Water, food, and defenses are the three things that have value when there is no government to back the shiny metals. You can take all the gold in Fort Knox, but if there's no system in place to give anyone anything they can use for that gold it's just a pile of shiny metal.
And no, no one with any common sense in a scenario where everything has fallen apart is going to trade their food and water for gold with the hopes that society will rebuild to the point where it has "value" in time for it to matter.
Government only backs the purity of the metal and assigns a "dollar" value to it...$50 for an oz of Gold, when in reality it's going for around $2000/oz. Gold has intrinsic usefulness that can be stored and never loses its properties over time, which is why it's such a good store of value. It can also easily be traded in other countries.
Water, food, and defenses are the three things that have value when there is no government to back the shiny metals. You can take all the gold in Fort Knox, but if there's no system in place to give anyone anything they can use for that gold it's just a pile of shiny metal.
And no, no one with any common sense in a scenario where everything has fallen apart is going to trade their food and water for gold with the hopes that society will rebuild to the point where it has "value" in time for it to matter.
Government only backs the purity of the metal and assigns a "dollar" value to it...$50 for an oz of Gold, when in reality it's going for around $2000/oz. Gold has intrinsic usefulness that can be stored and never loses its properties over time, which is why it's such a good store of value. It can also easily be traded in other countries.
Gold also cannot be counterfeited, and the total gold available, while slowly increasing, is also known.
People don't understand what "money" really is.
It's literally in the constitution! People just aren't educated on what money is.