No Stupid Questions

Lots of things can be used as currency. Gold was the OG because it is scarce, takes work to mine, is finite(ish), it doesn't tarnish or corrode in air or salt water, isn't attacked by acids except agua regia, meaning it doesn't degade over time. It's a really good medium for labor-value.

Problem is, it's also a useful metal now, in semiconductors and electronics, so now it is being 'consumed' by industry in a way that isn't readily recoverable except at product end of life, and even then it's not 100% recycled, probably more like 10%.

So the global supply increases due to work mining, decreases due to consumption as a commodity, and is still treated as a currency equivalent.

Solid gold is easy to store, and will survive calamities, bank collapses, fires, floods, ect where other intrinsic value items don't.

So it's a good investment if you believe that you will survive the deletion of society, AND you believe that it will be tradeable post-collapse. Or if you just treat it like a commodity.

But post-collapse, gold isn't intrinsically useful. In these events, other useful, consumable goods might be better for goods and labour exchange. In the early Australian colonies, there was no money, people bought, sold and got paid in rum.

Rum is a reasonable value holder, it can be preserved against degrading, it is 'fungible' and divisible in a way that gold coins arent.

Dried grains are a good currency too. Maize, wheat berries, etc, as long as you accept that your value will be contually consumed and replenished.

Whether a thing has value is largely determined by whether the society you end up in decides it has value.

The indigenous Australians would happily trade a gold nugget for rum or rope or steel tools, because their society had no use for gold, but did have use for steel.

Disclaimer: The only gold I own is in my phone and computer.

Societal collapse? No gold won't save you. Tools and how to use them will.

Maybe during hyperinflation though.

Gods not a terrible investment but it doesn't have a short term ROI just a REALLY long term one.

I hate Bitcoin but its probably a better investment (and just as useful) than gold.

I'm a fudd though and ONLY buy stable stocks that yield reliable dividends though. ETFs, S&P stuff.

Depends on your threat model. During speculative bubbles capital flows towards gainers no matter how crazy (NFTs anyone?). During corrections capital flows back towards commodities, and gold is .. er...the gold standard. It has a lot of industrial uses blah blah blah. Copper is also good for these purposes and is an interesting contrast.

Nobody says "if you can't touch it, you don't own it" for copper or oil or pork bellies. That's because that advice isn't about using gold as an inflation hedge or safe harbour in a bear market. That advice is predicated on compete monetary collapse and the use of gold as currency. If you don't live in a space where you can grow some of your own food, and have access to potable water from your own well I wouldn't worry to much about it. You will starve to death or die in the food riots so gold won't help anyways.

Depends on what you want to achieve.

It's a hedge against inflation. So in times of high inflation and economic uncertainty it will do well.

Keeping a small amount in a safe in case the world goes to shit, well only after you have a pile of guns, ammunution and canned food.

It's not a productive asset. If you buy stocks you'll probably be better off in the long run.

That being said your investment portfolio should not be only one kind of investment and gold should probably be a part of it eventually.

There are a lot of delusional people in here posting about their personal shower-fantasies of what they would do in the apocalypse. You can safely discard all that. If it gets so bad you need guns and tools and... blacksmithing supplies? you are so utterly fucked that gold and bartering will be the last of your concerns. People will be fucking eating each other. You simply cannot run to the woods and start living off the land, you will starve and die without acres of ready land already producing food. Real-life isn't like a survival video game, there is no tech-tree that you can climb and start producing food.

Read some Cormac McCarthy for a more realistic view of the end of the world. (Then have a therapist on hand for the after-effects.)

For a financial collapse, gold would probably retain value, a society still needs something to base the value of its trading on, we can't just all carry around sacks of grain. How much value gold will retain is very hard to predict, but people have been using it for so long that it's already survived several widespread disasters and is still in use.

Fungible, portable, valuable. Gold isn't a scam, as far as the concept of wealth and hierarchy isn't a scam.

Some (many? most? IDK) gold sellers are scammers. They will sell you overvalued stuff and insist it's extra-valuable because of some feature they made up. They are the ones being loud on the web and making you hear about it all the time. So, if you hear an ad, and buy gold, you've probably fallen for a scam.

But investing in gold by itself is just like any other commodity. And just to say, the rule on that last phrase is valid for almost everything (it's absolutely valid for stocks and investment funds).

When was the last complete societal collapse?

Gold is a good hedge against inflation. When was the last hyperinflation in your country?

Yes and no. If you order your "gold kit" off of an ad aimed at boomers worried about losing their houses, it is probably scammy.

If you're very rich and worried, you could stash away a bit of bullion at your home. You'll have other things of value you could trade on the black market of total societal collapse before you'd need to tap into that resource. If you're not very rich, a gold bar is not going to do you much good because it's a big chunk of change tied up in one item. You're more likely to need smaller denominations, like coins or rings, to pay for stuff in the apocalypse. Or you need to learn to smelt metal. The scam of it all is that people with a financial interest will advertize gold as the safe resource in times of high perceived crisis when the price of gold is already high or rising. It makes much more sense financially to watch the market and buy when it's down.

Gold is also something that needs the economy to come back before you ran out of other stuff to barter with. If our apocalyptical total collapse lasts a long time, gold will not be as valuable as drinking water, food, or shelter. Smokes (incl. vape juice) and booze might be more useful for a longer time.

I'm not rich and I'd sooner go down the prepper route than buying gold.

Obligatory not an economist, only know some basics about investing (and quite lazy about it)

I always thought that gold is just a rather unique commodity that people can also have the option of holding physically (not that it's advised to do so). Professional investors invest in just about anything as long as there is a potential return on investment, like typical stocks and bonds, gold and silver, housing/land, art, literal truckloads of food... frankly gold isn't even remotely the weirdest or "scammiest" on this list

As for more regular people, I do have a suspicion a lot of con-artists and/or people with suspicious intents heavily promote gold investing though. Also some libertarian types have a weird... fantasy? of total societal collapse with them rising to the top post-collapse, which I do not quite understand. But I'd presume gold would be attractive to those types since gold has been used as a means of transaction for a long time in human history

There was a video essay by Folding Ideas (From "the line goes up" fame) about a weird documentary narrated/hosted by Idris Elba, and If I am remembering it right it was basically a propaganda/ad film targeting people like peepers and that are skeptical of the government and such. So I believe there is at least a push to make gold more marketable and in fashion, like De beers did for diamonds.

I don't know if I am allowed to link to outside content (because the rule of no reposting outside content) but in any case it should be easy to find for anyone interested.

I’ve seen the assertion that silver is a safer bet than gold. Less glitzy, but still precious and with more industrial uses.

Of course, if civilisation collapses completely, neither will matter unless someone will trade you something for your krugerrands.

If you look back at the 2k8 crash gold plummeted almost as fast. People sold it off to cover other positions.

Gold is a solid store of value. That's about it. It isn't a terribly good investment as it just doesn't gain value very fast compared to inflation. But, as I said, it is a solid store of value, so if that is what you are looking for, it isn't a bad option.

If you want to invest, you are better off with index funds held over the long term.

invested a lot in gold under the belief that in the event of like complete societal collapse

If that happens, a better investment is to make yourself as self-sufficient as possible. Have a way to generate power (solar + batteries), acquire water (well water), sewage (leech field), stored food (just extra cans of food you normally eat), acquire food (a rifle and somewhere deer exist), security (that same rifle).

None of that is unreasonably expensive or hard to get. But all of those are what you would want if you are worried about societal collapse.

It isn't a scam. It is an asset like buying land in the middle of nowhere. It will in general match inflation but underperform most other investments. In the very long term I would expect that with global population stabilizing and declining, the value of gold will also stabilize and decline.

All investing is potentially a scam. That's why they warn you about securities trading.

If you're looking for something to buy now that will have value in say 1000 years, gold's a pretty good choice.

NFCs, bitcoins, silver, gold, whatever. If the only way people can cash out is to get someone to buy what they're selling, there's always going to be an element of grift to it. It's just some are more grifty than others.