Friday 26 April 2013

The future of gold?

Nobody can tell you what gold will be worth; it has no "intrinsic value".

Its value is arbitrary, floating on the whims of collective human emotion.

Nobody can tell you, today, with any degree of certainty, more than... all that glitters is not gold.


How's your weathervane?

9 comments:

DP said...

A perpetual 0% margin put equity?

Ein Gast said...

"Its value is arbitrary"
+1, really nice one, I can spend hours thinking of that one. But isnt that the reason why it is "money"? Isnt that the very core essence characteristic of "money" in a strict sense (in that context forget "credit" for a second)?
Gruß, AD

Ein Gast said...

okay, let's forget "value" for a second and let's talk "price" in that context. Can we agree that "price" is the "moneyness sticker" on labour, either performed labour results of the past or labour in the present?
Now the interesting question: How many onces of gold does it "cost" to pull one onces of gold out of the ground?
Hmmmm, how do you like that one? :D

Gruß, AD

DP said...

Hi,

I presume you mean the core essence of "money" being the Unit of Account - the expression of the relative values of all goods, compared to some accepted "money" measuring stick. So the stick is (like all other goods) not of some fixed length, but varying over time - based on collective human action & emotions.

Ein Gast said...

how can a different ratio (multiples of 1) ever be stable in the long run? Why I am getting to this? In order to challenge the term "gold's value is arbitrary", when approaching it from a similair ground of "gold's price is arbitrary"....
anyway, was just some brainstorming in that context :)

Ein Gast said...

...not exclusively about the "Unit of Account", but as hardcopy version as medium of exchange as well: "How much is one nice real cash paper HoggBug worth?"


Is it also arbitrary? Or might is get its backing not by "value" (whatever value really means), but by being the unit of account on billions of individual balance sheets in an economic zone. I'm not so sure. Just wondering how arbitrary the value of different tokens can be chosen by human emotions.

Gruß, AD

DP said...

Isn't everything given "value" (yes) by the shifting balance of supply/demand — be that demand for the purpose of final consumption, or as an asset in reserve? Applying equally to HoggBucks, euros, lean hogs, ABS, Siemens stock, gold, canned farts, … whatever.

DP said...

Please do continue with the brainstorming. :-)


At a ratio 1.0 or below, why would the miners bother to turn up?


At a ratio too far above 1.0, will there be anything left to build a house on safely?

Ein Gast said...

will the slaves allow their masters to reap the huge windfalls from their work? Well, you tell me, might history be some guide?
And I guess it depends on the jurisdiction?
And please dont base your reasoning not on some Worldwide-FG-Giant-Illuminati-Pricecontrol-cartell-BS.
Greets, AD

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