Yes that's a corollary to what i'm saying, and not an insignificant one either -
'.. You are saying that cost has gone down due to production cost reductions. '
Here's some data on raw production numbers [not cost] 1970-2000 -
goldsheetlinks.com - steadily increasing since the 1975 low, 2001 is unlikely to have fallen a great deal from 2000 imho, perhaps not at all .... here are graphs depicting the same data i think - goldsheetlinks.com
.. somewhere on the net i've seen a graph of production by decade, going back many centuries, sure would like to find it again ... shows that half of all gold now above ground was produced since 1848, or something like that
Sure, nolo contendere, ample supply has affected the price ... that's not the end of the story however - there are more young ladies getting married each year, they want more substantial and higher-karat rings, and necklaces and earrings as well, and many get them due to general increase in standard of living .... as for that held by central banks, some thirty thousand tonnes, i don't believe they'll feed it all out into the wedding ring market, gold has been the ultimate money for a long time, and will continue to be imho - it's the only form of money that is not a debt obligation of some group of fallible human beings, the only form not subject to political whim
' .. it struck me that all the tangible stuff is somehow not what people are about.'
Mmm, i dunno - have the roof taken off your house for a year or two and i think you'll develop an appreciation for the tangible -g- .... we are physical beings, homo sapiens sapiens, just clever animals really ... what we like are things which extend our physical capabilities - the motorcar allows us to travel faster and further than walking, for example, while improved transport and refrigeration allow us to treat our sense of taste from greater distance ... those CDMA cellphones? - they are extending the range of our vocal cords, from a century-ago distance of perhaps one hundred metres to a present circling of the globe ... on an intellectual level, playing internet extends our range so that we can squabble with others on the opposite side of the planet, where before we were restricted to our immediate neighbours -g- ..... but in each case, a pre-existing capacity is merely being enhanced by technology, there really is 'nothing new under the sun' in kind, only in degree, our species actually doesn't fundamentally change all that fast ..... anyway, i submit that, in addition to your roof, there is another non-high-tech tangible product which enhances the range and stability of another of our basic wants/needs, i.e. that of trading -
People love to trade, just love it need it want it ... and it's good for us, it's what makes division of labour possible, and all commerce be it local or international ... to do trading effectively we need a currency, a basic standard by which we measure what we call the 'value' of all other goods and services ... imho, such an animal cannot be a construct of fallible man, as in Mr Smith's words he has always 'by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal which had been originally contained in coin' ... it's just too much responsibility, too much power, for any group of human beings to have, to set the standard by which all human trade is valued ... example - USD production of late [now that would make a more impressive graph than that of production of gold, lol] ... there must be something underlying, something more basic than such a construct ...
Whoops, post not finished, hardly started [gee you make the brain cells wiggle] but Real Life beckons ... anyway, i look to the price of gold to outperform that of the USD over say the next five years, generally ... Waihi, there's a place by that name near Timaru, but of course you are North Island, which i don't know as well as the South ... don't know Alexandra all that well either but stayed near Roxburgh one time, heard lots of old stories ... anyway, cheers
ps - here's a post - #reply-16866212 - that touches in part on my philosophy du jour in re the quality juniors - at the tail end of the gold bear some of them are outstanding bargoons |
