What is it that you're arguing for then? That there be some entity that gets to decide what is and isn't a productive use of all of our excess money? Who gets to decide what's excess? Who gets to decide what is and isn't a productive use of the money?

How is this any different than buying a house? Buying a house that's already been built is pretty damn close to the same thing as buying gold. No new "work" is being done into the economy, you're just exchanging dollars for an asset that will likely appreciate a bit faster than inflation but less than $SPY.

The person you bought it from can do something else with that money, sure, but that's also true of the other person in your transaction to buy gold.

Maybe you'll say a house has more utility than bars of gold, but all of this at the end of the day, seems to come down to your specific views and judgements of what it means for capital to be used productively. So to circle back to the beginning, what is it you're advocating for here? That because you don't see gold as a low risk hedge against inflation as being "productive" it should face more taxes to incentivize it not happening?

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freedomben 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Buying a house that's already been built is pretty damn close to the same thing as buying gold. No new "work" is being done into the economy, you're just exchanging dollars for an asset that will likely appreciate a bit faster than inflation but less than $SPY.

I mostly agree with you, but I don't think the house comparison is good. Houses require lots of maintenance, and to hold their value (comparable to other houses) they often need remodeling every decade or so. If instead of houses we just said "land" then I think the comparison would hold up more.

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mapontosevenths 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, im not arguing that it should be illegal. Im just saying, as Warren Buffet before me did, that its not an investment.

It relies on the greater fool theory to produce excess returns. It is bad for the economy when money idles in non productive speculative assets.

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amanaplanacanal 11 hours ago | parent [-]

The money didn't disappear, it just changed hands.

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mapontosevenths 10 hours ago | parent [-]

You are forgetting the opportunity cost. The gold does not generate wealth it just stores value, like a mattress stuffed with bills. It has become a dead, stagnant, and unproductive thing and by doing that it has removed value from the overall economy that was previously there.

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amanaplanacanal 8 hours ago | parent [-]

How? The money that was used to buy it is now in the hands of somebody else that can invest it. Nothing was lost. It just changed hands.

	▲	mapontosevenths 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There are two sides to every transaction. In this case 1/2 of the trade is a dead end. In another hypothetical transaction we might see that the money was instead used to pay for services, and that profit was then spent on food, and then it was spent on fertilizer, and then it was spent on chemicals, and then it was spent on mining, and then it was spent on energy, and then it was invested in.... You get the idea. You can follow a single dollar around the world for years. The money is exchanged, and then exchanged again and again generating profits and adding value to the economy with every exchange. With the purchase of gold that half of the transaction is instead just... dead. The money is no longer in the economy, it's locked in some dudes junk drawer or a safe instead. Worse, it's not being used to generate excess returns like all of the items above are. Gold is just... useless. Except of course as a store of value, but even then it's only good if you think the dollars value will decrease and don't care that it's not great for the world around you to extract money from the economy and render it effectively dead.

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michaelmrose 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You either maintain the house for others use and extract rent or live in it. This is productive.

If you are hoarding an unused house we should heavily tax that to make it unreasonable to do so.