C2, it wasn't a charge, so much as a warning, which we all need. It really is a human norm, and failing, to be cultists. It's in our DNA. The process goes by different names, such as Stockholm Syndrome, patriot, club member, metal head, bias, shareholder, Kiwi, and all those other self-identifying processes which people are subject to.
You gave a good rendition of the gold catechism there. Many slogans strung together. An excellent mantra. Many of them true and true for thousands of years in some cases. But the future is different from the past. And certainly far more surprising.
Not at all: <You'll never admit it but your objections to gold are emotionally-driven. They are in a word, not data-driven nor do they take into account cultural matters. At its essence, I believe you objection to gold is that it is not modern, does not reflect scientific progress, etc. > I can see how you'd get that idea from my continual references to atavistic Aztecs, as though there is something wrong with long-lasting things. On the contrary, I'm pretty much autistic as far as gold is concerned. Emotionless. I have gone along to look at it to see if I could get worked up in some way. A bit like booze and tobacco, I can see how people do get hooked, but those sorts of things really don't do much for me, though I have made genuine attempts to join in.
I even went to Grafton Road, to Johnson Matthey's secure sales place and the nice lady got out various lumps of gold for me to consider at $323 per ounce. Maybe if she had made it a bit easier to load up, I'd have taken delivery. But it was all a bit difficult. So I'm not really anti gold. It's just that I like better ways of doing things in general and that includes money.
In the long process of me coming up with a better way of doing things, I was even laughed at back in 1984 as "Mr Bring Back the Gold Standard" by some of my BP colleagues, who went on to lose their money in the huge 1987 crash which passed by the USA and the rest of the world without much disruption. NZ got quite smashed. I sailed through the 1987 drama pretty much unscathed.
If I couldn't think of anything better than gold, I'd likely be Gung Ho for it too, but it is simply unsuitable from a financial relativity theory engineering point of view based on scientific and mathematical principles as well as good old human nature.
<You believed in Q when it was charged in the WSJ no less with violating the laws of nature, but you were correct and were enriched. > Yes. A similar situation arises now. The WSJ [if they knew about my financial relativity theory ideas] would say they breach natural laws or something too. And in passing, Carrie Lee, a Wall Street Journal journalist in Y2K accused me of running a scam with The Great Globalstar Memorial Day Massacre, which got the SEC onto me, including an attempted entrapment [I later realized] as well as some Californian enforcement fool. While the SEC was wasting time and money chasing me, [using my "screen name" as she called it, which happens to be my "reality" name too], they were ignoring complaints that Bernie Madoff was making off with $billions. That certainly showed SEC priorities. Laughable.
Regarding demographics, wealth creation, increased demand, resource shortages, and rising prices, <
The economic super-cycle is turning into a demand-driven one. It may take a few years for many to appreciate this, but gold, oil, silver, food, water, productive land, etc., are going to go ballistic due to increasing demand. It is a simple function of demographics and wealth creation by and re-distribution to the teeming masses which were at one time shirtless but will be no longer. > Think back to Club of Rome doomsterism. Or right back to Malthusian woes. It didn't work out like that.
I don't need any gold, silver, have oodles of water, gushing from taps at about $1 per cubic metre, there are vast areas of land which could have much higher production, there is no shortage of iron, aluminium and things in "short supply" can easily have production increased. Gold and silver do have their technological uses, but that's not what you mean.
Peak Oil and CO2 have got swarms of people drooling over imagined riches if they can get on the right side of history, which they imagine is to bet that oil runs out and CO2 will cook the planet. Both bets are wrong. Not just maybe wrong, but out and out wrong.
Sure, some will profit while people figure out what's actually going to happen when reality's rubber meets the road. Al Gore is doing very nicely. David Suzuki, Phil Jones, Hansen, and hordes are getting a good cash flow from Mann Made Warming. But the yokels are getting restless with the constant depredations on their pay packets and no sign of warming as the next snowfall blocks their car.
One primary false idea people have is "If a billion Chinese and a billion Indians all get SUVs like Americans, oil is going to run out". Well, yes. But they won't. I don't have an SUV and I can afford half a dozen. It's not a problem of money, it's that I need an SUV like a fish needs a bicycle [to quote ... oh, somebody, but not Gloria Steinem phrases.org.uk ]
Similarly, millions of people in London, Bombay, Beijing, Bangalore, and other large metropolitan centres don't need millions of SUVs. They need cute little Google city cars [auto-driving vehicles in which the "driver" is just a passenger] run on fuel cells with motors in each wheel. London's underground could be upgraded to superconductor levitated and propelled very frequent vehicles. Capacity of existing transport routes can be enormous once the primates are taken out of controlling them.
Then, in 2037, Peak People happens [unless sars, H5N1 or a known unknown intercedes, or an unknown unknown comes from left field] Major Paradigm Shift Happens and that's a biggie. Japan is already on the way down. So are Germany, Italy and others if not for Jihad migration which is likely to be stopped soon for cultural reasons. Russia has a declining population. China will soon peak because they have been forcibly cutting reproduction for decades. India won't be far behind. Africa is a mess and might level out due to hideous Mathusian processes. It's not even 100 years since Europe went through huge carnage.
But 2037 is a long way away. Gold and silver will play out long before demographic changes amount to much. Resolution of unsustainable debt increases and political routs and paradigm shifts will be what matters and that's over the next year or 10. Especially if 2020 sees reglaciation or another Maunder Minimum as predicted by the world's pre-eminent predictor of such things.
There's some food for thought.
Mqurice |
