More Valuable Than Gold

If worse ever comes to worst, gold is not the best thing to have. The best thing to have are all the skills that enable one to provide all one's needs themselves -- which is not something, many people living in cities are used to doing anymore. For that reason, people living in those conditions, would be the most vulnerable -- and gold will just be another useless thing that can't do anything, and thus, becomes worthless. Only things that can actually do something, have value. Just having them -- even if it lasts forever, has no value.

And if worse comes to worst, one needs to be able to produce something of value -- for their own use and consumption -- that might then be valuable and valued by others, and could be used in trade. But in a world of dire needs, gold would be the least valuable thing -- because it has no use. Most people get along fine without it -- and could conceivably, their whole lives.

In a world of survival, only those things that can sustain life immediately and directly, would have great value. So that justification for the value of gold -- is really the use of gold, which except for dentistry, has no use.

Of course that doesn't mean that a few people cannot value and hoard it, as though it was worth something, and even worth more than anything else -- which I can assure one it isn't, never has been, and never will be. In the worst case scenario, things that are usually free or cheap -- like air, water, and food, are much more valuable. And beyond that, shoes and bicycles, would be more useful than cars dependent on fuel.

Those who can care for themselves, will be much better off than those who need caregivers -- and beyond that, all the other professionals to maintain one's viability. Many in the urban areas have lost that capacity for self-sufficiency, and are almost totally dependent for survival and sustenance, on others -- which can be extremely advantageous in the best of times and conditions.

And so one does well to have that range of preparations and skills -- and not merely put all one's trust in gold, or any other one thing. That would be being able to access the knowledge of everyone else while also cultivating those skills enough to be able to be self-sustaining and self-sufficient if forced to do without that connection for an indefinite period of time.

Such an orientation is a sustainable lifestyle -- rather than the demand that others must provide those needs for them, under some kind of threat, coercion or even moral duty -- the will of the one, or even the many. And so, most people are now used to demanding that everyone else has to provide for them, rather than in first asking how they can provide for themselves -- much better.