6 ms·

Why do we value gold?

23 points by aminozuur 6y ago

lurquer 6y ago
Perhaps the question should be, “Why do women value gold?” Using gold for adornment seems universal. And, it seems to be the females in the culture who primarily wear it. Of course, it’s a chicken and egg kinda thing; do women value it (and the men who have it) because it’s valuable, or is it valuable because women like it? I’ve always liked the color of copper more. And, silver seems far more shiny. However — and this goes back to the gender issue — the men would not normally have the task of polishing the stuff as it oxidizes. In other words, while a copper necklace and a gold necklace might appear equally pretty to a man, perhaps a woman would look at the copper and see not just the color, but the work that will be needed to maintain it.
- valbaca 6y ago
  > Perhaps the question should be, “Why do women value gold?” No, it shouldn't. Gold has been worn by just as many men as women. I thought the blue-pink divide was arbitrary, but now gold is "only for women"? Based on what? > the females Gross. > the men would not normally have the task of polishing the stuff What incredibly specific and odd gender roles you imagine.
  - lurquer 6y ago
    So, let me get this straight... Jewelry has been — for the past 10,000 years — gender neutral? And, women have NOT been responsible for cleaning and caring for their own jewelry? Do you ever step outside and interact with people? Have you had so little contact with women that you know nothing of jewelry? Women wear more jewelry than men in nearly every culture on Earth. Marketing jewelry to women is a multi-billion dollar industry world-wide. Does that offend you? If you had any direct contact with women, you would know that —- even to this day —- polishing, storing, and organizing jewelry is something far more women do than men. If that’s ‘gross’ to you, you have issues.
    - dopidopHN 6y ago
      > Women wear more jewelry than men in nearly every culture on Earth Citation needed.
      - simonblack 6y ago
        Here's one. But where would you put it? https://yaffa-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/yaffadsp/images/dmImage/StandardImage/cessna_citation_cj4.jpg https://yaffa-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/yaffadsp/images/dmImage/S...
    - SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
      The fact that you are trying to reduce this to a false dichotomy between one of "the females in the culture primarily wear gold" (yes, "females" ) or "Jewelry is gender neutral" shows that you are not a serious person making a serious argument. Your whole weird gender-role based argument is entirely unsupported and yes, gross.
    - osacial 6y ago
      >Women wear more jewelry than men in nearly every culture on Earth. Ssure: https://www.rolex.com/ https://www.rolex.com/
  - imtringued 6y ago
    >>the females >Gross. This sort of phrasing/teminology is very common. Nobody is implying anything by it. I was surprised at first when I heard about it but it's probably because English is my second language and thinking of calling someone the equivalent in German would be very awkward. However, that's not the case in English. It's just a different language.
- parsimo2010 6y ago
  Sure, countries since ancient times have been using it as their basis of currency solely because women like shiny jewelry. Or maybe it’s because men like gold too and it’s not just for adornment.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    The causation is probably backwards really - relative preference bias towards women was because of the norms of ancient times. In elder strongly patriarchal cultures (including some still around today) courtship jewelery was one of the few valuables that belonged to the woman specifically as opposed to say land. It became a part of courtship and essentially an expression of commitment, ability to demonstrate ability to provide for his wife, as well as giving some insurance even if faith were broken. Relative value wise it could actually resale for sizable ammounts. If the worst were to happen - if he died or abandoned her, she would still have her jewels to fall back upon. Notable more modern cultural relics include things like a grandmother's or mother's wedding dress (industrialization helped make such one off goods viable while for masses not rich enough to wear one or more very expensive dresses once per social occasion), wedding ring, or other jewelery going to (grand)daughters specifically. Obviously the items would likely not fit the sons while also historically drawing ridicule if actually worn so that helped explain why it was allowed.
- jazzyjackson 6y ago
  Its men who carve the mines and go on global conquests to increase their stores. Gold watches, gold chains, men wear plenty of gold. I'm thinking of Gaddafi, or Mansa Musa, and the conquistadors. Some monumental architecture (WV captiol dome, moque domes) are painted gold, it's not to impress women, it's to project power. To your point on why women are wearing it, some cultures in India and Africa, IIRC women are in charge of house finances; without bank accounts, jewelry becomes a store of value. The aesthetic value is secondary, the important part is it can be transported on your person and liquidated, easily verified as being gold. Same as bitcoin, someone shows you a 256bit number, it's trivial to test whether that number is a wallet or not, you just check the ledger. Gold is the ultimate distributed store of value, no third party is needed to check if the value is there. PS you got a "gross" in one of the replies because some people are set off by the use of "female" when "women" would do. I don't really get it but just FYI.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
    > you got a "gross" in one of the replies because some people are set off by the use of "female" when "women" would do I wouldn't reduce the cause to just that one word. That word choice is merely the cherry on the whole cake of Gender essentialism. Deciding that _this_ unsupported irrelevance is where the conversation really needs to go is the foundation of it.
- osacial 6y ago
  > Perhaps the question should be, “Why do women value gold?” ...as in opposite, that men don't? https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.acMHk5wKXdR-SbwcIxcTWAHaHu&pid=15.1 https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.acMHk5wKXdR-SbwcIxcTWAHaH...
jvanderbot 6y ago
"It turns out then, that the reason gold is precious is precisely that it is so chemically uninteresting." - Rare but not too rare - Easily distinguishable from look-alikes (most other precious minerals look like silver) - Soft enough to form into jewelry - Melts readily into coins / etc - Easy enough to mine - Doesn't tarnish (chemically uninteresting) Saved you a click. Here's your facebook post text: "If you were to collect together every earring, every gold sovereign, the tiny traces gold in every computer chip, every pre-Columbian statuette, every wedding ring and melt it down, it's guesstimated that you'd be left with just one 20-metre cube, or thereabouts."
- valbaca 6y ago
  Interesting there's absolutely no mention of its unique utility in the modern era for computing based on its high conductivity. Copper is good enough for most applications but for where quality matters more than cost, it's irreplaceable, no?
  - bananabiscuit 6y ago
    Copper is actually more conductive than gold. Gold is only used for contacts because it does not oxidize and that’s the only time it matters if there is an oxidative layer on top of your conductor.
  - krustyburger 6y ago
    I have this sudden urge to buy some Monster cables from you.
  - parsimo2010 6y ago
    It’s not the conductivity that causes us to use gold plated contacts, it’s that gold doesn’t tarnish. Silver is more conductive than copper, but it’s only a few percent. For most applications it’s cheaper to just use a fatter copper wire than to use silver.
- blacksmith_tb 6y ago
  Just! That's a block of metal the size of a large building, weighing almost 400,000kg.
Nasrudith 6y ago
Really it is the memes behind gold that give it the value and role along with maybe a little evolutionary psychology theory of being attracted to the sight of shinies because they are reminiscent of water. Platinium is rarer than gold, denser, and more applications, and similiarly shiny yet it wound up dumped in the ocean to try to prevent debasing gold by the Spanish soon after discovery of a large cache in Ecuador. History and blindly aping the past isn't a very good reason but it is a strong one.
gumby 6y ago
> Gold's relative inertness means you can create an elaborate golden jaguar and be confident that 1,000 years later it can be found in a museum display case in central London, still in pristine condition. This ignores another, more importent manifestation of those physical properties: you can steal something gold and melt it down with negligible loss, rendering it untraceable. For example a lot of the first gold from the americas (mentioned in the article) was simply stripped from temples. Of course this works at the small scale as well.
- imtringued 6y ago
  The article mentioned that smelting gold is easier than other metals.
  - gumby 6y ago
    Yes it does but that could just be a comment about making jewelry or such (i.e. that's a feature not a benefit). You can't spend a US coin outside the US (except a little in Canada or Mexico) but you can spend gold coins as easily as you can "spend" gold jewelry pretty much anywhere. When I was a kid my parents would buy gold jewelry by weight and I used to see people sell jewelry to the goldsmith by weight. The actual labor put into it didn't add to the cost, it merely drew people into the shop. There are some articles about people who use gold as currency at Libertarian fairs and such. It's pretty inconvenient, actually.
cjdaly 6y ago
The article leaves out one big factor in why gold is valued. Similar to "why does the dollar have value?" (answer: taxes), a fundamental source of gold price support is that central banks all around the world - by longstanding official policy - horde gold (in metric tonnes) and treat it like a reserve currency/asset. Central banks could change their policies in the future and (e.g.) sell all their gold for bitcoin. If that happens, gold price will go way down and I will look for a 3d-printer that prints with gold filament. :-)
- jvanderbot 6y ago
  Circular: We value gold be cause we (banks) value gold. It's not wrong, but it's not a "reason".
  - cjdaly 6y ago
    I think, like the dollar/taxes example, it is circular but self-fulfilling. If you asked a central banker why they value gold, I suspect they would cite the "Rare but not too rare" and "Easily distinguishable from look-alikes" (in other words, hard to fake or counterfeit) points from the article. And the average person, on learning an ounce of gold costs about $1780 (today), I think will perceive this as valuable - a small thing with such a high price. And if central banks dis-horde, the price goes down and the typical person sees it as less valuable.
  - Doxin 6y ago
    It's circular but still a correct reason. The reason people value gold is because you can sell it for a high price. Why can you sell it for a high price? because whoever receives it can also sell it for a high price. Note that this isn't true for most things. If I buy for instance a car I don't expect to be able to sell it again for the same price. So I suppose another way to word it is "Gold doesn't depreciate"
  - dawguy 6y ago
    The circular valuation is the primary reason its valued so highly today. Any article which ignores that isn't doing the topic justice. Especially because there is a very solid reason the value grew so large to begin with. Prior to the invention of the electric lightbulb gold was far more beautiful than it is today (which was not discussed in the article). In candlelight gold will shimmer and gleam as the flames dance (with the red-orange flames accentuating the gold coloring). With electric lighting, the light provided is so consistent that gold is reflective but isn't any more more beautiful than a shiny steel appliance or clean marble countertop. The combination of rarity and being the most beautiful material in candlelight made it the perfect material for kings and temples to collect to show off their status. And when the richest people in the world compete to collect something, it makes sense that the price is driven upwards. In the modern world gold is still collected and stored as a symbol of status and wealth primarily because ancient kings valued it. Even if the driver of why they collected it originally has been greatly diminished. (The idea behind gold's reflective properties in dim candlelit rooms comes from the book In Praise of Shadows which I would highly recommend)
rufus_foreman 6y ago
Some people value gold because it is pretty. And some people value gold because it is useful. And some people value gold because the government can't create new gold out of thin air. Does that about cover it?
- TheBigSalad 6y ago
  It doesn't tell the whole story. Gold is pretty, but we can make prettier things nowadays, or simulate it's look. Gold is useful in electronics, but historically it's useless. It was once good that governments couldn't make gold, but we've moved away from the gold standard in modern days for the same reason.
  - rufus_foreman 6y ago
    Sorry, lost you. What was the same reason?
- osacial 6y ago
  It is possible to create gold out of thin air - side effect is radioactivity.
nine_zeros 6y ago
In Asian families with long histories, it's well known that gold lasts for generations. That alone is reason enough to hold wealth in Gold. They shape it as ornaments and pass it down generations. It's a store of wealth because other dynastic families will forever accept it as payment to pass it on to their own kids. Parallel alternatives are currency, land and historical artefacts. Currency is subject to manipulation (even fractional reserves is a form of manipulation), land can be seized by changing empires and wars and historical artefacts may lose their meaning. So gold it is. One could argue why it's not other metals but I suspect there's an element of glitter to it.
- imtringued 6y ago
  Just read the article, it gives a lot of reasons why the element gold is better than any other element. However, you're right about the motives of the holders of gold as wealth. Using an element to store wealth is easier than using an agreement with the local military to store your wealth.

23 points by aminozuur 6y ago

Perhaps the question should be, “Why do women value gold?” Using gold for adornment seems universal. And, it seems to be the females in the culture who primarily wear it. Of course, it’s a chicken and egg kinda thing; do women value it (and the men who have it) because it’s valuable, or is it valuable because women like it? I’ve always liked the color of copper more. And, silver seems far more shiny. However — and this goes back to the gender issue — the men would not normally have the task of polishing the stuff as it oxidizes. In other words, while a copper necklace and a gold necklace might appear equally pretty to a man, perhaps a woman would look at the copper and see not just the color, but the work that will be needed to maintain it.

valbaca 6y ago
> Perhaps the question should be, “Why do women value gold?” No, it shouldn't. Gold has been worn by just as many men as women. I thought the blue-pink divide was arbitrary, but now gold is "only for women"? Based on what? > the females Gross. > the men would not normally have the task of polishing the stuff What incredibly specific and odd gender roles you imagine.
- lurquer 6y ago
  So, let me get this straight... Jewelry has been — for the past 10,000 years — gender neutral? And, women have NOT been responsible for cleaning and caring for their own jewelry? Do you ever step outside and interact with people? Have you had so little contact with women that you know nothing of jewelry? Women wear more jewelry than men in nearly every culture on Earth. Marketing jewelry to women is a multi-billion dollar industry world-wide. Does that offend you? If you had any direct contact with women, you would know that —- even to this day —- polishing, storing, and organizing jewelry is something far more women do than men. If that’s ‘gross’ to you, you have issues.
  - dopidopHN 6y ago
    > Women wear more jewelry than men in nearly every culture on Earth Citation needed.
    - simonblack 6y ago
      Here's one. But where would you put it? https://yaffa-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/yaffadsp/images/dmImage/StandardImage/cessna_citation_cj4.jpg https://yaffa-cdn.s3.amazonaws.com/yaffadsp/images/dmImage/S...
  - SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
    The fact that you are trying to reduce this to a false dichotomy between one of "the females in the culture primarily wear gold" (yes, "females" ) or "Jewelry is gender neutral" shows that you are not a serious person making a serious argument. Your whole weird gender-role based argument is entirely unsupported and yes, gross.
  - osacial 6y ago
    >Women wear more jewelry than men in nearly every culture on Earth. Ssure: https://www.rolex.com/ https://www.rolex.com/
- imtringued 6y ago
  >>the females >Gross. This sort of phrasing/teminology is very common. Nobody is implying anything by it. I was surprised at first when I heard about it but it's probably because English is my second language and thinking of calling someone the equivalent in German would be very awkward. However, that's not the case in English. It's just a different language.
parsimo2010 6y ago
Sure, countries since ancient times have been using it as their basis of currency solely because women like shiny jewelry. Or maybe it’s because men like gold too and it’s not just for adornment.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  The causation is probably backwards really - relative preference bias towards women was because of the norms of ancient times. In elder strongly patriarchal cultures (including some still around today) courtship jewelery was one of the few valuables that belonged to the woman specifically as opposed to say land. It became a part of courtship and essentially an expression of commitment, ability to demonstrate ability to provide for his wife, as well as giving some insurance even if faith were broken. Relative value wise it could actually resale for sizable ammounts. If the worst were to happen - if he died or abandoned her, she would still have her jewels to fall back upon. Notable more modern cultural relics include things like a grandmother's or mother's wedding dress (industrialization helped make such one off goods viable while for masses not rich enough to wear one or more very expensive dresses once per social occasion), wedding ring, or other jewelery going to (grand)daughters specifically. Obviously the items would likely not fit the sons while also historically drawing ridicule if actually worn so that helped explain why it was allowed.
jazzyjackson 6y ago
Its men who carve the mines and go on global conquests to increase their stores. Gold watches, gold chains, men wear plenty of gold. I'm thinking of Gaddafi, or Mansa Musa, and the conquistadors. Some monumental architecture (WV captiol dome, moque domes) are painted gold, it's not to impress women, it's to project power. To your point on why women are wearing it, some cultures in India and Africa, IIRC women are in charge of house finances; without bank accounts, jewelry becomes a store of value. The aesthetic value is secondary, the important part is it can be transported on your person and liquidated, easily verified as being gold. Same as bitcoin, someone shows you a 256bit number, it's trivial to test whether that number is a wallet or not, you just check the ledger. Gold is the ultimate distributed store of value, no third party is needed to check if the value is there. PS you got a "gross" in one of the replies because some people are set off by the use of "female" when "women" would do. I don't really get it but just FYI.
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
  > you got a "gross" in one of the replies because some people are set off by the use of "female" when "women" would do I wouldn't reduce the cause to just that one word. That word choice is merely the cherry on the whole cake of Gender essentialism. Deciding that _this_ unsupported irrelevance is where the conversation really needs to go is the foundation of it.
osacial 6y ago
> Perhaps the question should be, “Why do women value gold?” ...as in opposite, that men don't? https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.acMHk5wKXdR-SbwcIxcTWAHaHu&pid=15.1 https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.acMHk5wKXdR-SbwcIxcTWAHaH...

jvanderbot 6y ago

"It turns out then, that the reason gold is precious is precisely that it is so chemically uninteresting." - Rare but not too rare - Easily distinguishable from look-alikes (most other precious minerals look like silver) - Soft enough to form into jewelry - Melts readily into coins / etc - Easy enough to mine - Doesn't tarnish (chemically uninteresting) Saved you a click. Here's your facebook post text: "If you were to collect together every earring, every gold sovereign, the tiny traces gold in every computer chip, every pre-Columbian statuette, every wedding ring and melt it down, it's guesstimated that you'd be left with just one 20-metre cube, or thereabouts."

valbaca 6y ago
Interesting there's absolutely no mention of its unique utility in the modern era for computing based on its high conductivity. Copper is good enough for most applications but for where quality matters more than cost, it's irreplaceable, no?
- bananabiscuit 6y ago
  Copper is actually more conductive than gold. Gold is only used for contacts because it does not oxidize and that’s the only time it matters if there is an oxidative layer on top of your conductor.
- krustyburger 6y ago
  I have this sudden urge to buy some Monster cables from you.
- parsimo2010 6y ago
  It’s not the conductivity that causes us to use gold plated contacts, it’s that gold doesn’t tarnish. Silver is more conductive than copper, but it’s only a few percent. For most applications it’s cheaper to just use a fatter copper wire than to use silver.
blacksmith_tb 6y ago
Just! That's a block of metal the size of a large building, weighing almost 400,000kg.

Nasrudith 6y ago

Really it is the memes behind gold that give it the value and role along with maybe a little evolutionary psychology theory of being attracted to the sight of shinies because they are reminiscent of water. Platinium is rarer than gold, denser, and more applications, and similiarly shiny yet it wound up dumped in the ocean to try to prevent debasing gold by the Spanish soon after discovery of a large cache in Ecuador. History and blindly aping the past isn't a very good reason but it is a strong one.

gumby 6y ago

> Gold's relative inertness means you can create an elaborate golden jaguar and be confident that 1,000 years later it can be found in a museum display case in central London, still in pristine condition. This ignores another, more importent manifestation of those physical properties: you can steal something gold and melt it down with negligible loss, rendering it untraceable. For example a lot of the first gold from the americas (mentioned in the article) was simply stripped from temples. Of course this works at the small scale as well.

imtringued 6y ago
The article mentioned that smelting gold is easier than other metals.
- gumby 6y ago
  Yes it does but that could just be a comment about making jewelry or such (i.e. that's a feature not a benefit). You can't spend a US coin outside the US (except a little in Canada or Mexico) but you can spend gold coins as easily as you can "spend" gold jewelry pretty much anywhere. When I was a kid my parents would buy gold jewelry by weight and I used to see people sell jewelry to the goldsmith by weight. The actual labor put into it didn't add to the cost, it merely drew people into the shop. There are some articles about people who use gold as currency at Libertarian fairs and such. It's pretty inconvenient, actually.

cjdaly 6y ago

The article leaves out one big factor in why gold is valued. Similar to "why does the dollar have value?" (answer: taxes), a fundamental source of gold price support is that central banks all around the world - by longstanding official policy - horde gold (in metric tonnes) and treat it like a reserve currency/asset. Central banks could change their policies in the future and (e.g.) sell all their gold for bitcoin. If that happens, gold price will go way down and I will look for a 3d-printer that prints with gold filament. :-)

jvanderbot 6y ago
Circular: We value gold be cause we (banks) value gold. It's not wrong, but it's not a "reason".
- cjdaly 6y ago
  I think, like the dollar/taxes example, it is circular but self-fulfilling. If you asked a central banker why they value gold, I suspect they would cite the "Rare but not too rare" and "Easily distinguishable from look-alikes" (in other words, hard to fake or counterfeit) points from the article. And the average person, on learning an ounce of gold costs about $1780 (today), I think will perceive this as valuable - a small thing with such a high price. And if central banks dis-horde, the price goes down and the typical person sees it as less valuable.
- Doxin 6y ago
  It's circular but still a correct reason. The reason people value gold is because you can sell it for a high price. Why can you sell it for a high price? because whoever receives it can also sell it for a high price. Note that this isn't true for most things. If I buy for instance a car I don't expect to be able to sell it again for the same price. So I suppose another way to word it is "Gold doesn't depreciate"
- dawguy 6y ago
  The circular valuation is the primary reason its valued so highly today. Any article which ignores that isn't doing the topic justice. Especially because there is a very solid reason the value grew so large to begin with. Prior to the invention of the electric lightbulb gold was far more beautiful than it is today (which was not discussed in the article). In candlelight gold will shimmer and gleam as the flames dance (with the red-orange flames accentuating the gold coloring). With electric lighting, the light provided is so consistent that gold is reflective but isn't any more more beautiful than a shiny steel appliance or clean marble countertop. The combination of rarity and being the most beautiful material in candlelight made it the perfect material for kings and temples to collect to show off their status. And when the richest people in the world compete to collect something, it makes sense that the price is driven upwards. In the modern world gold is still collected and stored as a symbol of status and wealth primarily because ancient kings valued it. Even if the driver of why they collected it originally has been greatly diminished. (The idea behind gold's reflective properties in dim candlelit rooms comes from the book In Praise of Shadows which I would highly recommend)

rufus_foreman 6y ago

Some people value gold because it is pretty. And some people value gold because it is useful. And some people value gold because the government can't create new gold out of thin air. Does that about cover it?

TheBigSalad 6y ago
It doesn't tell the whole story. Gold is pretty, but we can make prettier things nowadays, or simulate it's look. Gold is useful in electronics, but historically it's useless. It was once good that governments couldn't make gold, but we've moved away from the gold standard in modern days for the same reason.
- rufus_foreman 6y ago
  Sorry, lost you. What was the same reason?
osacial 6y ago
It is possible to create gold out of thin air - side effect is radioactivity.

nine_zeros 6y ago

In Asian families with long histories, it's well known that gold lasts for generations. That alone is reason enough to hold wealth in Gold. They shape it as ornaments and pass it down generations. It's a store of wealth because other dynastic families will forever accept it as payment to pass it on to their own kids. Parallel alternatives are currency, land and historical artefacts. Currency is subject to manipulation (even fractional reserves is a form of manipulation), land can be seized by changing empires and wars and historical artefacts may lose their meaning. So gold it is. One could argue why it's not other metals but I suspect there's an element of glitter to it.

imtringued 6y ago
Just read the article, it gives a lot of reasons why the element gold is better than any other element. However, you're right about the motives of the holders of gold as wealth. Using an element to store wealth is easier than using an agreement with the local military to store your wealth.