Sunday 16 April 2023

Should You Buy Gold?

Recently someone said to me that they were planning to buy some gold which many people talk about. But is it a good idea?

Well like many things in life there are good reasons and bad reasons for buying gold. So why is gold valuable?

For two reasons, firstly it is rare, if all of the gold ever mined was put into the middle of a football field, the type of football is unimportant, you could sit in the stands and look at it all. If you tried the same thing with Silver, it would fill to the brim multiple football fields. Secondly gold does not rust, which means that it's durable. 

Until the Twentieth Century weddings rings were gold because they didn't rust and it symbolically meant eternity. But in times of trouble it had great value as gold rises in price during such times. So you can sell your wedding ring at a good price to help you through bad times, then when good times return and the price of gold goes down you could buy a new gold ring. Gold is a good, although imperfect, way to measure the health of the economy and of the international situation.

Which leads on to why you should buy gold, gold becomes more valuable in times of crisis and goes up in value. It's small and even shavings of gold can have value. It's also easy to hide and to carry and the worse things get the better it is to have.

However there are quite a few downsides to buying gold, as an investment, unlike nearly every other form of investment, it costs you money. You need to store and protect it. It does not earn investment and if times don't get worse you can lose money. A lot of money. And if you have gold how much is enough?

That is a very difficult question to answer.

However there is also another issue that I never hear people talk about when it comes to gold, what happens if the government decides to make the private ownership of gold illegal?

Now you might be thinking that that would be a pretty extreme situation and you would be right. But that exact thing happened a number of times in various countries during the Twentieth Century. Including in Britain and the United States. The private ownership of gold was illegal in Britain during both World Wars and it was illegal in the United States for 21 years, 1933-1954. Gold had to handed in for bonds or cash and you didn't get a choice about it. 

Gold as part of a balanced portfolio is I think a good thing, but most investments should be in things that will provide a financial return. If your investing more than 10% of your portfolio in precious metals I think your doing yourself a financial disservice.


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Monday 10 April 2023

Upon Hope The Book

 In reply to my tenth birthday post Lindsay Byrnes posted this:

There are many excellent essays that could form the basis of a book that can be self self published using Amazon for only a very token cost. You might be able to promote it and get some modest sales, but more impotently preserve 10 years of your thoughts and best efforts on an important political philosophy as an enduring legacy.
By registering copies with both national and state libraries you afford future generation the opportunity to read about a traditionalists view at that time..

Which was both a very nice thing to say and an interesting idea. So after much thought I have decided to see how far I can go with this idea. I spoke to an editor that I know and he said that a book of around 100 articles is doable, I want to do 120 articles, one from each month. But at the same time I don't think I'm the best person to decide what should be cut. I have started recruiting people that I know but there may be people here who would be interested in helping out.

What I want is for me to select a random month and for people to number the articles from 1 (the best) to whatever number there is for that month. In reality the first and second are the most important. 

If anyone is interested send me an email: uponhopeblog(AT)gmail.com

Tuesday 4 April 2023

Why Are They Doing All Of This?

Yesterday I received an unexpected phone call, a friends wife called to talk to me about the WEF, the World Economic Forum. She has had a rapid, in her words, awakening. Over the past few months she has started to notice their agenda and how it affects us. During our conversation she said 'it's all about money'. But is it?

I mean she certainly isn't the only person to make this claim and it has a certain logic to it. People like money and one interesting thing about having money is that you notice that no matter how much you have someone else has more. Even if your the richest man on Earth there are still institutions and governments richer than you. Which can give some people the impetus to get richer, even when they are already absurdly rich.  Greed certainly has a place in answering the question, why are they doing all of this.

However it also has it's limits, it might explain how greed plays it's part, but how does it explain people who can never benefit financially?

Why are they going along with these ideas?

I think the answers lies in two areas, non-involvement and belief. Non-involvement is all those people who are complacent, scared or otherwise doing nothing. They go along with it because they don't want to be involved, they don't rock the boat. So they just do whatever they need to do, no matter how bad that is.

But many people do it because they believe it. They believe that these ideas or actions will lead to a better world and that they are one of the things that will create this better world. Amongst those who believe they can be further divided into two further groups, true-believers and ideologues. True-believers are those who truly believe in the ideas that they are pushing, They believe that it is urgent and viral, that others are naive and even evil for not believing as they do. The ideologues also believe what they push but they are more cynical. Because while they believe they also support other ideas and causes and they will betray any particular idea or cause for what they regard as the bigger cause. Their ideology.

Finally these ideas are not exclusive, it is possible for someone to believe and for them to be greedy for example. But what you can be certain of is that they are not doing for no reason at all, they always have a reason.


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