3 Reasons to Turn to Gold: Consumers, Conquest, and Chaos

The current geopolitical rift has turned debt from lucrative investment back into the lack of money, and is pushing governments to reconsider the stability of the current monetary scheme based on the greenback, while consumer trends, and space exploration steers towards greater demand for precious metals. One precious metal in particular circumvents all three challenges, gold.

The price of gold on the 1 year scale is relatively low, however, from August 23 – 24, a sharp jump of 1.6% maybe signs of a bullish rush towards gold as a safe haven for capital as geopolitics around the globe becomes increasingly on edge.

Since the war on terror was instigated by the US in retaliation to the 9/11 attacks, sentiments for a global foundation of cooperation, and unity under international law have been on the decline. In place of the globalized world based on universal human rights and unified international law, a multi polarized world based on socio-cultural identity, and national legislation sovereignty is back on the rise.

 

The return of nationalism has been the recent buzz word for the peoples concerned of its resurgence ,as well as for the peoples who felt marginalized in nations taking on the pioneering burden, and headwind of globalization. As the people for globalization have gotten tired from facing the real problems of trying to provide a standard based on universal human rights to the drastically different ways of life around the globe, the people who aren’t inclined towards a universal standardized world, but feel the pinch of allocating resources towards it, are pushing back.

Notable shifts towards nationalistic inclination recently includes; Xi’s Chinese Dream policy that has manifested in maritime imperialism’s disputed island constructions; Russian nationalistic insurgence in the Ukraine leading to the annexation of Crimea continuing armed conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro Russian separatist militias; the Brexit vote and their barring from accepting refugees; Trump winning the US presidency with the America First slogan and subsequent protectionist tariff tactics; Recep Erdogan’s Ottoman great again rhetorics that has lead to the reversal of Turkeys progress in democratic competition, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press; and the 60,000 ultra right protesters in Poland calling for a white Europe.

Other than the negative factors that may or may not conjure back the age of gold coins, the prospect for the application of gold as a core component of future technologies is most certainly golden.

 

Space as humanity’s new frontier will be requiring a lot of gold for its most precious property: gold always stay gold. The electrical conductivity of silver maybe the greatest, and copper’s cost efficacy to conductivity rate is why most electric wires are made of copper, but for the super long haul of deep space exploration, gold would be the to go material for circuits for its corrosion resistance properties.

The physical nature of gold lets it rub against itself without causing excessive wear and tear from friction. Extreme heat from unfiltered radiation can cause oil and grease to evaporate, or freeze in the extreme below zero temperatures of outer-space, moving components made of gold can continue to function without the need of lubricants.

According to Geology.com, space vessels and vehicles are augmented with gold-coated polyester film to reflect infrared radiation from wreaking havoc on sensitive instruments and sensors, and to protect against heating from radiation absorption.

“Gold has a very high reflectivity in the infrared spectrum range, so it is ideal for directing heat,” stated Matthew Stephens of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Gold will be crucial if more humans are to go explore outer space as well, as the current astronaut helmet visors are coated with thin layers of gold to protect dangerous rays from causing serious harm to the women and men behind the awkward looking suits.

 

According to the World Gold Council, a single mobile device contains up to 50 milligrams of gold. Currently, nearly 1 billion cell phones are produced each year. Estimations are that 6 billion smartphones will be in circulation by 2020. Gold is not only use just in smartphones by the way, gold is also used in most personal desktop and laptop computers. It is used in CPU’s memory chips and the motherboard, enabling computer components to receive power and communicate data within before the computer transmits the human interface to your screen as the words you are reading now.

Whether gold will be reinstated as the world’s international standard currency through political strife, or not, gold will continue to be a valuable commodity as the material of the future.