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Comment by fnid2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure that's true. There is no value in gold, it's imaginary and over time, people have tended to give up beliefs in imaginary things.

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No, it's not imaginary. Far from it. Gold is not like tulips in Holland. Not even remotely. It's value is in its scarcity, divisibility, and durability. Nothing else compares. Never has (unless you want to say Silver). That is why gold has been money for thousands of years, and that shows no signs whatsoever of changing. It is one thing that no matter what the markets do will still have value.

Is it an investment? No, and anyone treating gold as an investment is acting very foolishly. Gold is money, plain and simple. It has retained its essential value for centuries.

Agreed. Its actually (shhh!) currency that is imaginary. And so, to cure the national debt, we need only declare it gone.

Scarcity does not equal value, if value is defined as "something that is useful." Perhaps the language is deficient in not making a distinction between inherent and assigned value.

Gold has real value as, for example, a material used in electronics. That is about it aside from aesthetics.

Additionally, humans ascribe (nonexistent) value to gold for the reasons you mentioned. You can certainly argue, as some others seem to, that being suitable for use as currency is value inherent but that assumes the necessity for currency. In the past, perhaps.

Correct. Scarcity does not equal value, and scarcity alone does not make a good currency. However, gold is not only scarce, but also durable, divisible, and portable. The unique thing about gold is that its value is actually in its intrinsic suitability as a currency, more so than any other substance on earth.

I can accept that with the stipulations that it is a very suitable material for currency, not necessarily the most suitable one; and that this is only true at certain early or unsophisticated stages of civilisation.

However, even then the unspoken and often ignored requirement is that there is something of real value that the currency can represent. This also ignores fluctuations in the perceived value of gold, which belies its valuation not being tied to its function as currency. Arguing that e.g. mining for gold is a service whose end product is currency, "consumed" by others is circular (but in reality that does not matter.)

I suppose it can simply be said that gold is considered to have value by common agreement; but that agreement is not irrevocable unlike some believe.

FWIW, gold also has value in certain cancer treatments, glass making, satellite protection, dentistry, microscopy, and certain photographic films.

Not to detract from your point though - it just has wider uses than merely electronics :-)

What's really amusing to me is when gold-nuts rail against modern currencies as fiat currencies. It seems to me gold is just as arbitrarily denoted a currency as any other, it just has no explicit guarantor.

EDIT: Also, why is it so hard to imagine taking care of the debt? Or is it because he has little faith in taxpayers' willingness to pay into it?

The difference between gold and fiat currencies is that gold cannot be devalued through inflation. We don't have a machine that can manufacture gold, but central banks can 'manufacture' as much new fiat currency as they like.

I imagine that's why Scott's friends are buying gold. Not because they think the end of the world is nigh, but because they think the dollar is going to have to be devalued to sidestep the crushing debts that have been run up.

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