A Fantasy of Gold.

[Terraka]

1. Scientist will be super rich, yes? (warmup question)

2. How would this affect the economy of the world as a whole? What with gold and lead going in and out of each other yes?

3. Would this breakthrough decrease the price of gold? And what about lead (duh) ?

4. What will happen to Zimbabwe? Another great country will rise?

5. So let's say everyone acknowledges this as "A breakthrough of a lifetime", and every country wants it. But if you were to think about this generally, gold would be pretty much common everywhere right? So it will decrease in value (still has its properties) right? Now. Pretend USA already expected this, so he pays extra to the scientist to not sell the schematics for this processing machine to any other country other than USA, and a British spy discovers this deal. So he sends the news to the rest of the world. What will happen then? Disagreement in trust? Saboteurs trying to wreck the machine? OR in the worst case, war?

1) Yes, the scientist will probably be very rich. If not for the reason of making gold, then for the reason that there will be A LOT of other people out there trying to see if this technology can do other transmutations.

2)This will probably have a small impact on the world economy, though mainly the decrease in price of lead and gold. I suspect that lead and gold will both be similiar in prices after this, but with gold still being higher, because lead would still need to be "refined".

3)This would probably decrease the price of gold/lead, because gold will become very common, and not a luxury good anymore. From an economic standpoint, you always have an equilibrium between the supply and demand. With this technology, demand will go down, as gold becomes less valuable, but supply will rise (because you can just transmute). As a result, you must lower the price to attract more customers.

4) I doubt much would happen... because well... like my statement in the above, these nations will enjoy some profit and economic growth at the beginning, but as gold/lead devalues, they will be back to where they were to begin with.

5) I doubt anything important would happen. Yeah, there may be some demands from other nations for the US to release such information, but it wouldn't really for the sake of making more gold (As I said before, refer to number 3 for why). It would be more for the sake of learning more about this transmutation technology. But unless this machine can create something like deuterium or Plutonium from a piece of crap, I doubt wars or anything will happen.
It wouldn't surprise me though, if other nations sent spies to try and steal the information about the Gold-->lead Machine though. As I said, they would want the technology. Not necessarily the gold, just the technology.

**Gold really isn't all that important. A couple of nice chemical properties... but... in the modern world it doesn't hold much of a value except as a luxury metal.**

[Amon]

1. Scientist will be super rich, yes? (warmup question)

2. How would this affect the economy of the world as a whole? What with gold and lead going in and out of each other yes?

3. Would this breakthrough decrease the price of gold? And what about lead (duh) ?

4. What will happen to Zimbabwe? Another great country will rise?

5. So let's say everyone acknowledges this as "A breakthrough of a lifetime", and every country wants it. But if you were to think about this generally, gold would be pretty much common everywhere right? So it will decrease in value (still has its properties) right? Now. Pretend USA already expected this, so he pays extra to the scientist to not sell the schematics for this processing machine to any other country other than USA, and a British spy discovers this deal. So he sends the news to the rest of the world. What will happen then? Disagreement in trust? Saboteurs trying to wreck the machine? OR in the worst case, war?

1- No.

2- It wouldnt affect.

3- The gold price would be the same and the lead price would be extremelly high more than the gold price, so no1 would buy it cuz the lead would be just useful to make gold but if it is more expensive than gold theres no point in buying it to make gold.
Gold price would be the same cuz nothing would change.

4- No cuz no1 would buy lead.

5- if they made the machine and dindt tell any1 they would get as much lead as they could, make gold and sell it, but if any other country discovers it they would try to get lead aswell and Zimbabwe will notice, everyone will want lead and Zimbabwe will increase the price of it even higher than gold or they would keep the lead for themselfs to make gold and that would make gold cheap like a simple rock and Zimbabwe would be poor again.

Summary:

It wouldnt change anything.

[Amon]

Originally Posted by slingblader

In all honesty, and while it's off subject, that's not really true. The entire world together probably couldn't do much to make America do anything. If they brought it to a nuclear level.... hello apocalypse

theres not going to exist a 3rd world war, nuclear and bio bombs were created for one reason, to make ppl fear them, they know that if they start a war everybody will die.

The peace we are having now exist cuz of the fear, fear makes ppl think twice before they act.

[Terraka]

Originally Posted by Amon

theres not going to exist a 3rd world war, nuclear and bio bombs were created for one reason, to make ppl fear them, they know that if they start a war everybody will die.

The peace we are having now exist cuz of the fear, fear makes ppl think twice before they act.

Deterrence. That's the main thing keeping this world together =D
It's actually really sad, isn't it?

[manofsparrow]

Originally Posted by Amon

theres not going to exist a 3rd world war, nuclear and bio bombs were created for one reason, to make ppl fear them, they know that if they start a war everybody will die.

Not everyone's afraid to die.

The peace we are having now exist cuz of the fear, fear makes ppl think twice before they act.

Where have you been in the past 50 years?

[Shichirou]

Originally Posted by Prinny

Okay. Let's say you have a situation where a scientist just recently found out how to make gold out of a substance less valuable than gold using a secret machine (No properties of gold are lost even after process), lets say this substance was lead. You know the properties of gold: Never rust, really hard, never bends, high quality, used to make high-class accessories (jewellery, watches, etc.). Of course it's high-sought yes?




Now. Lets say the current value of items in this world are stated here


ITEMS / VALUE

Gold 100
Silver 95
Platinum 140
Lead 30
Mushrooms ???


And the only place lead is found in is...Zimbabwe. An LEDC - Less Economically Developed Country. Quite poor in the arts of trade, no offence. Well maybe not, but they aren't really as successful as the big countries like UK and US of A. If everyone were to find this out, they would want to buy the schematics of this processing machine from the scientist right? So the scientist ups the price SUPARRR high.

But these are the questions:

1. Scientist will be super rich, yes? (warmup question)

2. How would this affect the economy of the world as a whole? What with gold and lead going in and out of each other yes?

3. Would this breakthrough decrease the price of gold? And what about lead (duh) ?

4. What will happen to Zimbabwe? Another great country will rise?

5. So let's say everyone acknowledges this as "A breakthrough of a lifetime", and every country wants it. But if you were to think about this generally, gold would be pretty much common everywhere right? So it will decrease in value (still has its properties) right? Now. Pretend USA already expected this, so he pays extra to the scientist to not sell the schematics for this processing machine to any other country other than USA, and a British spy discovers this deal. So he sends the news to the rest of the world. What will happen then? Disagreement in trust? Saboteurs trying to wreck the machine? OR in the worst case, war?


Btw this is not a question in school or exam or something, it is merely a little puzzle that I LOVE to think about, cuz I always fantasize about making gold artificially. Oh lulz me and my fantasies.

1 - Duh lol :P Or assassinated.

2 - Well it would dramtically change the word's economy.

3 - Price of gold and lead would be almost the exact same.

4 - Zimbabwe would come into fortune although wouldn't become great, all the money they earn would be put into the community and improving standards of living there.

5 - Too long of a question and i couldn't get my brain to read it all due to the time.

[Captain_Cool]

1. No. Because of the fact buyers could get gold for much cheaper at other dealers they wouldnt buy it from the scientist.

so since the scientist cant sells his gold. all the other questions fail.

[Admiral Awesome (115 votes)]

Originally Posted by Captain_Cool

1. No. Because of the fact buyers could get gold for much cheaper at other dealers they wouldnt buy it from the scientist.

so since the scientist cant sells his gold. all the other questions fail.

Eventually that price drop will cause the dealers to go out of business because of fees they have to pay to get the merchandise into the store in the first place(not to mention salaries for their workers). There will be a point when profits are no longer being made and they will quit. The scientist simply turns the lead into gold, no middlemen.

[Joale]

I believe all currency is backed by the global economy(stocks and what have you), gold isn't really the chief thing now....due to economics the prices for lead and gold would even out. This wouldn't change anything really except for the scientist becoming rich, and people losing money on gold as it drops in value.
(The computer/electric industries would probably be affected more since gold is a great conductor for circuit boards and wires....but other than that it's too soft to be useful for much else)