> on a general note I feel like everything in US is translating into a money fight. from congress to law to carpool lanes, there seems to be only one goal left that matters in life, money.
It it could be seen as a return to the "gilded age"...
Gold... if shit hits the fan with today's population densities, the only currencies that will matter will be food, fuel, drugs (alcohol & tobacco) and ammunition.
why the downvotes? the distributed, permissionless transactions seems to be a design goal for cryptocurrencies. if so they are perfect for dystopia given some mass communication mean exists, even something like ham radio will do.
What makes you think they'd be more useful than gold in such a situation? In much the same way the have no direct use, and their use requires wasting scarce resources (energy, bandwidth) on performing transactions.
for the scenarios you are thinking about you are better off holding lead instead of gold. you can always acquire gold if you have lead.
jokes aside IMO there is a lot of very short term thinking even for the richest because majority of wealth today sits in stock market and real estate and they depend very strongly on civilization status quo continuing. the root cause IMHO is dysfunction at the congressional level which is basically our prefrontal cortex as nation.
I would think gold wouldn't be worth anything in the modern world if civilization actually collapsed.
You would need a semi-robust trading market as well as an upper class who can afford to not spend resources on survival to trade gold for necessities, wouldn't you?
Probably. But gold is more useful than electronic money. Gold has inherent value because it's a metal that's easy to hammer into useful objects that won't corrode and it's pretty. (Although it's too soft for things like knives and most other tools.)
It it could be seen as a return to the "gilded age"...