A large fraction of gold mined every year is used for its material properties in industrial and electronic applications. That presents a very real floor on price. If good was suddenly worth 1/10th as much we would use it in far more industrial applications thus driving up the price. Similarly mining would slow down from the current ~3,000 tons annually again driving the price up.

Gold is currently priced way above that level, but just like the stock market were dividends allow people to buy more stock when the price is low there is a very tangible feedback loop propping up the price which eventually kicks in.

Counterintuitively this means using gold as an investment vehicle makes the world a worse place because we fall back to less efficient methods in industry, and efficiency is ultimately the engine of progress.