Did not know that… but what about those, you know, “Chateaux l’Enfant 1949” (totally made-up name) that people pay like, idk, $5,000 for a bottle??
Clayton -
Along these lines of thinking, I believe you’d find firearms and ammo particularly valuable.
That type of wine would be great for the border guard and his boss (or her boss; don’t want to be sexist).
I know this one gets thrown out a lot, but in any thread that starts to get primitivist or post-apocalyptic in tone, I think this quote needs to be thrown in:
“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interests of everyone hang on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.”
- LvM, Socialism
I heard that in the last fiat collapse in Czechoslovakia that those little airline-sized bottles of hard liquor were in high demand as a unit of measure for all kinds of trading.
That isn’t money. The point of money is that nearabout everyone accepts it for money. When you start talking about stockpiling salt, tobacco, spirits, bullets and gasoline you aren’t storing future money, you’re getting ready for barter economy.
Marko raises a good point—are you trying to prepare yourself for a barter economy?
I would buy toilet paper. A few years ago I read an online account of one man’s life in communist Poland; he worked in a managerial position in one of the regime’s newspapers and in addition to his salary every week, he would also be given a bar of soap and a couple rolls of toilet paper. I guess communism and the destruction of civilization share a common trait—lack of toilet paper.
Commodity money is money. Thats why it has to be durable, fungible, divisible, and have inherent use-value. I am pretty sure this is per mises.