About That Idris Elba Gold Documentary
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- Опубліковано 4 тра 2024
- Clickbait Title: Can this magical metal make you immortal? Godkings hate this one weird trick!
This was a lot of fun to work on because I got to spend a lot of time learning THE TRUTH ABOUT GOLD and by that I mean actually interesting facts about how humans use gold. The mythology of gold actually makes a lot of sense through the lens of its physical properties, the fact that ancient humans could make things out of it and those things would outlive generations. It's just rare enough that societal elites can monopolize it, but common enough you can gather enough to actually make stuff with it. So these things, namely jewellery for the leaders, are so resistant to the elements that you can see how the gold itself became representative of the power of the kings, of their claimed immortality.
Written and performed by Dan Olson
Crowdfunding: / foldablehuman
Twitter: / foldablehuman
00:00:00 - Gold Open
00:00:53 - Ads for gold
00:03:05 - Gold is interesting
00:07:17 - Not everything is rosy for gold
00:11:45 - Enter the World Gold Council
00:14:56 - A journey with Idris Elba
00:20:02 - It's boring
00:22:22 - Colonialism
00:24:50 - The environment
00:33:52 - The rest of the doc
00:36:03 - Reception
00:37:47 - The Golden Thread
00:39:53 - Selling shovels in a gold rush - Розваги
Elba’s performance was praised as “Contractually Obligated”
He must owe a lot of taxes or something.
@@InquisitiveBible or he wanted to get some work in before the SAG strike. I'm probably wrong, I don't know the timeline of when this was made
@@WaxingRhapsodic-yj7rh nah
Dan's video points out how this lined up with other personal and creative interests in Ghana, man had his reasons to do it. Don't have to like an actor you otherwise approve of doing it, but if there's a bad guy in this it ain't him.
@@TymberJ It's sad that the gold people own the only flights to and from Ghana and there was no other way he could get there. Of course that's why he HAD to team up with the folks ruining the lives of their workers and the planet. Makes total sense.
"this is not a minor problem, this is one of the fundamental by-products of the mining process" sounds very much like a miner problem
Nice
Ayyyyyyy
Alan Rickman: "Miners. Not minors!"
He very much wrote that, pun intended.
Good writing. S tier
I am a Ghanaian, and pollution from gold mining is a horrible plague on the country
Yeah you should stop that
@@BigKnecht oh well now that you say that i guess he'll just go talk to all the other ghanaians and ask them nicely to stop
@@jonasbahn1466 maybe Ghanaians can do that themselves. Are you not capable of doing things yourself? Do white men have to come force you to save your own people and country?
@@BigKnecht i don't think condescendingly telling one dude that his country should stop mining gold is gonna inspire the rest of the country to make a change, especially when he already thinks gold mining is a problem
@@jonasbahn1466Don’t bother talking to that guy, he’s trying to troll and get a rise out of people , just block and move on .
How long until UA-cam offers advertisers a specific upgrade package titled 'Don't show this video to Dan Olsen'
Honestly, I read something brilliant: If your advertising sponsorship is having to scrape youtube for people to hawk it, maybe your product is the problem. Raycons are crap, BetterHelp is a hive of scum & villainy, people are suggesting to huff essential oils, and worse.
Well, it sure hasn't shown up _yet,_ because I just got a _Lindt cocolate_ commercial! ^^
@@XanthinZarda Your examples are definitely true, though I don't think the idea of using UA-cam to target to certain demographics is inherently a flawed idea. There's lots of people, especially younger, whose media consumption is primarily through UA-cam. If you want to reach an audience that TV advertising won't ever reach, it's not a bad idea. It's just that A: all ads fucking suck, and B: the kind of companies sponsoring UA-camrs suck harder. I'm never going to buy some dogshit mattress or overpriced meal kit because they gave a guy who I watch complain about media a few hundred bucks.
Hahahahhahahhaahahahahahaha!
@@XanthinZardamost of what you said is fine, but "huff essential oils" is downright deceptive. What I'm decently sure you are referring to is meant to help people addicted to nicotine quit vaping by simulating the feeling of it without nicotine. Like what vapes originally were supposed to do, except this might actually help because it doesn't have any nicotine at all. It's literally just the vape equivalent of smoking herbal cigarettes, it's not even a new idea.
summing that up as "people are suggesting to huff essential oils" is a little shitty. Like, it's technically not a lie, but it frames it in a certain way that is definitely deceptive.
(Note: I know nothing about the company behind this and do not know the in-depth details of the product itself. I don't know if it actually helps with nicotine addiction or not, and I hope my statement above properly portrayed that, I just responded because I thought the framing you used for that specific point was kinda shit, and that was worth pointing out.)
"These people didn't have any money, but they could sell their family heirlooms for money to rebuild their lives" is not the selling point they seem to think it is...
Just wondering when the sentiment becomes: " They were lucky they had all those healthy organs to sell to put their lives back together."
But if they had money, it would have presumably gotten very soggy, and no one would want it. Even a bank would have it's computers all full of water, making them useless. Gold, however, loves water and is the only choice for a tsunami victim. Make your next tsunami a golden one.
Not to mention that some rando can just break into their home and take those heirlooms.
Right? My first thought was: "Idris, do you not see how it was tragic that these people had to sell of family heirlooms and their cultural heritage to, idk, NOT DIE?" No one would try to romanticise Jewish people buying safe passage across the Atlantic in the 1930s/40s with great-grandma's wedding jewellery(I hope). Why is this an OK thing to say?
My mind went to selling the heirlooms of the deceased, and the incredible pain that must have made them feel. It's so depressing and so disconnected from the emotional value of these artifacts.
“hey, these guys have almost cracked the toxic pit problem”
“wait what toxic pit problem”
just fantastic
a perfect illustration of the Streisand Effect
Edit: actually I believe it'd be a Streisandian Bargain
@@CharlesAnjosI'm curious, what's the difference between the streisand effect and a streisandian bargain? :0 or are they just two ways to say the same thing
@@HackMcMack i imagine that a Streisandian Bargain is the tradeoff that highlighting a solution to a not well-known problem creates knowledge of the problem, which might create more negative reception than the positive reception the solution gets
The one flying into the Piltover council with breakneck speed while carrying a highly unstable element
I love those little flashes of Dan's sense of humor and personality we get. Oftentimes in his documentaries, any jokes we get are very dry and sarcastic (which is fine, not a complaint at all), but it's nice to every once in a while, get a more overt joke.
This is a very vintage slice of Folding Ideas. Less "Documentary on social phenomena" and more "Dan watched a thing that annoyed him". I'm here for it.
All of his video essays boil down to that. Line Goes Up was so clearly annoyed with NFTs, same with MetaVerse / Financial Advice. These are things that so clearly annoy him; its how he decides what to tackle.
@@JesseLeeHumphry Don't forget the Contrepreneurs video!
I accidentally read Dan as "Dad" and just unquestionably accepted that, lol
I saw Line Goes Up 2 years ago. Now I just like to watch Dan being annoyed. About anything really.
@@bravetherainbow He's the disappointed dad of all these con artists.
Avoiding talking about the environmental issue so hard that you result in skipping over the actual good the company ends up doing is impressive in itself.
They only did that good because the New Zealand government literally forced them to.
This was done on purpose ( like the swapping mass people labour for mechanisation/ alternate workers ), cos it's directed towards mine investors..
So they don't want to show the added costs involved in their future investment.. They only want to show how these issues are not an investment "problem" anymore..
Workers striking costs investors money, so they show they have "sidestepped" that issue..
Environmental concerns cost investors money, so they show a simplified version of how they've solved that too.. ( Without showing how much money & work is actually involved in that solution )
😁☮️🌏
Dan's willingness to make video essays about ads that annoy him is and remains fascinating.
This also reveals that Dan Olson doesn't pay for youtube premium. Respect
I can't wait for Dan Olsen to make a video about Temu.
Never seen this ad in my life
This also shows that Dan is not annoyed by [insert meme reference to common ads]
A few years ago on stream, Dan admitted that he doesn't use an adblocker bc UA-cam ads are where he finds his best inspiration
Imagine buying gold instead of just stealing it from the dragons horde like a real man
Not everyone has dragons nearby to steal from, man. This isn't like getting emergency booze from the corner store.
bro is a Hobbit
@@JJ-qo7tha real man is prepared to undertake a perilous journey to the dragons den no matter how far
@@milkflys Let's not forget it took a troupe of dwarves devouring all the food in his larder and a famous wizard goading him into making the journey. We don't even *have* famous wizards.
All of the easily-accessible dragons in Eurasia were slain by the Middle Ages, and the global dragon population was devastated in the 16th century. These days, there _is_ no dragon horde.
And if you want to find a dragon _hoard,_ you need to dig greedily and deep to find one which laired in the bowels of the earth, without accidentally releasing a balrog or something.
Came for the film criticism, stayed for the thinly veiled threats against the British monarchy.
I keep rewinding to that part
😂😂
As thin as the sheets of gold they use for gilding, perhaps
honestly i like this kinda stuff more than his film stuff
"that ain't subtext, that's just text"
-Me, right now. My mother is very proud.
(Why are all the jokes I make while shroomin so shit, and why am I so self conscious about it? Usually I can just make a shit joke, accept it's shit privately, then move in with my life. But not now, now I feel a desire to express, and express my thoughts on those expressions, and further criticize those expressions to the point until I say some barely comprehendable bullshit that feels way too pseudo-intellectual for me to post. I know I should stop, yet I keep typing, and furthermore I exasperate the issue by pressing the funni arrow and airing my laundry for all to see. Hope you liked my laundry.)
"But with gold comes power, and those miners knew that."
That sentence is so charged you could run Las Vegas off it for millennia.
But who will win the right to use that power? The bear, or the bull?
@@jacksonlarson6099I'm a simple man; I see a good New Vegas reference, I hit like.
“A liberating force”… gosh, I wonder from what.
" For every one job created directly, 6 jobs are indirectly created"
In Cajamarca Peru, a Canadian company mined for years. They brought in workers from the capital, Lima, because the locals were allegedly not skilled enough. When the company left, they took the gold, the profits, and the wages went back to their home cities while leaving behind contaminated drinking water which have caused skyrocketing cancer rates for over a decade.
Wow, they provided so many jobs for Oncologists.
Edit: Just to be clear, this comment was a joke, mining companies can go f*** themselves.
Gold mines are extremely profitable, for both the mining company and the services supporting them. But whose profit is it?
So the gold did create jobs in the medical sector, I guess
Yeah I literally shouted "NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN" when they mentioned Peru :/
@@peterprime2140 kinda, not really though because oncologists are for the most part working in the private, for profit sector. So the majority of people suffer without care.
Dan genres:
- Film criticisms
- Deep dives into patterns of human behaviors and our susceptibility to scams, or conspiracy theories, of understanding how and why people fall prey to our darker urges
- Ads he does not like
And here we see a lovely intersection of all three, very succinctly put!
Where does his dunk on Jamie Oliver fall?
@@JJ-qo7th I'd say points 1 and 2, but you could make an argument for 2 and 3.
@@JJ-qo7th All the videos seem to be about narratives and how they're constructed. Jamie Oliver was pushing the narrative that chicken nuggets are bad and Dan dissected how he did that and why it was bad.
-Blizzard Games and Conventions
I'm going to apply the "the gold council exists so there'll never be a REAL gold council" logic to every organisation from now on.
The World Health Organization exists so there'll never be a REAL World Health Organization
yeah man, the fda exists so there cant ever be the REAL fda! - probably harry dubois
@@cookies23z detective I fail to see how the fda, real or not, is relevant to this case
The PTA exists so there'll never be a REAL PTA!
@@cookies23zDISCO ELYSIUM MENTIONED‼️‼️‼️🏳️🌈🐖🍊🥃🌇🦗
"We did it once before, CHARLES, we can do it again"
I can't believe Dan threatened King Charles so harshly it actually gave him cancer.
This is the power of a Canadian. It's not just our geese that are dangerous.
Timestamp?
About 5:50
@@jamesrule1338 it’s the meese too. dan is secretly a goose standing on top of a moose in a trench coat
The boxing day tsunami bit hit me like a truck. It both comes out of nowhere and is then just *uniquely* horrifying. "Oh yeah, these people who lost their families in the worst natural disaster this century, they recovered *by selling their family heirlooms* "
These people had to literally sell their family history, their culture, their last remaining memories of their dead relatives, to survive. And this is presented as a *good* thing.
Orphan crushing machine etc.
I guess your point is we should have better social structures to support the people affected? (Sorry new to this channel just trying to figure out the community)
@@galacticpepsi their point is that it's awful?
@@galacticpepsi Correct! In an ideal world they would do fine without selling off the relics of their past.
LITERALLY my thoughts too. I was like “That gold probably wasn’t just bouillon sitting in their pantry…it was jewelry and stuff certainly…why is this being celebrated…”
I feel an urge to invent some sort of weird grift so I can end up on a Dan Olsen documentary
You should plagiarize it and then you can end up in a Dan documentary and an h bomber guy documentary.
Dw, I'll sell the grift to you through a fake online class.
And if you get a body count, you can end up on a Robert Evans podcast.
Same, all we need is a new grift to con chronically online crypto bros. They need a new fixation.
I’m just hoping Dan isn’t part of some big grift. Big Plain T-shirt?
Of all the twists this video could have taken, 'the gold industry documentary is bad at telling you that the gold industry did a good thing' was not one I expected
Well, "good thing" in this context would be kind of like highlighting the top notch medical care someone was provided that will grant them a new lease on life... because a poorly maintained piece of machinery in their industry ripped their arms off. You can't highlight the cleanup without spotlighting why you had to fix it in the first place.
@@trouty606 I understand the reason, I watched the video. I guess I didn't really realize how effectively the mining industry has been at keeping their negligence out of the public eye before the internet existed, to the point that the widespread coverage that the net DOES provide is still playing catchup on conveying the sheer scope of the problem to the average joe.
A few years back I was in Sri Lanka, and ended up trapped in some jewelry showroom by my guide, and they had a similar 'documentary' playing extolling the value of sapphires. And it was all what you'd expect - shots of beautiful jewelry, stories about the cultural and historical significance of the gems, all immersing you in the story of sapphires as more than just expensive rocks.
And then there was this brief section showing the poor bastards actually working in the mines, up to their waists in water at the bottom of a pit, that seemed deliberately engineered to make you feel disgust at the idea of ever owning the product of such brutal labor.
I understand that groups like the 'World Gold Council' are run by sociopaths, but you think they'd run their propaganda past someone normal first so they can avoid moments like that or thoughtlessly making the Boxing Day Tsunami into some sort of advertisement for the enduring value of gold.
It's not the meat factory they know if they show you how the sausage is made once you're still gonna buy at least one hot dog in your life for someone and that's enough for them. You only lie on something you knwo will get you in trouble
It's probably not helpful to think of organisations such as the WGC as being run by "sociopaths", because you run the risk of turning what is really a systemic issue with a personal one. You don't need to lack empathy for humanity or the environment to do what those at the World Gold Council do, because you're just doing your job. Something something profit motive, blah blah capitalism - somebody fill in the rest please
@@TiredOceanIt’s not even capitalism, Soviet and Chinese central planners were willing to sacrifice tens of millions on the altar of industrial progress.
The problem is that modern large scale or multinational activity by companies or governments allows for degrees of separation that allows regular people to eschew moral beliefs they’d hold for those close to them.
@@aleg719 Yes, but that's hotdogs, something you buy for cheap at grocery stores. It is, by contrast, VERY EASY not to buy sapphires and jewels
Did you escape with your wallet intact?
45 minutes? Interesting to see Dan getting into UA-cam shorts.
HAH
HAH
HAH
HAH
After 8 years of making video essays Dan has finally succumb to thematic backlighting
The yassafication of Dan
Contrapoints strikes yet again! 😊
He did this in his last video too, no?
@@Thellloksd Oh true lol. I hadn't re-watched that one like I did with the apes vid. I guess my mind blocked out the lighting
He has become worthy.
I will forever despise that "mining companies always clean up after themselves" claim. There have been entire civil wars started by mining companies simply not wanting to pay to clean up a decommissioned mine. In Australia, where I live, Rio Tinto left a uranium mine completely abandoned and unprocessed literally because one of their hedge funds didn't want to pay to clean it up.
I mean someone must have pretty thick wool (or a lot of money) covering their eyes in order to believe that claim. Because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a mining company EVER fully doing right by its workers, much less the land they are extracting from
I know it is dystopian, but for once i find it relieving the big bad guy is just plainly stating their plan.
Sometimes it's nice to have a villainous monologue. It's classic.
I mean, that's the case most of the time : see Israel's government and media since october 7th
@@razarac432 you mean since the 70s.
How are they bad guys? After watching this video, I'm still scratching my head as to what the issue is.
@@VinnyBloo They're trying to sell gold as a great investment, but they themselves are making money selling services around gold, because they know that gold isn't going to make themselves rich.
They're pumping up gold to keep gold mines in business. And if you don't think toxic metals going into your drinking water is an issue, then you're a m0r0n.
"St. Edward's crown could easily be reduced back to a 2.23-kilo ingot of gold _for a second time_ in history, after English Parliament melted the original medieval crown in 1649. We did it once before, Charles. _We can do it again_ ."
WE DID IT TO CHARLES I, WE CAN DO IT TO CHARLES III
So Charlie II just kept his head down, eh?
@@tonycampbell1424 By all accounts, Charlie II got a lot of head.
B-b-b-Based
5:43
For those wondering what happens if you drink the forbidden Gatorade: all the geese who accidentally did it once died from internal bleeding due to bleeding ulcers, burst intestines, or a combination of the two.
I recall watching a short youtube documentary where they post a guard with a rifle near one of these pit lakes. Their job is to shoot at geese and other birds that land on the lake surface and deliberately miss, scaring them off but saving them from an agonizing death from chemical burns.
@@djizomdjinnpretty sure that was that exact Tom Scott video that Dan cited
Worth it tbh.
Another fun fact, Butte held a wake for the geese. Hundreds of folks turned up to mourn them and sing for them. There's no resigned apathy in Butte, everyone cares so much and that makes it all the more heartbreaking what they've been left with.
@@SavageGreywolf I just went looking for the video again, it was a Business Insider video.
Meet The Man Who Shoots At Birds All Day To Keep Them Off A Toxic Pit | World Wide Waste
The floating text of 'responsibility' and 'love' followed by 'chlorine' and 'arsenic' was genius
"With gold comes power". Yes Idris, you and I both know the power doesn't go to the disenfranchised miners, it goes to the people who own the mines and the mining equipment and pay the tiny wages of the miners
What jobs do you imagine those workers doing without those mines being there?
@@VinnyBloo Something that doesn't literally destroy their home maybe.
@@SwordmaidenGwen That's a real big maybe. Those people are choosing to work in those mines because what you call tiny wages are their best opportunity.
@@VinnyBloo You said they chose to work their while also highlighting how they effectively have no choice by describing it as their best opportunity.
Idris Elba has a vested interest in gold. Not because he wants it, but if everyone else is busy with that he can focus on hunting Chaos Emeralds.
"Where is that damn fourth chaos emerald?" -Idris Elba, probably
?
@@blakksheep736Idris Elba voices Knuckles on the Sonic movies I think.
y o u m e a n t h e c h a o s e m e r a l d s
@@mrptr9013 👍🏾
"I assumed they were the villains from captain planet"
I don't why, but how dan delivered that line is hysterical 💀
This video has so many fantastic lines. That one genuinely caught me off guard.
The delivery on that one was perfect, but I also really enjoyed the “forbidden Gatorade.”
@@5nefarious YEAH 😭
@@5nefarious Under no circumstances should you enjoy the forbidden Gatorade.
"Wait, what toxic pit problem?" 💀💀
I don't think it fully contextualised that weird evangelical gold ad by explaining that that actor did burglaries for Nixon.
It doesn't contextualize everything, but it accomplishes two rhetorical goals:
1. It establishes that the dude is 100% serious.
2. It is a very silly fact to reveal about that actor.
G. Gordon Liddy is a fascinating character & got a very special 6 part series on the Behind the Bastards podcast, which I highly recommend!
"They don' represent tiny artesian mines consisting of three dudes sharing the one jack hammer"
This is such a funny concept
artesian miners do share the reason they all got mercury poisoning
I'd like to think that Elba's payment was just a sack of gold coins
I can only assume the sack had a dollar sign on it, and coins had skulls on them.
I would have gone with 30 pieces of silver. But yours works too.
@@capnmnemo Fun fact, since most gold is found as electrum (i.e. an alloy of silver and gold) ore, they'd literally be paying him with their scrap then.
@@jaspervanheycop9722 That would be in character.
@@jaspervanheycop9722 Technically, it's called a byproduct.
that cut from tom scott saying "it looks toxically blue, and it is" to "tell you what the waters nice and blue to me" from 26:42 had me rolling.
🎉✨ the Kuleshov effect ✨🎉
@@rynabuns Time to rewatch that Suicide Squad video
"What are the downs, Idris?" had me flashing back to "Where's Wallace, String?"
Solidly intended.
"Where's the money, Lebowski?"
Drake, where's the door hole?
Ah that scene was so good, thanks for reminding me.
Talking about how the only reason we should care about seeing galaxies form is because they may have gold in them is El Dorado levels of tunnel vision
technically the argument is that we should care about observing the formation of galaxies because the detectors use gold and therefore the value of gold should increase… which like, is even sadder.
This video has been out for less than 8 hours, I’ve watched it 3 time now, and I’m still stuck on Dan describing toxic quarry lake water as “the Forbidden Gatorade.”
I'm surprised no one sold it as alkaline water
@@richardarriaga6271 Cheaper to just add baking soda to mineral water
Burkley Pit literally looks like blue Gatorade. It's wild.
@@richardarriaga6271don’t give that crowd any ideas 😂
The Devil’s Milkshake.
I'm a scientist who studies the impacts of metal pollution from mines on ecosystems (environment, wildlife, domestic animals, and humans) and I cannot believe how much they skimmed over mine pollution and restoration, even in a propaganda film like this. Dan did a really great job summarizing the global mine remediation issues, though. As he alluded, it is almost always the countries that make or break restoration projects. In the UK, metal mines didn't need to be restored at all until the late 1990's - conveniently, after the last metal mine closed!
do you have any book recommendations about mining and environmental remediation for someone with a solid grasp of chemistry and biology but a limited background in geology?
DR FAUCI HAS SPOKEN
TRUST THE SCIENCE
I dont believe you
Was coal mining any better?
Really? You can't believe the comic book villain glossed over one of the worst aspects of their villianry?
That sounds like something an actual scientist wouldn't be surprised by, at all.
Thank you Dan for bringing this to such a big audience. Whenever people get fooled by those "beautiful blue lakes" I get chills imagining some unsuspecting kids taking a dip. I wish this was common knowledge.
I still remember what one of my school teachers said on the subject: "If you're out hiking and you find a still, clear pool of water with nothing growing in it - DO NOT DRINK. No matter how thirsty you are, if plants and algae don't want that water, then you don't want it."
foreigners die at Death Valley and other national parks for a reason
harrowing, that's good advice@@CoastalSphinx
Don't worry, some of them now have fences around it, and possibly a tiny sign with scratched lettering.
@@CoastalSphinx that's good, but who drinks from lakes anyway?
"Gold Open" is too good of a pun to be relegated to the progress bar chapters.
Saying that Idris Elba is famous for being in the Suicide Squad sequel/reboot is such a deep cut knowing the depths of insanity the original Suicide Squad movie drove Dan to in his art of editing video about it.
I will always remember as a pizza boy delivering maggots to aliens
He was Macavity. That's all he'll be to me now and forever.
@@TheJillers Oh come on, that there's Stringer Bell!
i still regularly rewatch that vid ocassionally
Stringer Bell.
I starting to think the only reason that the World Gold Council isn't full of mustache-twirling villains is because they're all clean-shaven.
"We can't be villains! We don't even have moustaches to twirl in a sinister fashion!"
Goldfingers entier villainous plan was: smuggle a ton of gold into i think Russia, then irradiate all the Gold in Fort Knox to drive the price of gold up.
And these mining companies would absolutely irradiate all the gold in Fort Knox to drive the price up if they thought they could do it and get away with it.
They're clean shaven because they're men in sales. There's real research on this: Men with beards in leadership or technical roles get rated higher in terms of trust and respect compared to clean shaven men. But men with beards in sales are distrusted, something about the beard in a sales role leads people to think you're hiding something. This is widely understood enough that if you pay attention, every man in a sales role is always clean shaven.
@@kayvee256 This is interesting and sent me down a brief rabbit hole. I found that the opposite generally holds true for salesmen (and anecdotally, half the salesmen I know have facial hair). This is probably also to do with the generation gap, since those studies were done recently and the WGC has mostly older, more established clientele. Whether or not it's correct, I'm glad you shared, because I never would've thought to look this up.
@@nathancarter8239 That's actually really interesting if it has changed!
Yeah, I found out about the sales thing when I started working in my early twenties, which was 20-ish years ago. Back then all the older guys in sales roles that were drumming up the work for me to do were *always* clean shaven.
But it makes sense that could be a cultural attitude that's shifted in the last 20 years. I'll have to go and see if the literature is showing a shift.
Dan Olson's setup of "I'd totally watch a documentary on gold with a travel budget" feels like a subtweet: he and his team work on a micro budget and still knock it out of the park constantly
I didn't care for gold too much, since it has not many applications of it outside of computers and jewelery.
And yet, Dan and his team managed to sell me the idea of a documentary purely about gold. That is good writing.
That was a great episode of Golding Ideas
As someone who's had the distinct displeasure of working on exactly this kind of mining propaganda as a creative I can tell you, this is spot on. It happens in all mining industries, not just gold.
A World Without Zinc!
Hope they paid well for that little chunk of your soul
@@johnwrath3612worth its weight in gold.
"Zinc! Come back! Come back, zinc!"
Beef. Its whats for dinner.
I'm an archaeologist in Nevada and let me tell you, I spend a lot of time looking at entire landscapes mined out, sometimes continually, between the 19th century and now. The abandoned equipment associated with it becomes something we have to document, as well as the massive piles of historical trash. The scale of mining landscapes is pretty astonishing when you see them in person, and that's even without obvious (visible) impacts from the heavy metals etc
My dad is an archaeologist too (in South Africa). The number of sites he's had to survey and record right before a mining company comes and destroys everything is heartbreaking. Sometimes he manages to secure National Heritage Site status for a particular little area, but it's difficult, and one mining company has just gone ahead and destroyed those protected sites too!
On the positive side, we did get to visit an ancient ochre mine, mined by hand for thousands of years, and it was a- transcendental, for lack of a better word, experience.
I used to live in Kellogg, Idaho; the heart of "Silver Valley" mining and the effects on the beautiful wilderness up there were astonishing.
You could be going for a motorcycle ride in the beautiful mountain pathways and stumble across a toxic, lifeless pit at the bottom of a crevasse.
Mining waste strewn throughout the lush wilderness
Australia 😵💫😵💫😵💫
@@sadslavboy wow never thought I would meet another northern Idaho local in a UA-cam comment section lol. my family is also from the area, Mullan actually. I always thought the mountainsides look a little bare and strange in places. after the silver market collapsed most people moved away but my uncle is still in the mining business but in Utah now. sad stuff.
@@4nn4hyour da sounds like a good man, hope he keeps up the good work!
Man, Tom Scott loves poisoned bodies of water almost as much as Fromsoft
Oh God, please tell me Tom Scott isn't in this video. I can't stand the guy.
Haha why? @EternamDoov
@@EternamDoovI understand, I have been burned by depressed British ppl too
I want to say that the California Gold Rush was terrible for the indigenous peoples of California; that state was founded in rivers of blood. I’m not sure what the doc says about it but I would hazard a guess that they don’t treat it as yet another example of settler massacre for inert material extraction. As someone who lives in the West of the USA, mining operations STILL negatively impact tribes to this day. The Gold Rush is so often presented romantically, it still holds that Manifest Destiny flavor for white Americans - but once you know a bit about how indigenous people were enslaved and killed, those old stories about brave pioneers get sour quick
Way to turn a story of discovery, exploration, and settlement into one of death and slavery.
Look, I'm no expert, but weren't there Spanish settlers in California decades before any gold rush? And centuries before that, the Aztecs and other indigenous tribes were killing each other and even making human sacrifices to their gods. Do you wish to go back to those times? You talk about the negative effects of mining, yet without mining, the computer you own wouldn't even exist, and our civilization would be a shadow of itself. Get a grip, mam.
☝️Underrated comment ☝️
A gold rush was also the backdrop of Wounded Knee. Gold rushes have informed innumerable massacres of indigneous peoples throughout colonial history, in both the New and Old Worlds. I love gold personally-I think it's up there as one of the coolest metals. However, it's not worth the death of a single human, let alone the millions upon millions massacred in the name of vanity.
Morbid fact about the California gold rush: after 1849 the native Californian population dropped so badly it didn't recover until the 21st century
The line about "nothing eats it ... except Instagram influencers" grabbed me as it went by. I've seen that presented before - super-luxury food with gold flakes on it just to add that extra-specialness to it. And from the first moment I learned of that being a thing, it struck me as _the ultimate_ in conspicuous consumption for its own sake. Because, as noted here, gold is chemically and biologically inert - it adds _nothing_ to the food _at all._ It goes in, it goes through, and it goes out.
Back when I was a kid, the symbol for outrageous wealth-flaunting was a _gold-plated toilet._ But that, on some level, actually makes _sense._ For one, it doesn't take a whole lot of it to do the job. And because of its properties, it's got to be super-easy to keep clean. And in the end, you've still got the gold.
Now, they're not just plating their toilets with gold - they're flushing gold *down* the toilet!
Tinpot dictators and those who willingly associate themselves with them also have a particular affinity for eating gold. A couple of years ago the head of the Vietnamese secret police went on a pilgrimage to pray at Karl Marx's tomb, and also eat a gold-plated steak in a Michelin starred restaurant.
it's also worth noting that while it's a fun joke to say it started with influencers, gold plating food dates back centuries; there's even a very prominent myth about schnitzels involving gold plating that states that cooked breadcrumbs were just the next best thing to gold's colour
you put my exact thoughts into words really well :)
One thing that makes it even funnier for me is that due to how malleable gold is, it can be rolled into incredibly thin sheets. So thin that only a couple dollars worth of gold leaf can cover a dish.
@@smidlem1117 With schnitzels, the truth of this myth is indeed questionable, but medieval cookbooks, both European and Islamic ones, did have a number of recipes for gilt dishes. Back then, people thought that gold had a medicinal quality, too.
This is the third time Dan's titles have confronted me with a batshit controversy I know nothing about, and I gotta say, I love it.
What were the other two?
One is definitely Contreprenuers and maybe the other is the short Darkmoon Faire video. Everything else in the past two years has been about headline news.@@blakksheep736
@@blakksheep736 The Geocentrism documentary and the Mikkelson Twins. I also didn't know about the Darkmoon stuff, but as that happened like, the day before I'm giving myself some slack XD
@@TemenCMoth which one is the Geocentrism documentary? In Search Of A Flat Earth?
@@blakksheep736 No, it's the one titled 'That Time Geocentrists Tricked A Bunch of Physicists'
When that conspiracy guy said ‘central bankers’ I could practically hear the triple brackets.
It's true though. It's got nothing to do with race or creed, I'm sure they just consider themselves powerful and nothing else.
@@EternamDoovhe was 1000% wanting to say jews
Just because conspiracy theorists don't like them doesn't mean they aren't out to screw over everyone who isn't them.
@@AliceBowie homie, he means jews
ok real talk I've seen the triple brackets here and there but have never received an explanation. what are they dogwhistling?
“Money is temporary, gold is forever.”
“oh really?”
*eats all of your family heirlooms*
To be fair, IIRC the human stomach doesn't digest gold, so it's just a matter of waiting for you to have a bathroom break.
Found the instagram influencer
What's really funny is that people used to coat their pills in gold so they would pass through their system undigested and could be taken again in the future. As you may have already guessed, there was less education about how medicine actually works in those days.
@barthvader95 just eat it again
@@capablanc 1000 iq play
Dan, you are a unique intersection of spite and extraordinarily thorough and well-reasoned research, and I appreciate the hell out of you for continuing to do what you do.
Something well known in academics is that, behind curiosity, spite is the second leading driver of academic research at large
@@HeavenlyHavoc given how much some fields of research have been driven, throughout scientific history, by petty squabbles and infighting; checks out.
@@HeavenlyHavoc dudes who built a giant telescope to find out who was right and e eryone ended up right lol
You ever make a throwaway comment on the internet, only to have someone show up 3 days later with a god damn essay telling you all the ways you're wrong? Those guys aspire to Dan's energy.
@@aradraugfea6755 I really do
"An inert mineral is stealing the valor of labor unions."
Hey! It's the inanimate carbon rod! IN ROD WE TRUST
Is this a reference to something and if so could you please explain it to me?
@@andrewgreenwood9068 Simpsons reference, for when Homer went to space
@@dirtside thanks. The Simpsons was a bit before my time
@@andrewgreenwood9068 Oh, that's not true! The Simpsons is still going! It's during *everyone's* time!
"Awww, they were about to show close-ups of the rod..."
My favorite part of 21:12 is how you can tell that he was trying to avoid saying "dowry" as much as possible and is uncomfortable when he basically forces himself to use it again.
A few random facts: while gold is mostly inert, it does react with halogens (mainly anything chlorine related), can be dissolved in aqua regia (conc nitric and hydrochloric acid) as well as cyanide, which can be used for mining gold and bromine can corrode it.
It’s also used in medications. For most galvanic purposes it’s not the shiny stuff, it’s a white salt that’s used (don’t eat that, pretty sure it wouldn’t be pleasant). Pure gold is soft like really soft, which is why it is mostly galvanized, surface steamed on or in alloys. There are metals that are technically more inert but they’re rarer and more expensive.
The only issue with this video is it's only 45 minutes long instead of Dan's usual length - I suppose I'll just have to watch it 4 times over
I know right? Can’t go back to sub 1:00 now 😢
I watch 4+ times regardless of the length
i'm on my second watch now!
Only 4 times? That's a low rewatch time. I think I've got over ten rewatches on line, metaverse, and financial advice a piece.
@@adampope5107i wish youtube told you how many times you rewatched a video because i think how many times i watched financial advice and countrepreneurs could spawn an intervention
Thinking of Levi Strauss being the biggest winner of the California Gold Rush made me think of the "World According to Jeff Goldblum" episode where he meets up with people who explore old, abandoned gold mining sites to see if they can dig up old pairs of Levi's jeans to sell to collectors. Jeans that, in the BEST case, were just accidentally left behind when the mine was abandoned. And in the worse case, are found among the remains of miners who didn't make it out alive. But the Levi's sellers and buyers don't care about that, all they care about is whether or not those rivets and labels are intact.
That’s a pretty big oof right there
😮
For sale: antique Levi's! Never removed.
Fashion never dies. That TNT and burnt flesh smell is how you know they're authentic.
That kinda sounds like grave robbing
To be honest, i actually appreciate how honest and overt they are about it being propaganda. It is refreshing to not be subverted, just verted.
More like vested. But yeah, same sentiment here
"Alright evil exists but look how SHINY I am ☀️☀️☀️"
- that Moana Villan be like
superverted
I'm reminded of some dialogue from the cartoon Young Justice:
Kid Flash: "First time at the Hall. I'm a little overwhelmed."
Robin: "You're overwhelmed, Freeze was underwhelmed, why isn't anyone ever just whelmed?"
@@misterlinux9290 Tamatoa?
First time watching a Folding Ideas vid and I'm immediately supporting this channel. Mining companies continue to oppress Filipino workers, so thank you for casting a light on that issue, even for a brief moment. Love lots from 🇵🇭
You'll love it here.
The fact that I'm just 26, and yet seeing tons of ads pushing gold as an investment make me think "Here we go again..." says a lot about gold as a means of extracting wealth.
It’s a tried and true method… someone WILL fall for it.
@@ArDeeMeemostly because most countries measure their currency through the national reserve of gold.
The fallacy that gold will always hold value is funny even to this level, because it assumes humans won't reach stellar level of mining where gold is lots more common.
"Wait what toxic pit problem" was practically my exact reaction to that segment
18:56 “it feels kinda like he’s cold reading the script off of a teleprompter that is a little too far away” literally spot on im dead
14ish minutes: okay I'm getting a little sleepy watching this
27ish minutes: ah now you've really folded my ideas dan
This is my favorite comment.
@@brandonfritts6111big agree.
Ideas fold flat!
Petition for Dan to make a documentary about gold
I think he just did
this comment is the proof of brainrot
@@katherinelynch4193 He made a documentary about a “documentary” about gold
@@katherinelynch4193the doc was about the doc, not about gold. There were facts about gold to allude to what _this_ doc could have been, but a fully produced Folding Ideas video actually digging into gold itself would look very different than what you see here.
one-up hbomberguy and make a 4 and a half hour video on gold!
As a Brit, i fully endorse the "we've done it before charles and we can do it again"
He's been ballsy enough to call himself Charles, we should be ballsy enough to raise The Good Old Cause
@@TiredOcean Nah, don't throw out progressive Brits; they may be a minority compared to royal shill Brits, but you can't blame them for being born in a shithole country.
@@TiredOceanI wouldn't go as far to say as "any brit"
I understand what you're trying to say but I wouldn't agree there.
@@TiredOcean Orreit, hard lad. Calm down before you spill your ribena.
Cos some gammons like the twat it means we all do???
The thing that has always confused me the most about gold is the idea that it has any worth at all in a doomsday/collapse type scenario. It's a shiny mineral, and it is neat that if you make a gold necklace it will stay a gold necklace. But you can't eat gold.
Like imagine this. It's the zombie apocalypse or whatever, all governments have collapsed, money is worthless, all that's left is the scattered survivors struggling to get by in this harsh new world. It's a freezing cold day, and you fear you might freeze to death. Your gold bar cannot warm you. The water supply is tainted and you have to choose between dehydration and risk of illness. Your gold bar cannot filter the water. Food is scarce, you're losing weight rapidly. Your gold bar can neither plant seeds for you nor aid you in hunting animals. A starving band of desperate travelers comes to the area looking for food. They have a variety of useful supplies with them that could make the difference between life and death for you. What do you think they'd be willing to trade those supplies for- a heavy lump of shiny rock, or a loaf of bread?
It doesn't make any sense for the scenarios these people are preparing for. A gold necklace can be a gold necklace for forever, but people don't care about pretty jewelry when they're starving.
Preppers often seem like they're prepping to travel back in time but with a grade school idea of the past. Shiny things have value in the past because they're so rare in nature, having lots of shinny means lots of community connections to get those rare things, essentially a lot of IOUs. During tough times people trade the shiny for food, cashing in their previous contributions to the community that got them the shiny to be the first to eat when everyone is hungry. Of course people love to cheat so shiny things need to be rare to prevent someone from just dumping a bunch of empty valued shiny into the market.
So preppers decide to hoard shinny with empty value, that was never used to build up the community, and then try to use it to demand the communities resources, as if that isn't the very reason we are in a apocalyptic setting to begin with!
'even the king can't eat gold', a finnish saying from the 18th century
@@jasminv8653it does have good material and engineering properties, just too expensive to be used now.
And in an apocalypse scenario where the daily survival is the main concern? Yeah it will be worthless. But then, are you expecting critical thinking from brainless prepper? Or even basic rational thinking even?
Nah, gold comes in clutch on the 24th level of the post-apocalypse tech tree. You don't know the meta
@@oiytd5wugho 😆
"Believe it or not Tom Scott hasn't even visited half of them" had me ROLLING.
i know its just a minor thing but i love the gold fun facts section has bg footage of dan just scrolling through the wikipedia page for gold. the level of shade considering *recent* events is immaculate.
I love that it demonstrates how WILDLY EASY it is to find cool stuff to say about gold. You can do a casual scroll down the basic Wikipedia article and find a bunch of interesting facts!
@@williamaitken7533 I am reminded of sleepless nights just diving deep into whatever rabbit hole Wikipedia was going to guide me down.
What recent events?
@@camillaquelladegliaggettiv4303I assume they're referring to James Somerton's plagiarism.
I was also thinking about that. It's like he's saying "yes I am using wikipedia as my source for this bit bc it's background info, but I'm not going to hide the laziness of it and the rest of the video isn't going to be like this."
"Gold Open" is such a stupid pun i love it so much
Edit: "some might say it's comedy gold," says my girlfriend
I immediately came to make this comment
I don't get it?
@@karlguntherhaase4112it's a pun on "cold open" which is the part of a show before the opening title sequence
@@karlguntherhaase4112see chapter titles also
"this is not a min(o/e)r problem" got me
That Documentary should be called:
"Idris Elba: Take the money and Run!"
"Mr. President, a second Dan Olson video essay about ads that annoy him has hit UA-cam"
What was the first? Contrapeneurs?
You know, as somebody who did his Ph.D. dissertation on gold chemistry, I agree that gold is a genuinely compelling subject :-)
it conducts them electrons good
It sounds like it'd be pretty fascinating. Hell, just the subject of gold in general should be pretty interesting if it weren't for all these capitalists shitting their pants in a mad rush to sell you some.
Can we get more documentaries based on PhD dissertations because I bet you have some great gold facts that I wanna know
Ooh, what did you find out in your research?
@@thecontagonist, copper and silver do that better tho
I know its because you used his footage of the Pit Lakes, but the "Special Thanks: Tom Scott" section of the credits warmed my heart a little after this week. Thanks, Dan.
It's always worth adding that. The world is a richer place because of his work.
Gotta big up the dan
The mid-roll ad I got for diamonds in this video is truly the chef’s kiss.
I just want to shout out the theme song for a second. Not only is it bizarrely catchy, but it manages to accurately capture the value of this documentary as both art and entertainment, which is to say "Idris Elba repeatedly saying 'Gold' over synthetic fart noises."
Inside of Dan are two wolves: One wants to install an ad blocker and the other wants to find weird rabbit holes.
I'm so glad the WGC made their documentary, otherwise I never would've realized that gold is pretty and valuable.
I know right I gotta get in on this gold thing before too many other people hear about it
Literally, it still blows me away every time I hear it.
It's not that I blame Idris for wanting to get work, get his paycheck, forward his own projects
but there is something distinctly uncanny and sickening about looking forward at a camera and over a history of black corpses put there by white mine operators, touting how great the mine operators are and how phenomenal the product of their labor is to the blacks. Saying this with full confidence to the viewers who's mind you know will be like putty in your hand.
Yeah, even knowing that it basically took South Africa until I was born, barely some odd 30 years ago to look around and go, "Let me think about this slavery thing again" which _still has systemic echoes to this very day_ makes me wonder how much the Gold Council paid Mr. Elbow (who I will not refer to by his proper name out of disrespect) to spread their cheeks and kiss it up. He would have still been a second class citizen when I was born!
I'm sure he was born, raised, and educated into some rich prat school in London where they likely whitewashed over that segment in their history and current event classes (because oops, they did a Colonialism), but you'd think he'd have had time to think about how there's still problems today.
I hope he can't sleep at night, is what I am saying.
The idea that gold jewelry is an investment is hilarious to me. You're not paying just for the gold but for the aesthetic, labour etc, and all of that is immediately not considered when you pawn or resell it. It's like how when you buy a diamond ring and its value immediately depreciates the second you buy it.
Buying gold as an investment is one thing, buying gold jewellery as an investment is completely different
I don't consider it a serious statement, and I don't consider anyone a serious person when they make such a statement.
The speed of depreciation for a gold wedding ring is only outstripped by the marriage.
Good point!
Right? My mom had some gold jewelry, a necklace and some earrings, that were beautiful and quite important to her as they were passed down from her grandmother, and the only jewelry she owned. Then we had a break in many years ago where they smashed the bathroom window and took the stuff.
Insurance covered it, so she got a rough estimate of what that amount of gold was worth at the time, which wasn't even a lot to begin with. But more obviously that did not at all replace the actual worth these things had to her.
Maybe the target audience for this advice were our gold thieves... They clearly considered that jewelry purely from a financial perspective lol
Tbf i am only half joking when i wear gold jewelry as an Investment. Thing is, that stuff doesnt tarnish, it stays good for years with proper Care, and If you HAVE to pawn it... Well, you can. Buying jewelry to Put it in a Safe makes No Sense to me, but neither does buying gold Nuggets. But i Like the idea of longevity, and gold Provides that better than Imitation jewelry.
That being Said, i know what a mess the Mining industry is, so i dont buy new jewelry and Stick to pre-owned stuff.
I was watching this with my roommate and when we got to the environment part I was like "As a person born and raised in Montana, seeing an open pit mine fill with water actively stresses me out." It especially hits with me, because my grandfather was an environmental engineering professor at Montana Tech, and he was part of the team that cleaned up Silver Bow Creek in Butte. He once told me that they would take samples through straws, and once the water hit your teeth, it would dissolve all the plaque on your teeth and if you swallowed it accidentally, you'd have the worst case of the runs for the rest of the day. Butte is an incredibly sad story - fascinating history, geologically interesting, and arguably we might not have the world we live in without it, but as soon as the copper dried up, it got discarded and left to struggle with the issues of being a town founded purely on the interests of the extraction industry.
Damn, Butte has to deal with being done dirty by capitalism, and having that name. (Yes, I know it's pronounced Be-YOOT, but I didn't initially know that and I'm sure a lot of people still don't.)
As a fellow former Butte resident, the pit still does occasionally mess up the water and it suckkksss
@@eos_aurora How does it mess up?
Dentists hate this one weird trick!
They really have their claws in deep when you have a story like that but you're still making a greater good argument. The businessmen who decided to extract in that way without care for the environment or local population aren't as utilitarian as they may seem.
I remember in electronics class in highschool, the teacher explained that the gold used in our electronics kits were worth like pennies, similar to the 6 cent jar of gold wafers in the video. It sounds like a silly disclaimer, but for a bunch of teenagers who don't know any better, there might've been students at some point who tried to remove the gold and sell it because "everyone knows gold is expensive, right?"
Wait, what toxic pit problem?!
Jokes aside, the fact that they didn't focus on the clean-water solution for the metals in the water is mindboggling. That they are just allowed to ditch whole mining sites and never look back or face any repercussions, even more.
I think the biggest hidden joke here is that the color of shirt Dan is wearing is not in fact gold, but mustard yellow
It's ochre, which is a pigment that is mined.
The Marikana massacre happened just over 10 years ago during a wildcat strike in South Africa at which over 100 miners were shot by police killing 34 of them. Frans Baleni interviewed at @22:20 was the head of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and defended the police's actions during the massacre. The striking miners were from a rivaling union AMCU that gained prominence because of the closeness of NUM to mining bosses and the government. The mine at which this happened is now owned by one of the companies in the World Gold Council.
To the uninitiated: A wildcat strike is a strike that is not officially organized through or sanctioned by a union. Union members can do wildcat strikes as long as those strikes were not performed with the approval of union leadership. Workers have to be *extremely* fed up to get involved in a wildcat strike, because they're doing so without any organizational support except what they themselves can cobble together.
+++++
thank you for sharing, how awful. so much blood on the hands of these "gold enthusiasts"...
Holy shit
World Gold Council Plan for world domination:
Step 1: create a gold rush
Step 2: sell the shovels
Step 3: kick back and enjoy infinite money glitch
"There is a narrative around gold that starts in its physical properties but balloons into its own collection of cultural signifiers"
I'm so interested in this kind of general phenomenon, how social constructions based on some kind of solid fact take on a life of their own.
My father was born near Rosia Montana in Romania, Europe's biggest undeveloped gold mine. Those mountains have been mined since Roman times. You can see the mounds of sterile earth, the open pit mines left untouched after operations stopped and the toxic waste lakes in the area. A Canadian company has been trying to get its mining project through for years. The ecological disaster it would have caused and the protests about it were reasons they stopped actively pursuing it.
Gold mining companies can go choke.
Especially after the Baia Mare spill... the sheer fucking gall, as a canadian-born romanian i wish failure on that mining project at every turn.
What it continues to shock me that there doesn't seem to be a single government in the WORLD that thinks large companies should have to clean up after themselves.
I am continually left aghast and speechless at this. Mining and extraction wouldn't be so bad if a) labor wasn't damn near enslaved in this industry at every turn, and b) both during and AFTER completion of operations the mine has to meet the strictest safety and environmental control standards.
The fact this isn't considered utterly viscerally non-negotiable by ANY locality or municipality considering granting an operating permit to a mining company is so beyond me, I don't even know what to say. Here in the US toxic byproducts and industrial pollution are as ubiquitous as sunlight. You won't see it everywhere, it depends on where you live, but yes large industry here has NEVER had to clean up after itself. Google 'lake Erie catching fire 1970s'. I find this beyond mind-boggling and a crime against humanity. But it's nothing new- when you're a corporation in this country you're like God himself. You have to answer to no law and there's not a single fucking thing you have to do that you don't want to do. I see that this seems to be a pattern in most of the rest of the world as well. What IS it about these corporate dicks that government officials ARE SO FUCKING DESPERATE FOR that they will dropped their knees for them at every possible opportunity; let them call EVERY shot and not have to show the slightest bit of social responsibility or legal accountability no matter what????
I just want to know what *IS IT* about these corporate ANIMALS that's so irresistible to government filth that this happens?!?! If we lived in a world NOT controlled by demons, every single ONE of these corporate heads would be on spikes if they fail to comply with ultra-strict environmental standards and meet strict OSHA and labor standards.
It's gotten a little better in the last 50 years here with a few pieces of federal legislation that were aimed to somewhat control these savages and help clean up the last 150 years of intentional sheer indifference and willful poisoning by industry, but we're still a long long ways off from where we should be.
Humans, your corporate dystopia is here.
It's..... amazing. I can never quite understand it. By willfully and gratuitously poisoning our environment we are poisoning our society who depends on water and food FROM that environment.... but of course the public's lives don't matter to the elite animals in public office who are willingly owned by these corporate giants and who live to serve them. Our lives mean nothing to them; less than nothing.
Sounds like this phenomenon isn't unique to the US either.
What it continues to shock me that there doesn't seem to be a single government in the WORLD that thinks large companies should have to clean up after themselves.
I am continually left aghast and speechless at this. Mining and extraction wouldn't be so bad if a) labor wasn't damn near enslaved in this industry at every turn, and b) both during and AFTER completion of operations the mine has to meet the strictest safety and environmental control standards.
The fact this isn't considered utterly viscerally non-negotiable by ANY locality or municipality considering granting an operating permit to a mining company is so beyond me, I don't even know what to say. Here in the US toxic byproducts and industrial pollution are as ubiquitous as sunlight. You won't see it everywhere, it depends on where you live, but yes large industry here has NEVER had to clean up after itself. Google 'lake Erie catching fire 1970s'. I find this beyond mind-boggling and a crime against humanity. But it's nothing new- when you're a corporation in this country you're like God himself. You have to answer to no law and there's not a single fucking thing you have to do that you don't want to do. I see that this seems to be a pattern in most of the rest of the world as well. What IS it about these corporate dicks that government officials ARE SO FUCKING DESPERATE FOR that they will dropped their knees for them at every possible opportunity; let them call EVERY shot and not have to show the slightest bit of social responsibility or legal accountability no matter what????
I just want to know what *IS IT* about these corporate ANIMALS that's so irresistible to government filth that this happens?!?! If we lived in a world NOT controlled by demons, every single ONE of these corporate heads would be on spikes if they fail to comply with ultra-strict environmental standards and meet strict OSHA and labor standards.
It's gotten a little better in the last 50 years here with a few pieces of federal legislation that were aimed to somewhat control these savages and help clean up the last 150 years of intentional sheer indifference and willful poisoning by industry, but we're still a long long ways off from where we should be.
Humans, your corporate dystopia is here.
It's..... amazing. I can never quite understand it. By willfully and gratuitously poisoning our environment we are poisoning our society who depends on water and food FROM that environment.... but of course the public's lives don't matter to the elite animals in public office who are willingly owned by these corporate giants and who live to serve them. Our lives mean nothing to them; less than nothing.
Sounds like this phenomenon isn't unique to the US either.
What continues to shock me that there doesn't seem to be a single government in the WORLD that thinks large companies should have to clean up after themselves.
I am continually left aghast and speechless at this. Mining and extraction wouldn't be so bad if a) labor wasn't damn near enslaved in this industry at every turn, and b) both during and AFTER completion of operations the mine has to meet the strictest safety and environmental control standards.
The fact this isn't considered utterly viscerally non-negotiable by ANY locality or municipality considering granting an operating permit to a mining company is so beyond me, I don't even know what to say. Here in the US toxic byproducts and industrial pollution are as ubiquitous as sunlight. You won't see it everywhere, it depends on where you live, but yes large industry here has NEVER had to clean up after itself. Google 'lake Erie catching fire 1970s'. I find this beyond mind-boggling and a crime against humanity. But it's nothing new- when you're a corporation in this country you're like God himself. You have to answer to no law and there's not a single fucking thing you have to do that you don't want to do. I see that this seems to be a pattern in most of the rest of the world as well. What IS it about these corporate dicks that government officials ARE SO FUCKING DESPERATE FOR that they will dropped their knees for them at every possible opportunity; let them call EVERY shot and not have to show the slightest bit of social responsibility or legal accountability no matter what????
I just want to know what *IS IT* about these corporate ANIMALS that's so irresistible to government filth that this happens?!?! If we lived in a world NOT controlled by demons, every single ONE of these corporate heads would be on spikes if they fail to comply with ultra-strict environmental standards and meet strict OSHA and labor standards.
It's gotten a little better in the last 50 years here with a few pieces of federal legislation that were aimed to somewhat control these savages and help clean up the last 150 years of intentional sheer indifference and willful poisoning by industry, but we're still a long long ways off from where we should be.
Humans, your corporate dystopia is here.
It's..... amazing. I can never quite understand it. By willfully and gratuitously poisoning our environment we are poisoning our society who depends on water and food FROM that environment.... but of course the public's lives don't matter to the elite animals in public office who are willingly owned by these corporate giants and who live to serve them. Our lives mean nothing to them; less than nothing.
Sounds like this phenomenon isn't unique to the US either.
What continues to shock me that there doesn't seem to be a single government in the WORLD that thinks large companies should have to clean up after themselves.
I am continually left aghast at this. Mining and extraction wouldn't be so bad if a) labor wasn't damn near enslaved in this industry at every turn, and b) both during and AFTER completion of operations the mine has to meet the strictest safety and environmental control standards.
The fact this isn't considered utterly viscerally non-negotiable by ANY locality or municipality considering granting an operating permit to a mining company is so beyond me, I don't even know what to say. Here in the US toxic byproducts and industrial pollution are as ubiquitous as sunlight. You won't see it everywhere, it depends on where you live, but yes large industry here has NEVER had to clean up after itself. Gogle 'lake Erie catching fire 1970s'. I find this beyond mind-boggling and a crime against humanity. But it's nothing new- when you're a corporation in this country you're like God himself. You have to answer to no law and there's not a single fcking thing you have to do that you don't want to do. I see that this seems to be a pattern in most of the rest of the world as well. What IS it about these corporate dicks that government officials ARE SO FCKING DESPERATE FOR that they will dropped their knees for them at every possible opportunity; let them call EVERY shot and not have to show the slightest bit of social responsibility or legal accountability no matter what????
I just want to know what *IS IT* about these corporate ANIMALS that's so irresistible to government filth that this happens?!?! If we lived in a world NOT controlled by criminals, every single ONE of these corporate heads would be on spikes if they fail to comply with ultra-strict environmental standards and meet strict OSHA and labor standards.
It's gotten a little better in the last 50 years here with a few pieces of federal legislation that were aimed to somewhat control these savages and help clean up the last 150 years of intentional sheer indifference and willful poisoning by industry, but we're still a long long ways off from where we should be.
Humans, your corporate dystopia is here.
It's..... amazing. I can never quite understand it. By willfully and gratuitously poisoning our environment we are poisoning our society who depends on water and food FROM that environment.... but of course the public's lives don't matter to the elite animals in public office who are willingly owned by these corporate giants and who live to serve them. Our lives mean nothing to them; less than nothing.
Sounds like this phenomenon isn't unique to the US either.
Thank you, Dan, for remembering your audience as they go through the harshest time of year for youtube videos. You are a bright light in the barren wasteland that is internet January
On the bright side, Fantano is doing two Classics Weeks in a row this year.
I just pictured Mike and Jay from Redlettermedia shouting in tandem: ‘FUCK YOU, IT’S JANUARY!!’
the only good part about january is that small content creators don't actually care about money so you get more niche creators coming out of nowhere
@@instoneylodge that's my alarm for the entire month
I didn’t know this was a thing actually! Barren January on the internet. Now that I’m looking out for it I bet I’ll probably notice it, seems like that kind of phenomenon lol
On the topic of colonialism I find it tragically comedic how during those last 15 minutes, in which they walk around the UK gold vaults, no doubt features some of the frozen Venezuelan reserves that they to this day refuse to give back to the nation in question.
based
@@breakinglegsandbreakinghea3167 based brutal imperialism, showing em brownies how its done innit m8
maybe if commies hadn't enslaved the country, those reserves would be accessible.
Jesus. If there is a country that needs their gold back, it is Venezuela.
so their commie dictator can continue to buy luxury goods on the black market while his people eat grass?@@misteraskman3668
It's crazy to think that this is the first time Dan's talked about a movie since Bakshi's Lord of the Rings.
*Bakshi
@@Jabberstax DAMMIT
I'm struck by what Dan touched on in the early bit of the video, the mythological character of gold owing to its chemical resilience, and how you can see echoes of that in mythology still today. In D&D, how do you know that *that* object is a magic item? Because in this damp tomb, it remains shiny and untained by the elements.
That probably also means that if Queen Elizabeth II rises from the grave as a lich and you defeat her, you get to keep the crowned jewels as loot
"if"?
@@franslair2199 SHhhhhh he did not played thae British Simulator yet, Let barry,63 get a hold of him first before the big lichz
Lizzy the Lich is 100% showing up in my D&D game. Complete with impression.
Thank you. You have made my life and the lives of my players better. :D
I think the British would want them back, but if you killed Lich Queen Elizabeth, let's see them take it.
Here's a fun thing for you. What's *about* as hard as steel but *about* half the weight? If you said mithril, you're still thinking in fantasy terms. Titanium! Mithril is just fantasy titanium!
As a fan of embroidery I would watch a whole documentary on goldwork embroidery which is a really beautiful art form. There is so many directions to take an actual gold documentary beyond being corporate gold propaganda, like now I want to legitimately learn about gold.
Seriously!!! Now I want a proper mini series that highlights a new use/significance for gold each episode.
They could have ones that cover topics missed by the Idris documentary; -Indian cultural significance
-cultural significance in Gana
-the chemical properties and significance of gold as an element
-the production process of gold jewellery from conception to market,
As well as all kinds other cultural backgrounds, crafts, and use cases.
Dan mentioned Golds use in aerospace engineering.
OP mentioned Goldwork embroidery.
I’m also curious about the production process for gold flake, and related, the creative process of gold gilding, and it’s historical use and significance.
Shame that there’s not a high likelihood of anything like that being produced, since they would have to g up against the WGL financial incentives.
i find it interesting how fancy restaurants serve food with gold leaf on it, i would watch a documentary about how tf that happened and if it ever happened before
I would watch a whole doc on gold overglaze used in ceramics, and the chemical process of making the liquid lustre it's applied as
As someone who was embroidering while watching this video, I completely agree with you.
A few years ago I went to a presentation on investing in gold. One of their principal criticisms of paper money was that it had value because government assigned it value. I wanted to ask how that was different from government assigning value to gold, but I was too chicken.
Is it weird that I kind of resent gold? Like, because of Conquistadors I associate gold with greed and destruction. I can't separate "gold" from the destruction of what could have been of the cultures that lived here.
Peak Conquistador gold fever came from when platinum stolen from the Americas was used to counterfeit silver, so the Spaniards dumped a bunch of it in the ocean so it couldn't be misused again. If the Spaniards were a fictional evil empire, that quantity and concentration of symbolism could kill small children who were exposed to it.
Honestly I'm kinda taken aback about that Aceh Tsunami section. Like, I'm sorry, I live in Indonesia, I know what happened, and that portrayal of "wow these people have lots of gold they can easily recover from life ending cataclysm isn't that cooolll????" is insane.
Aceh citizens do love gold jewelry, yes, but it's not like they have them stashed as "tsunami management fund"? Most of the time it's people displaced because their house and loved ones obliterated by the waves and sell what they currently wear on their person to survive. It's not out of some opportunity, it was desperate measures. White people docus is fucking insane, holy shit.
It's a corporate propaganda documentary, they would never talk about the toll the disaster took on the people and that gold was not actually a lifesaver but a desperate measure, it would be bad for PR to show their industry exploiting people and such a large tragedy, it sucks.
I know right?!?! This isn't them having a cool little trick up their sleeve, but being forced to sell sentimental items like a wedding ring or a family heirloom in order to feed for family for a few more days. It is absolutely disgusting to see it treated so lacksidesically
The first thing I thought was that that sounds incredibly sad that people had to do this. No doubt people were selling priceless family heirlooms and other sentimentally important objects for much less than they were monetarily worth out of desperation because the resources they needed to survive were not present. Not to mention that there were vultures out there with enough resources to buy said gold from people suffering from a humanitarian crisis. Trying to spin this into a positive story at all is sickening.
Yea. I was sort of enjoying the silly nature of this doc, especially juxtaposed with the kind of cranks who actually buy into gold being ppl who deny climate change and would rather have all men in charge of mines becuz there's apparently something inherent in men that lets us operate cranes better, somehow. When it got to Elba hand waving away the history of colonialism and the effects of things like strip mining on climate refugee hotbeds with "but the gold they mined actually what helped them survive", that's when I just got angry.
"It's a good thing they had family relics to pawn off to make up for their shattered infrastructure and non-existent bank accounts!!!"
I came prepared for an intellectual breakdown of an interesting subject, but I can’t quite get to it yet because I’m too busy giggling at the first chapter being titled “gold open.”
Oh god it is.
Just so that you know, the NZ mine also involved violation of indigeous Māori rights along the way
Until two years ago I used to live in a small rural town in France near a gold mine that was exploited until the 1950's. Even now, 70 years later the town is still dealing with the aftermath of that exploitation, mostly arsenic and iron pollution. During the 30 years it was active 10 tonnes of gold was extracted generating 700 000 tones of residues of exploitation. Those residues have been partially removed but a lot of it still remains, it looks like sand dunes. The access to those dune weren't restricted until 2017. It was also only in 2017 that some very basic measures against water pollution were put in place. Some studies and analysis were done by a government agency but it's conclusion were not made public to the people leaving nearby.
"The result is that the environmental activists are pissed off, the company shareholders are pissed off, and you, the viewer, are bored. This sucks."
You always have such a perfect way with words in describing complete failures.