rice is considered a non-perishable food.

you can't eat gold. you can eat rice (whether you like it or not).

gold doesn't give you a larger selection. rice is more easily convertible to other food items.

Great!
Give me your gold, I will give you rice

And then I can use my gold, to buy meat, pasta, pesto and some very good swiss cheese

i doubt you've ever traded gold for food.

You are right, I never have.
But I did trade gold for paper money (which leads to main topic as we drifted a lot from it) and bought other things that I cannot buy with rice.

We are really drifting off topic, but this usually happens in forums.

It was a nice run.

Cheers all, great insights from all of you. Made me turn my head with some very good inputs you provided

so if you're just swapping gold for dollars and vice versa, aren't you simply speculating on the value of gold?

nothing about whether it is a store of wealth etc. you are basically reliant on the amount of paper currency that someone is willing to give you for your gold in the future.

You cannot speculate with paper money on gold, it's the opposite.
When you work on Futures to speculate, you are expecting that the paper money that is delivered by the country is supported somehow by production, exports, services etc...and you use it to cover risk.
Once all this assurance is gone, Futures are irrelevant. If CH is bankrupt, would you still take CH bills? or would you try to protect yourself by buying gold.
At least this is how I see it, I might be wrong, but the basics are here.

If I may put it this way:
Gold is real, paper money is what allows you to get certain amount of gold, based on how strong or week it is.

This is why China, Russia and India are packing up. The BRICs cannot open it's bank if it cannot cover the money it will create

It's both surely?

Suppose you think the value of paper money will go down relative to gold, I think it will go up. So we trade, your paper money for my gold, and wait to see who is right.

Neither of us wants to own gold or paper money for its own sake, only for its potential as a medium for further exchange. This makes it a speculative transaction on both sides.

(Non-speculative would be trading for something because I actually want to consume it myself, not re-trade it later to someone else. If Phil_MCR swapped you some gold for a bag of rice because he wanted to eat the rice, that wouldn't be speculation. If he did it because he hoped to re-sell the rice later at a profit, that would be speculation.)

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Once again: There is no Gold standard any more. Nobody guarantees you that you will be able or allowed to trade Gold. If Switzerland is 'bankrupt', whatever that means, but the fiat money does still exist - you are still required to have it. You understand that you are required to pay all your taxes and make your financial interactions with the state in Swiss Francs?

They will not accept Gold, rice, grapes, Aluminium or anything else. Swiss Francs. The Gold standard is gone, we have the Tax standard now. What you are talking about is speculation on Gold, there is no guaranteed Gold to Swiss Franc conversion.

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"Sometimes it's hard to tell the living from the dead" -- Edgar Winter

My Grandad always used to say, you can plant rice to make more rice. He used the example to show how exponential growth works, as in one grain of rice yields N grains, and if you plant them all again you have N^2 etc. Gold just sits in your safe and does nothing. As a little kid that impressed me no end.

It does of course help to have some land with the right sort of climatic conditions.

Interestingly though, the rice producing nations of the earth are not really the richest nations. Neither are the gold mining nations.

well, the US is an agricultural powerhouse (including rice growing). but whether you have natural wealth (farmland, oil, minerals) is no guarantee of wealth. you only need to look at how the wealth has come to benefit a few rich companies/people/countries who control them...

if you wanted to protect yourself, then you would secure the things you need, which includes:

- air
- shelter
- water
- food
- etc.
...
- (gold doesn't make the list)

Let's go back to the list
- air : carbon tax
- shelter : housing (with all taxes related to it)
- water : being privatised more and more
- food : we all know this
- etc.

The common denominator is paper money, which is only covered by either the economical power of the country that emits it...or gold
And between the economical power of a country and gold, I would go for gold...especially now

Yet again, your arguments are not wrong, far from it, but I just think we are on different strings of approach.

Which brings me back to the origin of the topic: bitcoins are even worse than paper money, but it's just an opinion

I am sorry but you are referring to gold standard, not me. And yes the one where the dollars was equivalent to gold is dead, not the gold as a refuge value. All countries are on a gold collection spree

Very interesting point you stated. So my question is the following:
Which would you prefer to have gold or paper money, knowing that paper money's value is based on the country's economical strength which weavers (like what is happening since 2008)?

- air: you can just breathe - ok on that one
- shelter: buy land/house
- water: have cash to pay for it, or collect it from your land (ground water)
- food: have cash to pay for it, or grow it

if you fear for the scarcity of these items, you can acquire them now directly. no need to buy gold.

Bitcoins are as real, tangible and useful as gold.

They are:

- existentially real (essentially frozen electricity)
- unique due to mathematics (can't be forged)
- industrially useful (cost effective and rapid electronic transfer of wealth)

Also, unlike fiat currencies, Bitcoin can't be inflated since there's an absolute maximum on how many can be minted (if that floats your boat; personally I'm a Keynesian, but still think Bitcoins are very cool for storing and transferring value).

Then I don't understand your argument at all.

You need the fiat money. You need it to pay taxes. If you sell everything you own and invest all your money in Gold and at a later point in time for some reason you are not allowed or not capable to sell the Gold again to pay your taxes/fees/bills with Swiss Francs you are insolvent. I don't know what is hard to understand about it. You are speculating on a rising or constant price for Gold. Gold and Swiss Francs are not the same and not interchangeable.

Read what is written above. Money. Clearly money. You need it. Having a part invested in Gold, shares, real estates or rice - why not? When you think demand will rise? It is speculation never the less. The fundamental value to which you are calculating your profit and losses is still Swiss Francs.

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"Sometimes it's hard to tell the living from the dead" -- Edgar Winter

I just love the 1 year Gold chart V CHF & USD, with both countries printing like hell gold price has collapsed
http://www.kitco.com/gold_currency/i...&otherChart=no
USD has even beaten the CHF over 12 months......

to be fair, USD has beaten EUR (understandably) and CHF has pegged to EUR...

Well some fool thought it was a good idea at the time