TJ, some additional remarks to my musing about the value of gold, who has relative little practical value to its relative price, in contrast to other elements in great demand due to industrial modernization.
Gold would be accepted as "money" or as a store of value as long as this perception exist, there is no other justification for hoarding gold which dates back to the very early civilizations, when warefare and plunder was way of generating wealth, if compared to other rare industrial materials that make the world more energy efficient or strengthen the steel alloys or serve as catalyst in bio-energy or other chemical reactions.
After all this drivel, I must confess that indeed hoarding gold is a barbarian relic and pointless "value worship", as there are many more rare materials in great need to improve our standard of living in various indirect forms and very few are clamoring to own them as a store of value, even that their scarcity is several times higher than gold and the cost of extraction is way above the cost of gold.
My point being in this rant is, that the value of gold as anything else is driven after all by perception and not real useful value, and when the family of Yttrium , Neodymium , Samarium , Gadolinium , Cerium et-al will come to the fore as store of value due their expensive cost of mining, usefulness and scarcity it will leave the gold bugs in the dust.
Therefore saving gold for the next generation is a losing proposition and exercise in futility, as no one knows for sure what will be the investment trend in 30 to 40 years, and even could be that jewelry fashion will change and use of gold will strongly diminish. All this does not negate the point of present trend for riding the waves of gold pricing as any other speculative investment but gold should not be counted as a store of value for the long term in contrast to fertile agricultural land with enshrined water rights and forests or even "rare earth" minerals.
As such the true value of gold is directly connected to perception and liquidity but little else, as if it start to be not fashionable as a perceived store of value prospectign for gold will diminish and with it the desirability which will render the cost of extraction as irrelevant. |
