As many as a hundred million corpses have been left behind communism, at best in the pursuit of an ideal and at worst in the pursuit of power and influence, neither of which are tangible.
I used to work with a Vietnamese gentleman who had been a pilot in the South Vietnamese Air Force. After the North Vietnamese communists invaded in 1975, he was imprisoned for five years in a so-called reeducation camp. After his release, he escaped from the country on a fishing boat in the South China Sea, ultimately ending up in a UN-administered refugee camp in the Philippines. He was able to bribe and pay his way out of the country because he had gold. Assuming you could keep it dry, imagine trying to do that with nearly worthless Vietnamese currency. Notwithstanding the fact that the notes had Uncle Ho's portrait on them, even the communist cadres didn't want that crap. But GOLD? You betcha!
Moreover, as far as human purposes are concerned, there is nothing about the durability of gold that makes it more suitable than the assets we today consider to be money: all of it will outlive you, very likely several times over. I also have yet to run into anything that was not in finite supply and that includes all currencies, even under hyperinflated regimes.
Long after you, I, and all the banknotes on the planet have turned to compost, the gold mined in the days of the Pharaohs will still be here. :2wave:
As for scarcity, I am afraid we have a bit of problem here. Suppose that the moon is up for sale. There might be only one such moon orbiting the Earth, but if no one has any desire or use to own it, it is not scarce in any meaningful sense of the word. Stated differently, scarcity is a notion of distance between supplied and demanded quantities. It literally means "insufficient for the demand." If you allow me to paraphrase Carl Menger, all the gold of Fort Knox is without value to a man stranded on an island. That's why contemporary economic theory begins with the simple idea of supply and demand. It's the minimum you need to make sense of things.
I tell you what. You can have the moon, and I'll take all the gold in Ft. Knox.
Then, you misread me. I meant to say that absolutely nothing has intrinsic value. You have a market for gold, you have a market for currencies, each with actors making choices from both sides of the market.
Nonsense. A basic rule of debate is to, wherever possible, avoid words defining absolutes because: 1) there are few absolutes; and 2) all it takes to invalidate your position is one example. You've managed to use two words defining absolutes--"absolutely" and "nothing"--in the same sentence. :lol: Of course, in our discussion it depends on how you define the word "intrinsic." It would be difficult to place a monetary value on an igloo in the middle of an inhospitable, desolate Arctic, but it does have value in and of itself to the Eskimo who inhabits it, unless he wants to freeze to death.
And there we have it. The only :doh reason people actually go down that rabbit hole is distrust in governments. It's not unwarranted to a certain degree, even if I don't think it's a reasonable expectation for countries like the United States or Canada. Even setting this aside, it's unnecessary to go further than saying you distrust the government generally. I don't know if ever heard of Carl Menger and the "marginal revolution," the debate surrounding the nature of value in economics has been settled over a 100 years ago. We think in terms of preferences and opportunity costs because it is manifest to everyone involved that value doesn't manifest itself as an objective property, but as the consequence of human interactions.
Yeah, I don't trust governments to preserve the value of their currency. And why would anyone, given the stated goal of monetary authorities to devalue their currency at a steady rate, which they seem to think they can control over the long term. But do I own gold because of that? No, actually, I don't own ANY gold, either physical gold or in the form of a proxy such as a gold ETF. But I'm not dumb enough to loan the federal government dollars for 30 years at 1.45%, either. I would rather own a productive asset like shares in a corporation that should
increase in value over time, unlike gold which really will just maintain its purchasing power over time. Maintaining a stable value is supposed to be a prime trait of a currency.