Hi @willymac,
thank you for writing an exhaustive take on what can happen if the financial system collapses.
One of the reasons gold is so revered is that people dont have faith in the economic system anyway. I am not sure that real estate would be of much use at the time, but gold would be invaluable. cash on the other hand may lose all meaning in such a reality.
There are a lot of other realities that are far more demanding of the system. Imagine if there is an oil embargo. this may not affect the US but for the rest of the world it is catastrophic. Food cannot be transported. bills cannot be paid and the bank's derivatives foreclose.
War is a fundamental reality of economic crashes.
An apocalypse (a la mad max) is a direct offshoot of law/order collapse which follows soon after.
How many of us are willing to wage a war on each other for food, clothing and medicines. In fact how many us are capable?
i would say the best asset is to have access to some land where you can grow some plants and feed yourself. Back to basics as it were!
Thank you, Adarsh!
Faith in gold and silver is well-placed and has served well for 5,000 years. I see them as being the only real, durable wealth. Change dollars or rupees or yen or rubles into real gold or silver and learn to think of exchange rates and costs of things in gold instead of in fiat currencies!
I agree that there are many routes that may be taken to cripple an economy, but all of them, including a pandemic viral infection, pushed hard enough will break any financial system and that is the one think all societies today depend upon. If it breaks, then everything breaks with it.
Oh, every one of, I suspect, especially if your wife or daughter, or son is dying of hunger or from lack of a medication someone else has. I believe people will do what they have to do to survive when children are concerned. I may philosophically prefer death to taking life-sustaining food from another, but would have a hard time making that decision on a child's behalf.
Agreed 100%! That is very problematic for those who live in cities and fleeing to the countryside post-crisis event is too late to begin farming in time to sustain oneself, especially since farmland is already owned by someone who will not likely welcome a flood of refugees on their farmland.
We may find that large cities were not a beneficial construct for a sustainable society.
Gold and silver are worthless commodities to a crumbled economic system. Food, tools, fuel, and safety will be the most valuable commodities, and in the shortest supply.
Gold and silver are not for use during the face-down part of the collapse, but are to contain wealth that will be stored until a replacement system in in place. That may be the next generation but the relative value will still be recognized.
I agree completely that you can't eat gold and no one would sell you a can of beans for a gold Britannia in the middle of a crisis. However, If I make it past that failure point in my society, I would much rather have a few Britannias buried in a can than not. That will give me a resource that has served as real money throughout history.
Back when a silver dime was a day's wage, an ounce of gold was a small fortune! I'm not going to care about that if I don't have food in the meantime.