[ExI] Gold

[Dan]

You're right to point to supply and demand factoring in the price of gold. To keep a severe price drop from happening, though, would require that the demand increase to meet the new supply. (By the way, not to diss you or anyone else, but I made a similar argument in the last decade regarding platinum from asteroids. I mean the price will likely drop, but who knows where demand will be? In other words, one can't simply predict: more supply, lower price -- unless one knows that demand will either remain the same or drop.) While gold is useful for a variety of things, I do believe the price will drop and drop a lot. I don't have a clue how low it will go. (And, of course, expectations will play a big role here. If investors in gold expect the price to drop, they might start to change their investments factoring that in. They do not, of course, individually and collectively, have perfect foresight (no one does, so attempts to out-predict are likely to fail
 too), so they might overshoot or undershoot.)

I don't see this happening right away though. Think of nanotech. I first read about it in the 1990s. By now, I thought we'd have already had either a nanotech singularity or at least nanotech in many everyday items. I'm sure it's going to take off, but when? It might be more like a logistics curve here too and where still in the flat portion, trying to figure out when it's going to ramp up (and then when the ramping up is going to flatten out again).
 
Regards,


Dan
 See my SF short story "Residue":
http://www.amazon.com/Residue-ebook/dp/B00BS3T0RM/ -- US
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- UK
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00BS3T0RM -- Canada
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