>Scarcity is a major part of gold's value. I'm not sure if you're conflating value and worth or missing my point. If there was only 1 Oz of gold and Mr X was

>Scarcity is a major part of gold's value. I'm not sure if you're conflating value and worth or missing my point. If there was only 1 Oz of gold and Mr X was willing to pay $1bn for it. Gold would be worth $1bn. But there's more than one ounce and the market clearing price is much lower than that. Mr X may still value an ounce $1bn, but he doesn't have to pay that, he gets a relative bargain. If no-one valued gold at $1 an ounce today, you shouldn't be willing to pay $1 if there was only 1oz. Supply just creams of the top people who value gold most highly. Scarcity just means you're creaming off a smaller higher valuing population. So scarcity doesn't give something value per se. Id agree in certain edge cases that scarcity does increase value. I'm not sure if gold is an example of not. There are other rarer elements that don't have the same cachet. But in general I don't think scarcity itself adds value.