Gold Stacking and Ethics

[Pipers]

37 minutes ago, kimchi said:

The problem is 'we' don't pay the global price for the land and potential gold beneath it. There is no global market price for such land. We either pay local prices for the land (which may seem like a small fortune for the folk that live there, but is just a few $s for us), we pay them a bit of a premium (which seems like a windfall to them), we force them off or (historically at least) we just kill them and take it anyway.

Gaddiffi was matey with Blair for a brief time, remember that? Then suddenly he was planning a pan-African global currency backed by gold. The next thing you know we have live footage from the Whitehouse as Obama and Hillary whoop and holler at him being speared up the rear end and decapitated by folks they probably financed and armed.

It's not rocket science.

 

Yes his third way, the Green book!

[Cacc]

The beautiful catch 22. The only way to stop destruction of land from mining is to make what is being mined worth less than the cost to mine. Take something like gold and drop the price below mining cost and everyone who likes shiny things or has in their head the "real value" of gold will buy it up. When they buy it up then there is a shortage of supply so prices have to be raised to slow down demand...then it is valuable enough to mine again to increase supply. And silver being mostly a byproduct of other mining makes it a little harder to figure the exact cost of mining and that is why we all think it is so undervalued.

[kimchi]

15 hours ago, Martlet said:

I know the video(s) you refer to, fascinating.  It is economical if you can gain enough scale to cover the labour and invest in machines to automated as much as possible.  IT kit is sent to recycling for this reason, they also strip and recycle copper, other metals out of the mass of consumer product.  The thing left is the plastic, and much of that can be recycled if you have a use for the lower grade output.  In the process there's an amount of energy and a lot of chemicals used, so its not without some impact.  Friend of mine works in the local scrapyard, I was surprised how much they do recycle nowadays.

That's good to hear, I've been wondering about that. There was a radio phone in recently about household recycling and a chap rang up who used to work for them. Hopefully things have changed but he said e.g. on PET bottles the number on the bottles represents the quality for recycling, and no-one is interested in the lower or ungraded stuff (e.g. food trays etc) so it just got burned with the other non-recyclables. He said energy was still produced and there was zero pollution (!) and was so confident about it he said he didn't bother to recycle himself at home at all!

[Kman]

I too have thought about this after seeing a very crude gold mine where they used toxic chemicals and just released it into the natural surroundings 

I also heard about Nazis taking victims gold fillings and I thought "god id hate to have a coin made out of a victims gold filling" 

I have a creative mind and and am naturally anxious, this often leads to  imagination and often overzealous worries 

I think it's good you're so moral @onlyroadtoheaven but I also feel sorry for you as I know it adds a lot more grief to daily life 

Selfishly id like to be like JunkBond and not worry about these types of things, but I fear what type of world we would live in then if we were all so dismissive 

 

 

[PansPurse]

7 minutes ago, Kman said:

I too have thought about this after seeing a very crude gold mine where they used toxic chemicals and just released it into the natural surroundings 

I also heard about Nazis taking victims gold fillings and I thought "god id hate to have a coin made out of a victims gold filling"

If you want an ethically sourced one I could leave you my gold crown in my will... you can own it on paper in the meantime if you like

[kimchi]

That's a good point about the Nazi gold @Kman

At least it's a fairly good bet Libya's gold ended up in private hands (Clinton, Obama). It's a sobering thought to consider that he was probably taken out because he was planning a pan-African currency backed by gold. And I was reminded last night that Gaddafi warned that Libya was the cork bottling up mass immigration to Europe, and if it fell we'd see it within five years, yet they did it anyway to keep Africa under the petro-dollar so we could continue to expoit the continent at our leisure

It's also got me thinking about my Sovs with the history of the British Empire...

In short this thread has really cheered me up lol, but if gold becomes part of the solution to wipe away the psychopaths at the top of government and finance then it'd be rather fitting I think. Yes I think that's how I'll try to think of it

 

 

[kimchi]

18 minutes ago, PansPurse said:

If you want an ethically sourced one I could leave you my gold crown in my will... you can own it on paper in the meantime if you like

Will you do me free postage if I reserve a kidney too?

[PansPurse]

7 minutes ago, kimchi said:

Will you do me free postage if I reserve a kidney too?

Sure... Not sure what the legal implications are... Also, frankly, the tooth will probably withstand the ravages of my lifestyle better...

[onlyroadtoheaven]

1 hour ago, Kman said:

I think it's good you're so moral @onlyroadtoheaven but I also feel sorry for you as I know it adds a lot more grief to daily life 

Selfishly id like to be like JunkBond and not worry about these types of things, but I fear what type of world we would live in then if we were all so dismissive 

 

 

Ahhh, but you/I/anyone shouldn't worry about the grief about leading a morally correct life. Its more about the satisfaction of doing something good, and hopefully that good will be replicated by the recipient. Anyway, I wont get too spiritual else before I know it I will be wearing orange robes and leading a cult.

I choose to overlook the destruction of land and villages for the shiny stuff that I hope will make me money (I even invest directly into mining companies ... for now). However I live in the New forest and if gold was found there then I would protest against proposed mines and stop collecting. I know it doesn't make sense but its the attitude that if its on your door step and affects you then you get involved. if not then you ignore it.

Bloody human nature.

[KDave]

44 minutes ago, onlyroadtoheaven said:

Ahhh, but you/I/anyone shouldn't worry about the grief about leading a morally correct life. Its more about the satisfaction of doing something good, and hopefully that good will be replicated by the recipient. Anyway, I wont get too spiritual else before I know it I will be wearing orange robes and leading a cult.

I choose to overlook the destruction of land and villages for the shiny stuff that I hope will make me money (I even invest directly into mining companies ... for now). However I live in the New forest and if gold was found there then I would protest against proposed mines and stop collecting. I know it doesn't make sense but its the attitude that if its on your door step and affects you then you get involved. if not then you ignore it.

Bloody human nature.

I agree with your first point, satisfaction and purpose are important to keep you going and striving and if this is achieved by doing 'good' then all the better, depending on what is considered good of course.   It is all for personal gain. People saying we need to stop destroying Canadian wilderness are signalling their virtue to make themselves feel good, getting that satisfaction reward. Non of it is selfless.

The second point is classic not in my back yard mentality. You would boycott gold if a mine was opened up in your garden of course everyone else would too I bet. People were kicking off about Fracking not long ago because some of them value their drinking water above the questionable economic benefits to themselves. Some wanted to preserve the view from their upstairs bedroom window. Some of them didn't live anywhere near the place and just wanted to feel good about themselves. Combined together you get the consensus value judgement and no Fracking. Human nature all of it. Value judgements.

We tell ourselves stories that we are right, superior, we have morality and ethics, but reality says that we are wrong more often than we are right, we are fragile and weak and that when our environments change our morality and ethics change. History is littered with examples. Bloody human nature. 

[PansPurse]

11 minutes ago, KDave said:

I agree with your first point, satisfaction and purpose are important to keep you going and striving and if this is achieved by doing 'good' then all the better, depending on what is considered good of course.   It is all for personal gain. People saying we need to stop destroying Canadian wilderness are signalling their virtue to make themselves feel good, getting that satisfaction reward. Non of it is selfless.

[kimchi]

Virtue signalling, the most obvious meme/play/pisstake since the fake news nonsense put across mostly (here) by the BBC.

I was banned from one of the mainstream (digital brainwashing) 'popular culture' sites earlier this year for questioning 'fake news'. When I then googled that site and 'banning' the top hit took me to one of their own articles saying the Daily Mail wasn't being accepted for citations on Wikipedia because of its dubious factual content, and yet they ban me for saying the same thing!

You can't make this terrible up, seriously. We are at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia.

Now if you'll excuse me I stumbled across yet another transgender TV programme last night, so now need to go off and work out which of the now 34 'genders' I am so I can fill in some forms (you would think as I was born a hetero male and have always remained so it would be fairly simple, but alas it's not apparantly!).

Meanwhile I hear Saudi Arabia has granted its first robot/AI (Sofia - sp?) citizenship. All hail 'equality'!

[KDave]

To answer the kids question. They are obviously trying to save him from drowning because they are doing so.

If instead they stayed at home and said 'lets stop the child drowning', perhaps used a hashtag on twitter, perhaps they go on social media to tell everyone that they think saving the drowning kid is a good idea, then they are signalling how virtuous they are. 

Regardless, the point comes back to ever changing human values which are based on selfish needs, even when the actions appear selfless. Maybe the kid should have been left in the well. 

[PansPurse]

29 minutes ago, kimchi said:

Meanwhile I hear Saudi Arabia has granted its first driving license for a woman. All hail 'equality'!

Fixed that for you 

[Lowlow]

The reason we care is because we care about ourselves.  You don't throw down the crisp packet because you like living in a world that doesn't have crisp packets laying around everywhere, and maybe because you prefer sea otters over the bacteria that would benefit from eating their dead crisp packet suffocated corpse, but it is a very human centered view that sea otters are worth more than bacteria in the big scheme of things.  Humans are very selfish, we want diversity of life because it benefits us, we want clean air because it benefits us, we want a moderate climate because it benefits us, etc.  The Earth really doesn't care.  A million years is nothing in Earth time, and it won't take that long for evolution to repopulate the planet with life no matter what we do.  Even the pyramids will be gone in a few thousand years, and everything else we've created in less time than that.

But somewhere buried under a hundred feet of nuclear rubble, gold coins will still be in mint condition.

[matrawr]

Maybe poses the question how did the first gold/silver coin came about?

[Kman]

On 1/26/2018 at 17:18, kimchi said:

Now if you'll excuse me I stumbled across yet another transgender TV programme last night, so now need to go off and work out which of the now 34 'genders' I am so I can fill in some forms (you would think as I was born a hetero male and have always remained so it would be fairly simple, but alas it's not apparantly!).

I have kind of a mixed view on the gender stuff

The argument as I understand it is that people think gender is just a word, it's separate from biology and is a social construct, so they would prefer to be recognised as x, y, z or whatever they feel best suits them 

I suppose it's no different than an Arsenal supporter being offended if they were called a Spurs fan? (this might be a terrible explanation but just my attempt at understanding lol) 

Personally I don't care what people want to identify as, if they want to identify as a submarine, if it makes them genuinely happy and they aren't hurting anyone good luck to them. 

I think the problem is when not using this new language is considered a hate crime and made into law 

A small group of people shouldn't be able to bully the entire population because they're offended at something they just made up 

[Pipers]

How has this thread gone from gold/ethics to gender?  

Anyway, gold is sort after because it's sort after and it's scarcity.  The ethics of mining gold are the same as mining any other commodity people want gold mainly as a store of wealth, if gold was not used then another metal would be used  silver or copper.  Capitalism always drives technology forward so as concerns about chemical use ect increases within the mining industry new technology will come on board.  

 

 

[kimchi]

1 hour ago, Kman said:

I think the problem is when not using this new language is considered a hate crime and made into law 

A small group of people shouldn't be able to bully the entire population because they're offended at something they just made up 

Bingo.

Anyone can call themselves what they like imo, I don't care, and I'm a polite fellow so will never be rude about their personal choice (as long as it doesn't directly affect me negatively).

But there is blatantly a top-down 'hate crime' agenda here, and it's not just because Wallis Simpson was quite likely it seems a hermaphrodite, or that Tony Blair was (is?) a crossdresser.

[Kman]

This person has gone too far lol

 

[Xander]

1 hour ago, Kman said:

This person has gone too far lol

 

Hush Puppies!

[Lowlow]

"destroy the land ..."

 

What does that even mean, "destroy the land" ??

It apparently just means altered the land so it doesn't look as natural as it used to.  I don't see how you can "destroy.  the.  land."  It's land.  It's like trying to destroy water, do you have any idea how impossible it is to destroy water ?  You can taint it with impurities that humans don't like, you can turn it to steam, freeze it to ice, but it takes a fusion reactor to "destroy water".

Land is going to be there long after we're dead and gone as a species ... and as long as we don't taint it with nuclear fallout, the creatures that inhabit this earth in the future won't care.

Too much of this stuff is knee jerk reaction.  It's like people who get upset because someone throws an inert glass bottle into the ocean, even when that glass bottle becomes a home for sea creatures who live in it and is completely chemically inactive, it's like a perfectly shaped rock as far as sea creatures are concerned.  The trouble is, people don't like the way it looks, that's the only reason anybody cares, because they just don't like the idea of it being there, they like the "pristine wilderness" look and get upset whenever they see any presence of mankind, it shatters the illusion that they were the first human being to ever set foot there.

[KDave]

That is spot on. People don't like to think much about themselves or why they think a certain way, or why they do certain things or support certain ideas, which is the source of the problem, they would be outraged by a glass bottle on the beach and not really know why. To ask why they are personally outraged by a glass bottle on a planet full of beaches is just too much to ask on a day to day basis 

[Kman]

1 hour ago, Lowlow said:

"destroy the land ..."

 

What does that even mean, "destroy the land" ??

It apparently just means altered the land so it doesn't look as natural as it used to.  I don't see how you can "destroy.  the.  land."  It's land. 

I think more in terms of destroying animals habitats and felling trees? also potentially poisoning the surrounding area if done crudely

AKA making the land inhabitable 

 

[PansPurse]

Good to know there's so many people who'd rather live on an industrial estate than a small village in the Cotswolds.