{"id":54775,"date":"2020-08-22T07:31:21","date_gmt":"2020-08-22T12:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54775"},"modified":"2020-08-22T07:31:51","modified_gmt":"2020-08-22T12:31:51","slug":"why-martians-are-wrong-about-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54775","title":{"rendered":"Why Martians Are Wrong About Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"small-12 medium-10 medium-centered columns featured-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/dweaay7e22a7h.cloudfront.net\/wp-content_3\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Why-Martians-Are-Wrong-About-Gold-650x360.jpg\" alt=\"Why Martians Are Wrong About Gold\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"row content-body\">\n<div class=\"small-12 medium-10 medium-centered columns\">\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"small-12 medium-2 columns\">\n<h3 class=\"row collapse meta-post-info\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dailyreckoning.com\/why-martians-are-wrong-about-gold\/\">Why Martians Are Wrong About Gold<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"single-article-body\" class=\"small-12 medium-10 columns single-article\">\n<p>A martian \u2014 Warren Buffett once razzed \u2014 would marvel that earthlings dig gold from the ground\u2026 only to rebury it in vaults.<\/p>\n<p>That is, the business is idiotic\u2026 pointless\u2026 and wasteful.<\/p>\n<p>At first blush, our space man is justly puzzled. Why would humans shovel up hunks of metal \u2014 only to lock them away, idle?<\/p>\n<p>Yet the martian \u2014 and the Nebraskan \u2014 jump past a fundamental truth of human nature.<\/p>\n<p>As one insightful fellow (whose identity we cannot recall) has noted\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Men act with purpose. They do not squander their time or resources on pointless, juiceless pursuits.<\/p>\n<p>Why would they expend vast resources to haul up gold\u2026 and risk their lives deep in dangerous mines to grab it\u2026 if they lacked compelling reasons?<\/p>\n<p>We note that Mr. Buffett has recently purchased 21 million shares of Barrick Gold. Has this man forgotten his martian?<\/p>\n<p>And so we arrive at this question: Why do men still toil extravagantly to wrest gold metal from stingy earth?<\/p>\n<p class=\"centered subhead\"><b>The Gold Standard of Money<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Perhaps men continue digging up gold because thousands of years of history demonstrate that gold is worth digging up.<\/p>\n<p>Gold is perhaps the ideal money, money\u00a0<i>par excellence \u2014<\/i>\u00a0if you will forgive the expression, the gold standard of money.<\/p>\n<p>Money must be rare. Rocks cannot be money \u2014 for example. Nor can dirt.<\/p>\n<p>Yet there must be enough money to \u201cgo around.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gold is rare. But there is enough to go around. Hence it meets money\u2019s strict conditions.<\/p>\n<p>Gold is also durable. Gold mined thousands of years ago lives yet, fresh as a sprig, no wrinkles, no sags.<\/p>\n<p>And unlike gems or diamonds, gold is divisible. It can be fashioned into bars or coins as needed.<\/p>\n<p>Meantime, money must be a store of value. And gold maintains its value across centuries, across millenia.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why Martians Are Wrong About Gold A martian \u2014 Warren Buffett once razzed \u2014 would marvel that earthlings dig gold from the ground\u2026 only to rebury it in vaults. That is, the business is idiotic\u2026 pointless\u2026 and wasteful. At first blush, our space man is justly puzzled. Why would humans shovel up hunks of metal [&hellip;]<\/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":[15378,124,11023,374,536,8732],"class_list":["post-54775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-brian-maher","tag-central-banks","tag-daily-reckoning","tag-gold","tag-money","tag-price-stability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54775","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=54775"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54776,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54775\/revisions\/54776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}