‘The Scream’ sets record with $120m sale

What if people stop giving a shit about gold?

 

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Gold has an intrinsic (industrial) value. It can actually be used for something other than jewelry...

 

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When society collapses, no one will care whether gold has an industrial use.

 

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I wonder, could you buy stuff in North Korea with gold or silver coins if no one was going to prosecute you? I bet you could.

Gold has an intrinsic value because it's difficult to mine. A mountain of dirt, labor and energy will just about make a coin in a day. That labor is stored in the coin making that coin very valuable.

Silver's price is hugely volatile - but I think it's going for what? $29-31 a troy once? Silver's supposed to trade at 1/18th gold as that's it's prevalence in the earth. The truth is there's hardly any silver around at all. Most all that is mined is consumed.

 

Lots of things are difficult to get. That doesn't automatically make them valuable in a theoretical future where the economy has collapsed.

 

Unlike with a painting, with a bar of gold I can still hit you in the head.

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Also, in a Mad Max world, I can use my gold chain as a conductor and restart the car battery. Plenty of useful usage...

 

I can trade the painting to the Humongous in lieu of sexual favors. He likes screaming.

 

Despite my vigorous opposition to modernist art, I must object strenuously to the comparison of the practical utilities of a painting and a bar of gold. The painting could indeed be used as a weapon. It would simply require greater ingenuity. A painting is clearly a weapon for the precise, instead of the brute.