Gold is falling. And I\u2019m riding a delightful wave of Schadenfreude.<\/p>\n
I wondered just why I was so happy at their misfortune, so I though long and hard about it. And it ties into my psychology, philosophy and pretty much everything I hold dear.<\/p>\n
First, I\u2019ll admit up front,\u00a0 I\u2019m not a finances guy. I\u2019ve never had the extra money to invest, short of putting some money in my son\u2019s college fund or the 401K that my employer matches, and that makes sense to me only because the matching funds are basically free money. As far as I see it, it makes more sense to pay off your high interest credit card or car loan or mortgage, which guarantees you a return on that outlay, just in interest you won\u2019t have to pay, than to gamble on an market.\u00a0 If you understand markets, and you think gold is a good investment, and you buy it along with shares of Apple Computer and Amazon and whatever else, that\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n
Gold is different. First off, it\u2019s marketed heavily by charlatans and blowhards to people who drive me nuts with their willingness to believe any insanity so long as it doesn\u2019t come from a reputable source.\u00a0 Don\u2019t trust CNN or any other MSM (main stream media) but the blog of some white supremacist living in a trailer in the Mojave dessert, recycling his own piss must be right about gold, just like he was right about that Kenyan Socialist in the white house.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019m already disposed to be frustrated by these guys. But the thing about gold is that it\u2019s not like buying canned goods or ammo or putting up a solar panel. Gold is a medium of exchange. It has value because society says it does. Now, don\u2019t get me wrong, I like having a nice medium of exchange. Just try to buy a gallon of gas by bartering a pig and figure how to make change. So that\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n
But Dollars and Lire and Euros are media of exchange that work just fine. If you are huddled in your bunker listening to ham radio and laughing at those of us who have all our wealth in currency, wondering what we will do when the SHTF (shit hits the fan, for those of you who don\u2019t own any cammo) lemme break it to you gently. Nobody will give you baked beans or firewood or oral sex for your gold after society breaks down, because gold is only worth what society says it\u2019s worth.<\/em><\/p>\n So, yeah, part of my anger is at the gullibility of people who point at the rest of us as gullible for believing, say, CNN or our long standing societal institutions. But that\u2019s not all.<\/p>\n Many of the gold bugs who make me weep for the human race fall into the ranks of Doomsday Preppers, or as we used to call the guy with a bomb shelter in his backyard before we had basic cable, whackjobs.<\/p>\n Now, yes, I do accept that there are disasters, and bad things happen and being prepared for a flood or a power outage or a tornado is a good idea. If you live in a flood zone, own a boat. If you live in Tornado Alley, a storm cellar does not make you a whackjob, it makes you prudent.<\/p>\n But the idea that society its teetering on the brink doesn\u2019t impress me.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen this for millennia, literally. The first millennium, the second millennium, Y2K, gay marriage, women\u2019s suffrage, the Emancipation proclamation, none of these things ended society, and I think we\u2019ll make it through the Obama administration just fine.<\/p>\n But, let\u2019s give the benefit of the doubt and assume that, yes, this time, really, the S will HTF. The reason I go from amused mockery of the Doomer to actual anger is this:<\/p>\n I\u2019m angry at the guy with the \u201cbug out bag\u201d because the original term was attributed to soldiers who deserted their posts in battle. On one side of the Chosin reservoir, men \u201cbugged out\u201d and their buddies died. On the other side, men held together and brought all hands out.<\/p>\n I think, when the shit does hit the fan, if you are a decent human being, you don\u2019t hide in the bunker, you roll up your sleeves and pitch in a start shoveling.<\/p>\n In any crisis we see this. Hurricane Sandy didn\u2019t lead to lawless gangs wandering the streets. It lead to a drop in crime, it lead to vast outpouring or co-operation among New Yorkers and Jersey-ites, not known as the most touchy-feely or people. We saw the people of Boston, my beloved angry, rude, cantankerous city, step up and help when the bombs went off at the marathon.<\/p>\n Who do you want to be around when, and if the S does HTF? Actually, it won\u2019t mater, the guy with the bug out bag full of gold will have run off and gotten out of the way of the guy who will be there for you.<\/p>\n So, yeah, I will laugh at the guy who lost his shirt buying gold because Glen Beck told him to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gold is falling. And I\u2019m riding a delightful wave of Schadenfreude. I wondered just why I was so happy at their misfortune, so I though long and hard about it. And it ties into my psychology, philosophy and pretty much everything I hold dear. First, I\u2019ll admit up front,\u00a0 I\u2019m not a finances guy. I\u2019ve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25,14,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doomsday","category-politics","category-tin-foil-hats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65\/revisions\/78"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.inkandbourbon.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}