What makes certain assets appreciate perpetually over time?
Inflation.
Hard Assets of Intrinsic value go up as currencies are debased.
It's axiomatic.
So - what causes inflation?
All the things that define humans and human activity at this juncture of our evolution.
1) The need to dominate our evironment. This leads certain political beings to need to amass more and more money and power. To do this they need more and more government to fund and protect and justify their acquisitions. The larger the government the more expensive it is to fund. Eventually the expense of running the government demands greater and greater DEBT which eventually crowds out productive investment. All this funding and debt require massive printing of money - which debases the currency. That is inflation.
2) The need to defend our dominance over our environment. This requires armies, and police and prisons and weapons. The greater our domain the more expensive to fund our armies and police and prisons and weapons. Entire industries spring up to create more and more advanced weapons and bigger survelliance and enforcement agencies - all funded by greater and greater debt.
3) The need for enemies - both within and without to solidify and justify our power. This is terribly expensive and requires massive funding for infracstructures - media of all sorts - (television, internet, streaming social networks, radio, satellites, cable, etc) to stoke anger and hatred against these enemies and provoke and justify wars to fight them.
4) Wars. These are msssively expensive in the cost of waging them - but are also terribly inflationary in the disruption of supply chains and the depletion of stocks of commodities. Hot wars are the worst, but Trade Wars accomplish the same stoking of inflation while we wait for them to develope into Hot Wars.
5) The need to impress our fellow beings with our grandeur. This requires more and more stuff - Discretionary Spending on every conceivable product that makes us look and seem more important and beautiful and powerful and interesting Endless spending on crap we don't really need. Which ultimately requires more and more consumer Debt which in turn makes everything more and more expensive.
All this human activity requiring endless debt is endlessly inflationary.
Eventually everyone goes broke. Or at least nobody can repay their debt, Which should be the same thing, right?
That should be deflationary, right?
Not when you have a central bank in collusion with a Treasury that sets rates and prints money to bail out everyone deemed Too Big to Fail - which eventually includes all government and all the Big Banks, and all the larger Shadow Banking institutions, and all the largest corporation. They don't go broke. The Fed takes their bad debt onto their own balance sheet and the Treasury prints money to keep everhone funded. This requires ever greater debt.
A lot of poor and middle class people go broke but it can take a long long time for them to organize sufficiently to put a stop the the inflation machine that is breaking them. Especially when they still want to gorge themselves on all those discretionary items that distract them from their poverty. And when they try to blame inflation on certain arbitrary enemies that the powerful political beings tell them to blame. This just creates more wars and greater spending,
It always eventually becomes a choice between the debasement of the currency to keep everything inflating- or allowing for a depression and then a monetary reset.
Guess which the Fed and the Treasury and the President - whomever he or she might be - will choose?
So inflation is a one way bet.
At least until Human Nature changes.
Don't hold your breath.
And maybe buy a little gold for protection.
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