In Gold We Trust

I’ve been hearing more and more about how awful our economy is going to get and how smart it is to invest in gold because the dollar is unstable. Those selling this idea speak about gold as if it is our only hope – the only sure thing. I admire their passion for returning the dollar to the gold standard (thus removing our beloved dollar from the fiat category), but it makes me wonder why gold is a standard anyway. To me gold is almost worthless. I have no immediate need for gold in my life, so I find it difficult to presume that gold is the standard by which our money should be set. Sure it’s pretty, but so is Jennifer Lopez. Why not make her our standard? When I worked at Starbucks, I had a large African-American customer that asked me to add cream to his coffee. When I asked how much I should add, with a smile and wink he replied, “I like it the color of J.Lo’s skin.” I have to admit, it sure made the precise color of the coffee sound even more delicious. He created value in something quite mundane. Since then, I’ve often thought that using the color of celebrity skin tones would be a brilliant marketing ploy. Anyway, back to gold… The one area of my life where gold actually does have value is very utilitarian. Gold is an excellent conducting metal in electronic circuits, especially audio. In our era of abundant electronics, I would think that gold has much more value as a conductor than when it’s aesthetically employed. Even so, is that reason enough to make gold the thing by which all other things are valued? If so, why not make silicon our standard. Integrated circuits are the brains of our electronics. All of this has me thinking about why we even value things at all. When you remove the marketing hype and trend, which vary like the wind, surrounding the pricing of goods and services, existence is the only remaining thing of value. Why don’t we tie our money to something that is intrinsically invaluable to sustaining life? How about the value of a loaf of bread, a gallon of fresh water, a bottle of penicillin, a liter of blood? Even a barrel of crude oil makes more sense than gold. While we’re at it, why not get scientific about it? We could create a metric monetary system derived from a semi-universal constant, like say… the number kilowatts of energy produced by a one meter square solar panel (with x% efficiency) orbiting outside earth’s atmosphere and shadow precisely one astronomical unit (AU) from the sun? OK, maybe that’s a little difficult, but you get the idea. Or maybe the idea of tying our money to an element of the periodic table is right, but we’ve just picked the wrong element. Why not choose something like carbon, nitrogen, or oxygen, which are critical to building and sustaining life, thus assigning value to life itself by an objective and calculable method. I mean, why gold?

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
– Matthew 6:19-21

P.S. I find it funny that the symbol for Gold is ‘Au’ and astronomical units are abbreviated AU. Is there a conspiracy here? Hmmm… hahahahahaha P.P.S. Just heard the Portland band AU on NPR. Some great stuff. AU can be found at myspace/peaofthesea.