanish began to conquer it and the Brisith started to settle it.) There has never been Feudalism anywhere in the Western Hemisphere because the people were armed with lethal power from day one (the the moment they stepped off the boat.) At age 12, they knew enough how to manage their own 10 acre farm, hold a gun, and read the King James Bible. No need for Feudalism. No need for central authority.

Where we would run into problems is the inner cities where there is no real supply of land for people to grow their own crops, nor has there been any real desire for self-sufficency. Government always provided the inner city (be it food or housing or resources due to a lack of marrital support.) The people that lived there in a post-apocalyptic world would have to MOVE AWAY to the country and start laboring for those organized enough to show them how to raise livestock and grow crops. Eventually, our full manufacturing would start up again, wouldn't take very long.

I should watch one of those prepper shows and try to better understand what drives those people. Lord knows we got a bunch of 'em here in TN.

I could get behind an apocalypse or two...if it would land us near the top of the BCS

"
The whole point of trading gold is that with gold there is no need for any central ANYTHING to back its value. It is valuable simply because it IS gold, no other reason"

LMAO...

"The modelers examined 19 commodities and said that 12 would be gone long before now — aluminum, copper, gold, lead, mercury, molybdenum, natural gas, oil, silver, tin, tungsten and zinc. Lomborg says:

Technological innovations have replaced mercury in batteries, dental fillings and thermometers; mercury consumption is down 98 percent, and its price was down 90 percent by 2000. Since 1970, when gold reserves were estimated at 10,980 tons, 81,410 tons have been mined, and estimated reserves are 51,000 tons. Since 1970, when known reserves of copper were 280 million tons, about 400 million tons have been produced globally, and reserves are estimated at almost 700 million tons. Aluminum consumption has increased 16-fold since 1950, the world has consumed four times the 1950 known reserves, and known reserves could sustain current consumption for 177 years. Potential U.S. gas resources have doubled in the past six years. And so on.

The modelers missed something — human ingenuity in discovering, extracting and innovating. Which did not just appear after 1972.

Aluminum, Lomborg writes, is one of earth’s most common metals. But until the 1886 invention of the Hall-Heroult process, it was so difficult and expensive to extract that “Napoleon III had bars of aluminum exhibited alongside the French crown jewels, and he gave his honored guests aluminum forks and spoons while lesser visitors had to make do with gold utensils.”

Guess who wrote that, IB?

hedge wrote:"The modelers examined 19 commodities and said that 12 would be gone long before now — aluminum, copper, gold, lead, mercury, molybdenum, natural gas, oil, silver, tin, tungsten and zinc. Lomborg says:

Technological innovations have replaced mercury in batteries, dental fillings and thermometers; mercury consumption is down 98 percent, and its price was down 90 percent by 2000. Since 1970, when gold reserves were estimated at 10,980 tons, 81,410 tons have been mined, and estimated reserves are 51,000 tons. Since 1970, when known reserves of copper were 280 million tons, about 400 million tons have been produced globally, and reserves are estimated at almost 700 million tons. Aluminum consumption has increased 16-fold since 1950, the world has consumed four times the 1950 known reserves, and known reserves could sustain current consumption for 177 years. Potential U.S. gas resources have doubled in the past six years. And so on.

The modelers missed something — human ingenuity in discovering, extracting and innovating. Which did not just appear after 1972.

Aluminum, Lomborg writes, is one of earth’s most common metals. But until the 1886 invention of the Hall-Heroult process, it was so difficult and expensive to extract that “Napoleon III had bars of aluminum exhibited alongside the French crown jewels, and he gave his honored guests aluminum forks and spoons while lesser visitors had to make do with gold utensils.”

Guess who wrote that, IB?

I think it is wonderful that we are finding more and more gold. Perfect. Great. Excellent! By my point still stands, GOLD is valuable simply because gold is VALUABLE. You do not have to trust/have-faith that somone (anyone) guarantee ANYTHING in exchange for it. There is no need for any central authority to give it value. All its own value is in gold being gold. The fact that there is more gold to be found does not mean that we need some government to define the value of the gold.

The US should go back on the gold standard. Back our currency with gold NOT on the full faith and trust in the Federal government.

You just said nothing...

"GOLD is valuable simply because gold is VALUABLE."

I mean, seriously, are you that stupid?

Exactly. It would be because we gave it value. Like all the other currencies out there. It's rare enough that the market wouldn't be flooded or its value devalued.

innocentbystander wrote: The whole point of trading gold is that with gold there is no need for any central ANYTHING to back its value. It is valuable simply because it IS gold, no other reason. You keep gold because you have NO FAITH in ANY central authority or you don't feel that any central authroity has any authority over you.

Not really. Unless you are a goldsmith or metallurgist, gold's value (much like paper currency) comes from people's willingness to accept it. With an ear of corn, you can eat it, you can distill it to make whiskey, you can process it into oil to power a diesel engine (or fry chicken) - it has actual uses. With gold, the value is ephemeral.

Test: if you're starving and have a 22 ounce bar of gold and I have the only four ears of corn on earth, you will eventually give me that bar of gold for the corn. Meanwhile, if you're starving and have the only four ears of on earth, you will never give them to me for that bar of gold.

This is a different conversation from the central authority one, but one that could be instantly fixed with having jewelers and metalurgists around and being plentiful. Once the jig is up and everyone realizes that everyone is out to SCAM everyone with fake gold, then EVERYONE will get the resources, equipment, and training on how to discriminate fake gold from fool's gold. That wont be hard.

Disagree. Charlatans and scam artists have been round for years and many will collude with assayists, jewelers, etc., to "certify" fake gold. The only way to combat this (and the way humanity has traditionally combatted this problem) is to have a central authority appoint independent assayists to certify the product (government regulation has been around since, well, government). Remember Adam Smith:

All money is a matter of belief.

innocentbystander wrote:

Johnette's Daddy wrote:c) gold is heavy - it has to be transported and defended - both of which are difficult without some sort of collective authority to arrange for common defense and d) if there IS a central authority they would probably prefer to issue paper or something much easier to control.

Rubbish. This is just a nonsense argument for a federalized government. You can PAY someone a tiny amount of wealth to protect (with their lives) your VAST amount of wealth. You don't need government to come along for common defense. You just need to hire very carefully.

The use of paper really only works with a central authority backing its value. The entire reason why people turn to gold is because they have NO FAITH in any central authority. So the paper would be worth nothing to them other than the value of paper on which it is printed. This is the biggest reason why the eceonomy of the Confederate States of America had a ZERO EFFECTIVENESS since there was nothing backing the paper that they printed (and far too few people in the South had any actualy faith that the government would last.)

You cannot pay me to guard your vast wealth with my life if I have the ability to just take it from you. If there is no system of justice to pursue and prosecute me, I (or my gang) will just take everything you have. Even if you already have a security team in place, what's to stop them from colluding to kill you and split your wealth amongst themselves? It's happened countless times - Emperors & Kings with standing armies have been usurped by their palace guards, merchants in the "Wild West" had stores, saloons, mines and farms taken from them by their employees, etc., - without Sheriffs and Marshalls in place, I wouldn't count on my winning personality to keep my employees faithful.

innocentbystander wrote:

Johnette's Daddy wrote:2. In the Great Depression, the crisis was almost exclusively a lack of money. America still produced a ton of barter-able items. We had plenty of things like wood, steel, textiles, shoes, manufactured metal items (flat irons, door hinges, knives, etc.). The amount of that stuff that we no longer have the capacity to produce (at least at the cottage industry level) is staggering. Even during the Great Depression, you still had Uncle Sam making sure that people had things like electricity, fresh water, food fit for consumption, etc.

(shrugs)

We don't produce it not because we can't, but because we won't. We don't have to produce it. Our factories and plants sit empty and abandoned (have been that way for 50_ years.) We have 13 year old Malaysian girls in Southeast Asia make all that crap for us. We know how to do it and we have all the infrastructure sitting around to do it again (if we had to) but we don't because the labor cost associated with the unionization of such well-formed manufacturing jobs, means there is no market for the raw goods produced. Basically, our dumb labor is paid too well in the United States to justify having them produce anything of value.

Whatever the reason, we DON'T produce stuff anymore and the ability to ramp up and produce stuff from scratch could be nigh unto impossible. Take steel - a lot of "domestic" US Steel is made from slabs that we import from China and Korea. If you're making knives and axes and don't have a supply of steel, - you'r not going to make any knives or axes.

innocentbystander wrote:

Johnette's Daddy wrote:A post-apocalyptic world will most likely resemble the Stone Age (or modern day Afghanistan) - strong men/warlords will arise and reimpose a basic form of feudalism.

It would look nothing like Afghanistan. Afghanistan is tribal and Islamic. In Afghanistan, the strong men/warlords incest their own daughters and rape the little boys. There are no factories or education or literacy or belief in Christ (things we have had in this Hemisphere since the Spanish began to conquer it and the Brisith started to settle it.) There has never been Feudalism anywhere in the Western Hemisphere because the people were armed with lethal power from day one (the the moment they stepped off the boat.) At age 12, they knew enough how to manage their own 10 acre farm, hold a gun, and read the King James Bible. No need for Feudalism. No need for central authority.

Uh, dude - they were SENT HERE BY CENTRAL AUTHORITIES! Both the Jamestown and Massachusetts Bay colonists came UNDER CHARTER FROM THE KING:

"In June of 1606, King James I granted a charter to a group of London entrepreneurs, the Virginia Company, to establish a satellite English settlement in the Chesapeake region of North America. By December, 104 settlers sailed from London instructed to settle Virginia, find gold, and seek a water route to the Orient." http://www.apva.org/history/

"In this case, the Massachusetts Bay Company, a joint-stock company resident in England, whose membership included merchants and landed gentry, received a charter from the Crown."

In the Southwestern US (Texas, New Mexico, California) there are people who are STILL RECEIVING MINERAL RIGHTS GRANTED BY THE KING OF SPAIN!

America is exceptional not because of the myth of the "Marlboro Man" rugged individualist, but because from the beginning, America was planted by corporate raiders on both the Spanish and English sides.

"It's rare enough that the market wouldn't be flooded or its value devalued."

In that case I'd try to get as many moon rocks as possible...

If the shit truly hits the fan and there is no central authority anywhere...the most precious metals will surely be cold steel and lead (copper jacket optional).

So you don't think people can live in peace and harmony without a central authority?

bluetick wrote:If the shit truly hits the fan and there is no central authority anywhere...the most precious metals will surely be cold steel and lead (copper jacket optional).

Point made. In the 14th Century, English Archers had to scour the field after battles and retrieve any usable arrows, cutting them out of bodies if necessary, because the process to make good, armor piercing arrows was very time consuming and the English needed hundreds of thousands of arrows to fight just a few battles (e.g. - at Crecy, 7,000 English Archers fired 48 arrows each in their first volleys - some 336,000 arrows). They shot them much faster than they could make them and ship them to France!

An armorer/gunsmith/gun powder maker could be a kingpin, post-apocalypse.

Even during the Great Depression, you still had Uncle Sam making sure that people had things like electricity, fresh water, food fit for consumption, etc.

Have to disagree with you there, at least in the rural South. Rural electrification didn't arrive at my grandparents' farm until my Dad came back from WWII and installed the wiring like he learned in the Navy. Indoor plumbing too. Fresh water came from the well in your own back yard. The food that was fit for consumption was either grown in your own garden or sold/bartered with a neighbor. Uncle Sam did very little for them except try to collect revenues from AA's ancestors' noble merchandise.

This discussion reminds me of one of my favorite songs and videos:

[youtube]3cQNkIrg-Tk[/youtube]