[chaostheory]

It’s a great metric at the moment for the reasons that you’ve given. We are living in a period of crisis and instability. Just like in that time, we are close to yet another global war. The difference is whether or not nuclear weapons will keep things from further escalating.

[eru]

> We are living in a period of crisis and instability.

What? We are living in a golden age of unprecedented peace and prosperity. By and large, people never had it so good.

[Dalewyn]

The west (and some tag-alongs like Japan) is living in a golden age of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

The world at large has other ideas, especially continental Asia and the Middle East where people seemingly can't stop brutally killing each other.

[eru]

Have you had a look at the graph of GDP per capita in eg Bangladesh recently?

PR China has also seen enormous advances in prosperity, and hasn't been in a major war in 70 years, either. In India obesity is a bigger problem than starvation. And approximately everyone can afford a smartphone, too.

South East Asia is doing fairly well, too, compared to historical averages. Even Sub Saharan Africa is finally starting to catch up.

Yes, there are still wars, alas. But by and large people are richer and living more peaceful lives.

We could look at statistics, if you wish. (I was looking for a graph of casualties of war over time for my previous comment, but couldn't find one that was recent enough, sorry.)

The founding Prime Minister of my own adopted home of Singapore wrote a book called 'From Third World to First'. And he's right.

[ithkuil]

We have to put things in perspective.

During the Balkan wars about 5% of Europe's population lived in a country that was at war.

Yet that time period was relatively peaceful compared to the first half of the 20th century where Europe went through two total conflicts.

Yet for me the war in Yugoslavia was of personal significance and I felt it and its longer term effects closely.

But it wouldn't be fair for me to just dismiss that the second half of the 20th century was a time of peace and prosperity in Europe, because a part of it was burning in flames and committing atrocities to who were their brothers 5 minutes before.

The precariousness of peace is what makes it so valuable.

Yes. There are conflicts all around the world. Wars. Oppression. Injustice. Racism.

I don't think that recognizing that we're living unprecedentedly peaceful and just times is going to make those conflicts and injustices worse.

Quite the contrary. I feel that never recognizing the successes and progress that humanity has made in many of those fronts is what will eventually doom us to regress.

[richk449]

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

[lesuorac]

But why is gold a better metric than anything else?

Like if there's a global war I bet people are going to want canned food much more than a gold chain. So should we use the price of chicken soup in 1944 vs 2023?

---

But yeah I also agree with eru; being "close to yet another global war" is a way better place to be than "actually in a global war". Considering pretty much every century has them.

[noxvilleza]

Precious metals (gold/silver) are very expensive given their weight, relatively easy to divide up, and won't significantly go stale or decompose (some oxidation will occur - sure). I'm sure there are other assets that this is also applicable to - it's just the categorical example I remember discussing with my accounting teacher ~19 years ago.

[eru]

> [...] and won't significantly go stale or decompose (some oxidation will occur - sure) [...]

Just to nerd out a bit: You can dissolve gold in some particularly strong acids, but it doesn't really diminish the value of the gold. The effort for getting it back into elemental form is small relative to the price it fetches.

Compare this to eg aluminium, or to make an even starker contrast: wood.

[djtango]

Yes - exactly this. Gold is nature's money. Every other asset wishes it was told but it's gold's chemistry that makes it a good store of value for exactly what you said. The relative cost to purify and reshape/melt etc is cheap wrt its value. Cf Platinum which is much harder

[eru]

Maybe. I wasn't making any comments on suitability as money, only on chemistry.

Historically, gold has been a decent enough base money. But people soon make up notes to stand in for that base money, and those notes (and fiduciary coins!) win in the market. (To explain, fiduciary coins are those that like notes promise to pay the bearer. By themselves, they are not made of valuable material.)

If you don't move your base money around much, and just let it sit in vaults, then the chemical qualities we talked about don't matter all that much.

See eg https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/rise-fall-gold-standard... for some background.

[djtango]

Yes and I was chiming in about how its chemistry is really quite unique which leads to its role in money.

Cu and Ag are far more prone to oxidation.

Its thanks to the relativistic effects that gold is so much more oxidation resistant. But the other adjacent metals are too hard and or too rare. Eg. Pt Ir Pd Rh etc

That coincidence of lustre (which is both pleasing but also a rough way for us to ascertain purity/quality before we had better tools), malleability, oxidation resistance and ease of purification (gold has a relatively low melting temp) all made it a fantastic candidate for storing wealth.

As someone who studied the periodic table I find it very fun to then appreciate how the properties of elements played their role in civilisation

Meanwhile things like diamonds are hard / impossible to subdivide and standardise so things like diamond coins or tokens are impractical

[noxvilleza]

Yeah I was just comparing it to other things that are very expensive (by weight and size) like, saffron, truffles, caviar, printer ink, etc.