mandag 6. mars 2017

The Twenty-Four Carat Moon

The Earth’s moon is a rock and mineral matrix. In the Scrooge McDuck story
The Twenty-Four Carat Moon the moon behind the Moon is pure gold.

In many stories Scrooge, Donald and the boys have been treasure hunting. However, this moon seems to represent the biggest treasure they are going to hunt for. Scrooge desires it most strongly.

Back on Earth
On Earth, the gold dug out and now above the ground could be formed into a cube close to 70 feet, or 21 meters on each side. This cube would have a weight of 175 000 tons. Gold miners must sift through 35 tons of stone, sand silt and earth for every ounce (31,103 gram) they find. The US Geological Survey estimates that there are still 50 000 tons of minable gold in the ground, but the climate cost is going to be astronomical if the coveted metal is ever dug up.

The Moon behind the Moon
The twenty-four carat gold-moon is 800 kilometers in diameter, and if the math is correct, the metric answer is 5.174E + 21 kg gold. In other words: The volume of the moon is
268083 000000000000 m3. The density of gold is 193000 kg/m3. That means that the mass
is 5174000000000000000000 kilo. These figures make Scrooge drool when he is calculating the moons value:

- That much gold in dollars would be two hundred and seventy-seven untouchaba-trillions, six hundered and six uncomprehendabalillions, two hundred and eighty-eight fantasticatillions- .

Scrooge is going to be richer than he ever imagined in his wildest dreams. He thinks! However, the old duck has been kissed by Mrs. Dementia. He has forgotten the lesson he learned in the story A Financial Fable. Too much of something valuable makes it less valuable – or possibly valueless.

More is Less
Given Scrooge manage to overcome the technical challenges of transporting even a fraction of the moon-gold back to Earth, the metal is going to lose its monetary value the moment it reaches the Earth’s surface. Millions of tons of extraterrestrial gold would saturate the commodity market on Earth. Since gold as a metal has little practical use, Gold would become cheaper than iron. The multibillion London online trade would cease to exist, and 100 million people in the gold business would be out of work.

The Illusion of Value
Anyway, The Twenty-Four Carat Moon story is meant to entertain and educate. Carl Barks often drew on real life situations. Scrooge is as an insatiable capitalist, who must always have more, more, more. The superrich duck mirrors the one percent superrich people in our world who are controlling most of the world’s resources. The superrich do not want to share even if they have more money than they possibly can spend in a thousand years. They just want to keep the money because it is theirs to keep. The catastrophic results of this mentality, this unwillingness to put their money into worthwhile projects, we see all over the world.

A Poor Country
A seemingly rich country like the USA has not been able to get rid of its slums. The country does not have free health care for the whole population, and the young have not the right to free education. True riches, true values for a better future are still an unreachable dream in the land of the free. Gold is an illusion of wealth, dross made valuable. The one percent has not understood Charles Dickens classic novel about miser Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.

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