RE: People choose a candy bar over a free 10 oz silver bar

I just think some (most?) people don't understand anything about silver or gold. I showed a 1 oz gold eagle to a friend and asked what he thought it was worth. He said something like this; "What is that? Gold? hmm..maybe 50$?"

The I said..c´mon man..it's pure gold. 100% pure gold. 24 karat. He didn't even know what that meant. He had a gold wedding ring, so I asked him - how much did you pay for that? 1000$.

Then I explained to him that that gold ring was probably less than 0.3oz (less than 10 grammes) and that it was probably watered out with other cheaper metals (15-20 karat). So you paid 1000$ for something like 0.15 oz of gold. You were OK with that.

Unconsciously, people "know" somewhere that gold is precious. That's why they buy golden rings when they marry etc. But he didn't seem to be able to convert that into "well, here is a 1OZ (31,3 grammes) of PURE gold. Somehow, THAT was not very valuable to him.

When I told him it was worth about 1300$ his jaw dropped. But when I explained why he grasped it.

This is a very interesting phenomena. People are often so brainwashed or dumbed down by the educational system that they don't consider logical ideas. They just act on impulse. Because he had no problems understanding it when I explained it.

Same goes for other things. Like taxation. A lot of well functioning adults (they function on automatics..they don't really think, just react) can't even conceive the concept of taxation. They believe that the State just HAS money. They have not thought about the very easily understandable and obvious reason why governments have money. YOU give them money (or rather, they TAKE your money)

I actually have had to explain this to grown up adults with an IQ over 100 who have jobs with responsibilities. That amazes me, and is very interesting.