The reason is that gold is itself a useless piece of metal (electronics and jewellery notwithstanding). Its only use is as a hedge against the gov't issued currency. Therefore, to bet that gold increases in value means you're betting against the country you're in doing well.
But in that case, you're better off buying a bunker and bullets and long life stored goods. because gold is useless if the country you're in fails!
The only other use for gold as far as i see is to dodge a country's foreign exchange restrictions, to launder money discretely, and to dodge inheritance taxes (if that's even possible with gold jewellery...).
> The reason is that gold is itself a useless piece of metal (electronics and jewellery notwithstanding)
Gold being an excellent conductor while being mostly inert, solid at room temperature and highly malleable seems to be a pretty useful set of properties.
> because gold is useless if the country you're in fails!
Not entirely true. You have to look at why gold became one of the earliest mediums for exchange in the first place. I'd list six primary properties:
1. High density
2. Relative scarcity
3. Distinct appearance
4. Solid
5. Inert
6. Malleable
It turns out density is a really important one. Why? Imagine your country stamps gold coins. If you can take a coin of unknown origin and weigh it against a known good coin, you can pretty easily detect a forgery by it having lower weight. Gold isn't the densest element but it pretty much was until modern times. The only one other that was reasonably accessible was platinum, which was pretty valuable in its own right.
Even the apocalypse will have trade and need a medium for exchange.
> The only other use for gold as far as i see
You're not looking far enough. Gold has been used in places where the local currency has become questionable due to, say, inflation, (effective or actual) government confiscation and so on. Even refugees as recent as the Vietnam War would try and escape with gold.
In recent years India tried to invalidate bank notes in circulation with very little notice that set off a bit of a panic. That's not a problem gold has.
> Imagine your country stamps gold coins. If you can take a coin of unknown origin and weigh it against a known good coin, you can pretty easily detect a forgery by it having lower weight.
That hasn't been required since the middle ages. So if modern society reverts back to using gold for trade (because there isn't a currency left, that's what the dollar collapse means), I'd rather have stocked up bullets and kill those who has the stuff i want, rather than trade for it. After all, there's no guarentee that they won't just shoot me in the back after the trade anyway.
What i'm saying is that anyone in a western country that invests in gold is implicitly investing in a hedge against collapse of the dollar (or currency in general). And in the event of a collapse, the gold is going to be useless, if you don't have the bullets to back it up and defend yourself.
Or, speculate on the price - sell when it's high, buy when it's low. But that's literal gambling, not investing.
But in that case, you're better off buying a bunker and bullets and long life stored goods. because gold is useless if the country you're in fails!
The only other use for gold as far as i see is to dodge a country's foreign exchange restrictions, to launder money discretely, and to dodge inheritance taxes (if that's even possible with gold jewellery...).