| mrstickball said: If your interested in the value of gold in a destroyed economy, you can find some real-world examples of it. Using Katrina as a basis for not having gold is incredibly stupid. There was no barter economy when it hit...There was only a survival economy. For a real answer, look to Zimbabwe and their quantitative easing. When unemployment hit 90%, and bread costed trillions to buy, what did people use? Gold. The poor sifted night & day for it in the rivers to find some, and used gold dust as a basis for monetary transactions, since the currency was useless. Gold has a use if there is an economy at all. For example, if the USA collapsed, foreigners would most likely offer to trade goods for gold, as gold would still have a monetary value outside of America. That is why it would have an intrinsic value. Could gold be useless in any scenario? Of course. If zombies attack, or nazi space-aliens. But last I checked, these scenarios were far less likely as opposed to inflation/deflation which can still use gold as a means of trade both inside, and outside, of America. *edit* Here is the YouTube entry for 'Zinbabwe Gold For Bread Program': http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2009/feb/11/zimbabwe-gold-panning-starvation-food |
Let's bring forth another thing that is needed to act as currency in an economy: The item used as currency has to be in sufficient supply, that people can get ahold of it. In Zinbabwe, they can mine for gold. The properties of gold work well as currency (durable and really not of much use for anything). HOWEVER, in the United States, do you think that people will have gold in sufficient quantities that they would be able to use it as currency?
If the economy of the United States melted down, expect to find a complex barter system to develop, where people would end up swapping electronics and other goods for one another.
As far as a "survival economy" goes, what do you think America would be if things totally broke down? Things go into survival mode.
