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Where do you go to buy actual silver and gold if you want it? And where do you store it in your house if you do? (let's assume you don't trust banks)

I assume all the instinctive places are the wrong ones, and well know to burglars.

My dad used to keep it in the garage in a metal box with “biological hazard” labels plastered over it…

It used to be Krugerrands. I got 10 when I was 21 and sold therm for £100 or £200 each

Costco sells gold and silver bars. Half a kilogram for £60,000.
https://www.costco.co.uk/search?searchOption=uk-search-all&text=gold

That's not a recommendation. It simply always tickled me that people could nip out for a spot of shopping and come back with a gold bar among their groceries.

Isn't one of the surest signs of a speculative bubble about to pop being the point where taxi drivers start giving you investment tips?

Am I alone in my weird moral universe where I think that when Gates is weighed and measured that his shenanigans with Russian pros is far outweighed by his efforts to rid Africa of Malaria?

I’m not someone who gets remotely bothered by famous people’s sexual kicks but I do appreciate that they can have other sides that use their wealth and influence for something that is a huge benefit to the world. I don’t think anyone who will be alive in the future because Gates had loads of money and had dodgy behaviour will begrudge him getting syph or crabs.

Maybe my moral compass is wrong (in fact I know it’s wonky) but I’m ok with this as long as the hookers were of age and not trafficked.

How naive to think that hookers are not trafficked, raped, coerced and beaten up and bused in multiple ways by their pimps and traffickers, as well as their clients.

Ok, disclaimer I have never used a sex worker, I have known and know several for weird reasons. A few I have tried to help or convince to get out and others are absolutely in control of how they use their bodies. They do not have pimps and -regardless of me not understanding it - claim to enjoy what their choice of what to do with their body gives them the lifestyle they want.

You of all people should appreciate that there are women who are forced to sell themselves and there are women who use their bodies as they wish and it is certainly not up to anyone, yet alone a man, to tell them what they should or should not do.

Many, if not most sex workers are coerced but there is a substantial number of women who, especially in rarified environments of wealth and society, who mix and choose to make money from something that they would do anyway, you are far too sharp and worldly to deny otherwise.

To argue that all women are coerced would be to deny all women agency.

"Sex worker"

Prostitution is not work. It is abuse of women by men.

So you are against women having any agency to decide that they use their own body for earning from sex if that is something they would want to do?

And I used “sex worker” because it appears that it’s the more acceptable phrase for prostitute and has fewer of the negative connotations that prostitute does.

I'll throw a little fuel on the fire here by pointing out that many trans women are forced into sex work precisely because of the attitudes that Cyclefree has displayed on this site, attitudes that keep them out of 'normal' society and normal jobs because of bigotry and prejudice - see the poor trans woman working in M&S who was the target of a campaign of abuse and vitriol last year for simply asking a woman and her daughter if they were required assistance. How many employers would take on a trans person now knowing that at any moment they could be the target of a hysterical campaign about "perverts" working in shops?

I will add that I agree with you that while some women are indeed trafficked and exploited, women have agency, and I have known (as friends through my social circle, not as a client!) some very high class call girls who earned more in their 20s and 30s than most people will in a lifetime and are now very happily retired. It is a woman's right to choose - and if that means choosing that life, it isn't for us to condemn them.

I don't think many would codemn the women for their choices, but the men who make the world in such a way that women would make those choices.

If we didn't live in a patriarchy in which men routinely held power over women, and monopolise wealth and income, we'd see drastically fewer women making such a choice.

So it's hardly a free choice. At the very least there's economic coercion, if not psychological or physical coercion.

That’s also true for, say, people working as office cleaners.

Yes. I think in a previous discussion along these lines I also said that I wouldn't want my daughter to become a professional toilet cleaner, just as I wouldn't want her to sell her body.

Toilet cleaner is a fine and noble form of work. My favourite film of recent years "Perfect Days" is about the life of a toilet cleaner in Tokyo.

https://boxd.it/76jTqV

That is a fabulous movie, about taking pride in your work.

I loved it.

Great soundtrack too.

It is also about how the analogue life is fulf of pleasure. The central character rejects the digital world for the joy of the everyday. Though, being Japan some of the toilets are high tech.

Where do you go to buy actual silver and gold if you want it? And where do you store it in your house if you do? (let's assume you don't trust banks)

I assume all the instinctive places are the wrong ones, and well know to burglars.

My dad used to keep it in the garage in a metal box with “biological hazard” labels plastered over it…

It used to be Krugerrands. I got 10 when I was 21 and sold therm for £100 or £200 each

Costco sells gold and silver bars. Half a kilogram for £60,000.
https://www.costco.co.uk/search?searchOption=uk-search-all&text=gold

That's not a recommendation. It simply always tickled me that people could nip out for a spot of shopping and come back with a gold bar among their groceries.

Where do you go to buy actual silver and gold if you want it? And where do you store it in your house if you do? (let's assume you don't trust banks)

I assume all the instinctive places are the wrong ones, and well know to burglars.

My dad used to keep it in the garage in a metal box with “biological hazard” labels plastered over it…

It used to be Krugerrands. I got 10 when I was 21 and sold therm for £100 or £200 each

Costco sells gold and silver bars. Half a kilogram for £60,000.
https://www.costco.co.uk/search?searchOption=uk-search-all&text=gold

That's not a recommendation. It simply always tickled me that people could nip out for a spot of shopping and come back with a gold bar among their groceries.