Gold: The world’s monetary standard.
Valued at approximately US $1,300 per ounce (at the time of this posting), it is the go-to commodity in times of economic depression.
Gold’s market worth is driven by supply and demand which are currently diminishing and skyrocketing, respectively. It is already an astonishingly rare metal and we have nearly exhausted underground reserves in our pursuit for more of it, yet we continue to rape the land in search of new seams completely justified by our insatiable appetite for more of the yellow metal.
This appetite has shaped human history which is a testament to gold’s solid grip on our psyches.
Another testament to its power over the human mind is what lengths we will go to mine it.
A recent television show introduced me to a town with the distinction of being the highest elevation human habitation in the world. It is called La Rinconada and is located near a gold mine in the Peruvian Andes.
What also makes this town unique is how the inhabitants make a living there. The workers are not paid a wage for mining the gold. They practice what is called the cachorreo system which means that they are obligated to work 30 straight days for no pay and then allowed one day to take as much ore as they can carry on their shoulders in hopes of extracting what gold they can for themselves.
They are literally toiling for a sack of rocks because too often they come up empty when those rocks are crushed and their contents exposed to mercury and heat to extract the meagre amount of gold contained within.
These people choose this life because they believe they have no other choice.
Then again, what if money never existed in the first place to drive the need for gold? If we sought gold only for its artisanal value but did not value it enough to despoil the planet when easily accessible sources disappeared, then we would be living in a different world indeed.
That revolutionary thinking would likely make the inhabitants of La Rinconada come down from the mountains and choose instead to live a long and healthy life.
