I'm happy to hear Buffet's thoughts on financial matters, but I'll still place more weight on the emergent consensus of a market. I understand his point, but i

I'm happy to hear Buffet's thoughts on financial matters, but I'll still place more weight on the emergent consensus of a market. I understand his point, but in a sense gold's utility is it's non-utility. Or another sense is that most people have the same understanding of it, dollars and bitcoins have no inherent utility other than people have a shared understanding of what they are, and what they are for. Also understand that he is speaking as someone looking to allocate capital to receieve a return on that capital. There are other entities that would prefer something like gold, nation-states for example. So Buffett is just saying if you want to see your purchasing power appreciate, don't hold your money in currencies, but invest it in value producing companies. Salt Yes, as your link describes, salt use to be far more scarce and therefore commanded a far higher trade value. So it was actually that salt was far more expensive, rather than gold was cheaper. In fact the word salary comes from a latin word pertaining to salt. http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=salary http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=sa...