This will be true right up until the point it is not. The US dollar dominance is not a feature of the universe, it's a social agreement that, like any such agreement, will eventually come undone.
Now that same kind of dinner can still be had for the same silver dollar, but the amount of gold in the small 1923 gold eagle[0] would be enough to serve 30 today, not merely the 10 diners of 100 years ago.
And some of these are nice restaurants.
Today if your dollar does not contain the full ounce of silver it was originally intended to, and all you have is a $1 bank note instead, it still buys a kid-sized ice cream cone at McDonald's. Now sometimes only during special promotions depending on market.
[0] Regular ordinary legal tender, but were all confiscated by the government because they were gold in 1933, when the ownership of gold by Americans was outlawed until decades later (only after its backing of the dollar was discontinued).
This has been (more or less) the standard since like forever, for at least several thousand of years including in major world's empires including the Greek, Persian, Roman (Rome and Byzantine), Islamic (Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottoman) and British Empire until 19th century where bimetallic currency namely silver coin (dirham) and gold coin (dinar) were pervasive.
Fun facts, the word dirham in Islamic empire is derived from the word drachma with the same meaning in Greek, while dinar is derived from the Roman word denarius.
When you try to do both, you end up with situations where the government gets incentivized to take a metal that's fairly low value, and stamp a design into it to infuse it with new value. Silver bullion in the 1880s that might be worth 60 cents an ounce suddenly went up to a buck and change when you turned it into a Morgan or Trade Dollar. I suspect the introduction of the $20 gold piece in 1849 (and possibly the $3 in 1854) were in part to sop up a glut on the gold market.
We hyperinflate the currency by printing $trillllions a year and hading it out to countries at war, businesses that have failed and defending the oceans.
USD has already been hyperinflated, its just the affects are being felt slowly as the money "trickles down" from the 1% to the rest of us.
It's why collectables, real estate and such were the first assets to inflate, because that's what the rich buy, food inflation is much slower.
Hyperinflation is coming, I've been saying it and buying gold since QE1 back in '08.
It probably won’t come to that but we don’t know. And uncertainty is bad for business.
Investing in gold as a hedge for the collapse of society is imo a really piss-poor idea. Either invest in stuff you can use (i.e. food) or stuff that will be demand (Ham radios, firearms). Gold is just not going to be the future medium of currency there isn't enough of it in practical sized values.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money#Overview
Ham radio is only useful if you can power it and find someone else with one who can also power it, my guess not enough people will have them to be useful. firearms are only useful if you have ammo - while you can make bullets and black power it is hard to say if it is worth it. I doubt there will be much firearm trade unless there is an ammo manufacturing (no longer society collapse - though a much more likely scenereo) - people who have ammo will keep the guns that go with it.
I'm not disagreeing that there are plenty of things other than gold to hold onto. However gold is still a reasonable choice for post disaster trade for the same reasons society settled on it in the first place. (note that society also used copper and silver for trade)
Roman currency (both the coinage and the numeric value promixal to goods) lasted for years after the empire fell. It was just easier to use that relative value, and rely on local credit
> "society will have broken down far enough that even the gold will be relatively worthless and the predominant goods of choice will be cans of dog food and beans.
it absolutely was peaceful, especially in those two countries.
Again, yes, it was peaceful BETWEEN the US ans UK, but your thesis that the primary global currency can collapse peacefully without a catastrophic global crisis is... well, picking the transition of the Pound to make that point is not a choice I would have gone with.
That also makes them good speculative assets fwiw
unless we agree for it not to. it took faith in a social structure to put the system together, and as long as it's maintained, it will stay together.
there's likely no invisible hand that builds and then ruins all of our achievements (unless we want to believe there is one (which makes it just us again in the end))