Bring back the golden age

Every time I switch on the television and tune in to TVM, there always seems to be that hideous, mediocre, teleshopping-like advert clamouring for our gold in return for cash.

The advert itself looks so cheaply put together, so much a blast to the 1980s Italia Sette’s grainy, garish television, that even if I had a treasure chest of useless gold and was threatened at gun-point, I wouldn’t go there.

What worries me is that somehow this advert reflects our society’s material soul.

We’re trading something like gold – a beautiful, tangible, earthy element – for money: the same money which has brought about the relentless commercial expansion that has so defiled our beautiful island.

But even an idealist like me has to acknowledge that a society cannot function without money. There has always been some kind of payment system.

First there was bartering: “I give you an apple, you give me a kiss,” said Eve to Adam. Or was it the other way round?

Bartering, that age-old method of trading, is actually making a comeback. In the UK, there are restaurants that encourage you to take in products from your vegetable garden in return for a free glass of wine, and the privilege of seeing your vegetables transformed into cutting-edge cuisine.

In Malta there’s malta barter.com, a website which seems to want to create a bartering community, where goods and services can be exchanged without need for cash.

In theory this is a fantastic idea, but bartering relies on ‘The Double Coincidence of Wants’ – you have to want what I am offering at roughly the moment I want what you are offering – and sadly that can be slightly impractical on a day-to-day basis.

Which is why, over the centuries, people have resorted to monetary systems, using things like shells, cocoa beans, various metals and even feathers.

At one stage Roman soldiers were paid in salt, which explains the origin of the word ‘salary’.

Let’s pause here for a little ode to gold. Gold is indestructible. Once, in my student days, I was on an archaeological dig on a remote island in Italy, when my then boyfriend dug up a thousand-year-old gold coin.

Jubilant shouts of “Oro! Oro! Il Maltese ha trovato l’oro!” ran through the whole camp, and we became heroes overnight.

Of course, on paper, for an archaeologist, there should be no difference between a bone and a coin – both should be met with a polite, restrained ‘Aha’ – but this was Italy. The said gold piece was more or less intact, unoxidised and unblemished.

Gold preserves over time and so does its purchasing power, which more or less hasn’t changed over the millennia. Moneyweek journalist Dominic Frisby, observes that “an ounce of gold would have bought a Roman Senator a jolly decent toga and perhaps a pair of sandals; today the euro equivalent (€700) would buy your local MP a very respectable suit and shoes.”

Compare that with modern currency. A €5 note would not last 10 years buried underground and definitely buys you much less now than it did 10 years ago, ergo what’s the point of saving?

So I’m now thinking: using gold once again could take us back to the beauty and stability of the old world.

Now, I am not at all a wearer of gold accessories. In fact I shy away from anything that remotely glitters. But we’ve all seen gold ingots in movies and wouldn’t you just love to own one? I always imagine it to be beautiful, and unlike paper money you can look at it and touch it and be enthralled.

As currencies around the world are devalued, gold keeps its spending power. So why not do away with paper and digital money and go back to gold? It imposes discipline on people and governments. We can’t spend gold recklessly and there’s no illusion of false credits because we can only spend what we have. Once it’s spent, it’s gone.

It would be a restrictive monetary system but it would be fair, free and honest. And we’d all go back to the culture of making stuff: we’d become once more a producing society and not a consuming one.

Surely, that would bring about a change in our deteriorating values, morals, behaviour, ambitions, manners, everything.

I’m not saying we should go out-and-about wearing weighty gold ‘ċappetti’ (bangles) from the wrist right up to our armpits, but exploring the philosophy of money would help us rethink our attitude to material wealth.

Meanwhile, ignore adverts imploring you to part with your gold – just melt any unwanted jewellery into beautiful gold ingot bars.