Re: Survivalist Types


Robert Sturgeon wrote:
On 21 Mar 2006 06:48:31 -0800, "CanopyCo"
<Junk74020@xxxxxxx> wrote:

(snips)

Over all, it is just a difference of personality.
I can't count on anyone providing me with anything, so I want to know
how to make it myself if I need it.

You, on the other hand, count on someone else having extra and being
willing to sell it to you, and you having in inexhaustible supply of
money to buy it with.

Unless you have an inexhaustible supply of everything,
you'll eventually have to trade for what you don't have, but
do need.

Yes, eventually everyone needs to go to town.
Just that the more things that I can make myself, the less often I have
to pay someone else to make it for me.

That is why I keep a garden and a hardware store supply of tools.
I even mess with peg wood type of building so all I actually have to
have is a way to cut the wood.
That way I can make it myself.


Unless someone else has a surplus he's willing to
trade for what he doesn't have, it doesn't matter what you
do, short of going on a raid. The question at hand is -- is
pure barter a more efficient way of conducting trade, or is
mediated trade, using widely valued things, like precious
metal coins, more efficient? The answer is -- mediated
trade is more efficient. But precious metal coins are not
the only possible way of concentrating portable wealth.
Whiskey, .22 cartridges, chocolate bars, cigarettes -- all
these can be used.

Exactly.
That includes bartering with precious mettles too.
If they don't want gold, but do want whiskey, then the guy with the
whiskey will make the trade.

And I can make whisky from the crop that I grew, using the still I made
for found parts.
I can trade my work building things with the hardware store of tools
that I have.
I can trade my food out of my garden.
All of these things are things that will not run out.

Gold, on the other hand, was something that I had to go buy to have.
You got a gold mine?
Then what you going to do when the gold runs out?

But none of them are as good a form of
money as precious metal coins, because there will be people
who don't want chocolate bars, or .22 cartridges, or
whatever you have to trade. Then they will have to take
those things in trade and in turn sell them for what they do
want. The relative values of such things are far harder to
figure, and the "mark-up" on such things is far higher, than
the equivalents for coins. That's why money is the best
medium of exchange -- it is, by some definitions, the most
easily sold commodity, and thus the best form of
concentrated, portable wealth. The harder it is to get as
much for a given thing as you paid for it, the poorer it
serves as a medium of exchange and concentrated wealth. The
more universal the understanding of the market value of a
given thing, the better it serves as a medium of exchange.
The more concentrated the value of a given thing, the better
it serves as a portable, concentrated form of wealth.


Exactly.
Even now, right now, today, I cannot get anything for a gold ring,
compared to what I paid for it.
The medium of exchange today is not gold, so no one knows how to figure
its value.
Now, American money, that will buy stuff with no problem.
I get exactly what I paid for it everyplace I go.
Not so with gold, however.

Maybe that will change after the bottom falls out.
Likely so, with deflation.
But that will not educate people to what is actually gold, and what is
not.
So gold will only have a limited value.
A gun, on the other hand, will have a known value.
After all, anyone knows a gun when they see one, but few know gold form
gold plated when they see it.

Chocolate bars, .22 cartridges, cigarettes, and whiskey have
widely varying values between one brand and another,
between, in the case of the chocolate bars and cigarettes, a
fresh batch and a 10 year old batch, and between what one
person will take for any of them compared to the next
person. For example, a non-smoker will steeply discount a
carton of cigarettes, a teetotaler the same with whiskey, a
diabetic the same with chocolate bars, a non-.22-owner the
same with the .22 cartridges.

And a person that is not interested in gold will not be interested in
that.

They will know that they
won't use them themselves, and not having as good a "feel"
for their relative values, will not give as much for them as
they will for a more universal good, like a coin.

But only the coin accepted in that area.
American coins go over well here, but not Mexican coins.
And gold will get you nothing down at the Homeland today.


Really, this is simple economics, and the obvious need to
bother with it demonstrates my previous point about economic
ignorance.


Don't worry.
You ignorance can be changed threw education.
Stupid is the one that is for ever. ;-)

.

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