> Gold is not worth a thousandth its current market value if people didn't treat it as a scarce shiny valuable and instead treated it as a good conductor or flaky metal.

That's a stretch. If it were not valuable monetarily, its price would be similar to other difficult-to-extract, heavy metals with a long list of unique properties, like Iridium or Rhenium, neither monetary, and both around $400 an ounce.