Do you care about conflict free gold?

See http://www.perthmintbullion.com/Blog/Blog/12-07-04/Perth_Mint_Gold_Certified_Conflict-Free.aspx:

"The Perth Mint's endorsement under the internationally recognised Conflict-Free Smelter Program will provide further customer assurance that our gold is obtained from ethically trustworthy sources."

Customer survey (unofficial, my curiosity): once this program gets rolled out, will you not buy coin/bar from someone not certified as conflict-free?

 

Just a little lost with the triple negative Bron, but assuming you're asking if I would avoid conflict gold,

my answer is no, I wouldn't avoid it. I would still buy gold without a certificate or whatever.

It's not that I don't mind, it's just that I don't care!

As soon as you go down that path you have to ask what happened to all that Nazi gold from melted down fillings...or all the Silver that Cromwell stole to pay for his New Model Army.

 

Nope, conflict-free gold will not protect my wealth any better than conflict gold.

 

Agreed. And what about all the gold that Spain looted from South America?

"Conflict free" everything has something noble about it. But quite frankly, in these days, I think people the world over are getting sick & tired of the utter hypocrisy of the world elite. One type of violence is unacceptable, but other types of violence (eg. financial repression) are acceptable.

How about this, a more noble stand:- let the world major powers now VOW not to sell any commodity to any other country which is engaged in violence against others. Ok... where does this leave us? China must cut off all supplies of REE to the USA, as they are used in missiles. Saudi Arabia must cut off all oil supplies to USA, as they are used to power the USA weapons of death which kill women & children the world over.

"Oh no..." they would say, "you can't extend this to REE and oil... we're only talking about gold and diamonds here... so lets not confuse the issues". Hypocrisy.

I'm ready to accept these much tighter restrictions, but they aren't. So who's on the high moral ground now?

EDIT1: And seeing as gold is born in super-novas, it is actually the product of one of the violent events in the universe.

EDIT2: Perth Mint has done the right thing. No doubt about it. It would be suicidal not to adopt this policy. It's doubtful that all the big mints worldwide will follow along, no matter what they profess; eg. the USA has drug laws, yet the CIA has a long history of drug running heroin, etc. If there's big $$ to be made in conflict gold, then I'd expect intelligence agencies to get involved.

 

Given that Australia is involved in a war in Afghanistan, how many degrees away from the conflict does the gold have to be before it is considered "conflict free"?

I imagine a gold bar with the blood of a 12 year old child soldier still crusted onto it would be considered "conflict gold", but how far back to that does the chain of trust with these "conflict free" refineries go? If somebody tries to sell that blood spattered bar to one of those refineries, are they really going to turn it away or are they going to say "Listen mate, come back when you've washed that blood off it and then we can do business"?

Or is this just all the mints getting together to provide cover for the Rand Refinery because that's where most of the blood-gold ends up?

 

Here here who really knows where it came from & what percentage of people really care . I dont

 

Would our Enemy give a shit? "Nope"

 

Actually, here is an interesting one:

The Mabo case that established native title in Australia wasn't decided until 1992.

Does this mean that the Perth Mint won't buy back it's own bullion products made prior to 1992 because the metal could only have been extracted from the land without the permission of it's original owners?

And if the mint will buy it back, isn't the whole scheme just happy-happy PR bullsh*t?

 

Here is another interesting one:

If an ounce of gold is extracted from the earth's crust and no one writes it down on a piece of paper, did it really happen....... ?

 

It raises my opinion of the Perth Mint as a business Bron. Sure, we can pick holes and point fingers. I would rather have the Perth Mint take what I regard as more ethical initiative than the other way around. We live in a society concerned primarily with 'monetary wealth' rather than ethical consideration in my opinion. So most will surely call me a sucker, but yeah, I may be inclined to buy from the Perth Mint in the future due to the initiative, even if it is only the thought that counts .

 

The Perth Mint gets publicity from 1 tonne coins. It pulls the rug from under collectors of its product with remints (which I bought) and privy editions of its most appreciated coins. The Perth Mint is in a prime position to buy its 'conflict free' gold because it is in Australia. The Perth Mint is pretty gimmicky.

 

Is conflict free gold where you make a purchase and don't cop it in the neck from the weaker half

 

Well, unless someone from the Perth Mint is prepared to confirm that until now they have knowingly been doing business with African warlords, its probably safe to say they haven't been.

That means they have to do precisely nothing except put little warm-and-fuzzy "Conflict Free" stickers on everything as though they've actually gone out of their way to "be ethical".

Yay. Look at us everyone. We're ethical.

This is a gimmick, plain and simple.

Or perhaps I should say: another gimmick.

 

The Perth Mint claims the program provides "further customer assurance". I would not state that it is simply a gimmick, whilst I don't deny that it might be. Perhaps you know something about the Conflict-Free Smelter Program that backs your claim.
When is an ethical approach not a warm-and-fuzzy gimmick?

 

A "conflict-free" label has about as much credibility with me as "organically" labelled food.

 

My answer would be yes, but my reasoning would be a bit analytic, a bit philosophical and would probably sound a bit wanky.

 

:lol:

:lol::lol:

 

I would absolutely care about where my gold comes from - it would be great if we could stop all the conflicts in the world by not funding them.
I always try to buy fairtrade chocolate when I can (no child labour in producing the beans).

The problem with this effort, however, is that who decides the conflicts that are not acceptable, and those that are ok ?

Obviously the rule will not be applied equally to all conflicts in the world.
The USA is involved in quite a few conflicts- will the Perth Mint stop sourcing gold from the US ?
Who makes the decision that some particular conflict in Africa is not acceptable for gold sourcing, but countries involved in Afghanistan, Iraq or Palestine are ?