{"id":39178,"date":"2018-10-15T16:36:22","date_gmt":"2018-10-15T21:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39178"},"modified":"2018-10-15T16:36:22","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T21:36:22","slug":"you-cant-eat-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=39178","title":{"rendered":"You Can\u2019t Eat Gold\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You Can\u2019t Eat Gold<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cYou can\u2019t eat gold.\u201d The enemies of gold often unleash this little zinger, as if it dismisses the idea of owning gold and indeed the whole gold standard. It is a fact, you cannot eat gold. However, it dismisses nothing.<\/p>\n

This gives us an idea. Let\u2019s tie three facts together. One, you can\u2019t eat gold. Two, gold is in backwardation in Switzerland. And three, speculation is a bet on the price action.<\/p>\n

The fact that gold is inedible is supposed (by the enemies of liberty) to be proof positive that a gold standard wouldn\u2019t work. Of course, there\u2019s always the retort: You can\u2019t eat dollars!<\/p>\n

That may be emotionally satisfying, but there is a deeper issuer that the anti-gold crowd is missing. Yes, money makes terrible food but, also, food makes terrible money. A car makes a lousy airplane. And a shoe makes an awful TV. Cow poop is putrid as food for people, but it works well as fertilizer for plants. Each thing fits a particular purpose.<\/p>\n

Why does food make terrible money? One reason is that it\u2019s perishable. No one\u2014other than a refrigerated warehouse\u2014can make a bid on food beyond his own short-term needs. Without this robust bid, food has limited marketability. That is, it has a wide spread between its bid and offer prices.<\/p>\n

Think of it in human terms, or even personal terms. Suppose you strolling along the sidewalk, and you\u2019re hungry. You see a restaurant sign, \u201cHamburger + fries + drink $10.\u201d You would pay the offer price. The next restaurant is going out of business, and its sign says, \u201cAll inventory must go! 50 hamburgers and 50 pounds of fries for $100!\u201d You would not pay it (unless you were with 49 friends).<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You Can\u2019t Eat Gold\u00a0 \u201cYou can\u2019t eat gold.\u201d The enemies of gold often unleash this little zinger, as if it dismisses the idea of owning gold and indeed the whole gold standard. It is a fact, you cannot eat gold. However, it dismisses nothing. This gives us an idea. Let\u2019s tie three facts together. One, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[374,1183,17726,1100,647],"class_list":["post-39178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-gold","tag-gold-standard","tag-monetary-metals","tag-paper-money","tag-precious-metals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39179,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39178\/revisions\/39179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}