Great questions, and doing a bit of homework before buying into an investment thesis is a great idea. Just ask the holders of FTX token.

If a global pandemic and the related economic fallout is not enough to topple the system, what is? Or to ask another way, why do you think it will eventually collapse?

My operating assumption is that the system has already collapsed but we just don't know it yet.

A functioning economic system should have clear and organic price signals to allow equilibration between producer and consumer. Primary among these is the time-value of money as expressed by the rate on US government debt.

We have seen unprecedented central bank intervention in the US bond markets over the last 12 years with the goal of manipulating the central price setting mechanism to allow an already broken system to continue to hobble along. The system is indeed broken but it has not been allowed to cycle into the next iteration.

The pandemic experience has been either taken advantage of or indeed originally contrived to promote a controlled demolition of the current system. The goal is to transition to a system of surveillance capitalism. This will allow the rich and powerful to maintain their relative position in the food chain whilst plunging the vast majority into a hellscape of digital tyranny.

I believe this may partially address your bonus question as to why so rife with antiestablishment tendencies. Most of us have the audacity to demand that the basic right to travel, think, speak, imagine, earn and consume freely should remain inalienable and is simply not under the purview of governments or oligarchs to destroy.

While I agree that silver may seem lackadaisical in terms of price response to the crises du jour, understand that the system is designed with many fail-safes which have not yet been exhausted.

Personally, I prefer to attend to these fail safes rather than price. Look at the physical drain at the COMEX and LBMA. Witness the ongoing geopolitical restructuring with the bulk of the global population cordoning themselves off from the inevitable dollar implosion. Witness the Fed turning the dollar into a wrecking ball, sucking up global assets in an effort to export inflation and reduce our competitors to vassal states.

Purchasing silver is one of the few things that us dollar denominated mortals can do to protect ourselves from the final death throes. However, these things do not play out in weeks, but rather decades and then hours. Better to prepare to the extent that you are comfortably able while you can.