隨筆

So I occasionally listen to various contrarian investing viewpoints on youtube. One of these are super long physical precious metals (gold, silver, platinum etc.) and think the world (especially central banks) is falling apart. Which I don't think will literally happen but fair. (I also bought some gold and silver as the prices were rising). Anyway, they brought to my attention recent news that the EU is trying to "indefinitely freeze" billions of dollars of Russian assets in an European bank and using them as a "loan" to Ukraine. (tl;dr: confiscate Russian money held in EU banks and giving the money to Ukraine). Things would be pretty interesting if that goes through. Today it's Russia. Maybe someday it'll be the Chinese? (am I "Chinese" within this context? probably.) My understanding of "rule of law" slowly evolved over the years -- these days I mostly understand it from a private property perspective, i.e. that the state isn't going to confiscate your property and take it. This is the (original) bougie take. Not really caring about public justice, just making sure the government is going to preserve existing power structure, and that the state is not going to go rogue and do a commie revolution. It's the only thing the middle class and above *really* care about. Things are slightly different in the international relations context, but on this point it's the same. And the rule of law truly is a cornerstone of modern economy. Bank's generally don't defraud you (except in very very subtle ways like printing money with a central bank -- but that can be mitigated). And generally it's safer to keep money in a bank than digging a hole in your backyard and stashing your gold (note: I don't have a backyard). It's also safer than trying to remember your crypto private keys or managing a hardware wallet. I mean. I have seriously weighed the risks of the alternatives, and I honestly don't like the idea of making a technical mistake and accidentally lose $1M worth of BTC, or getting my house burgled and losing $1M of gold or silver coins. (And gold is a cool thing because you can carry a lifetime earnings worth of gold in a suitcase.) If rule of law (in the financial domain) is starting to look risky, perhaps real estate property could be an alternative. The premium is extremely high (transaction costs and costs of ownership is high, returns are low), but it's an alternative.