You are so wrong it is painful.
Really? Let's see . . .
What value does food have? Do you think the value is artificial and set according to some vague "feeling" that people have? If you do not have it you will starve.
Yes, food does have a basic value to humans in that we need it. However, I'm not sure how this is relevant at all to any point I made. You are literally comparing apples to dollars.
What value does salt have? If you do not have it you cannot function. Roman soldiers were paid in salt (salarium hence salary).
Oh lord. There is no evidence that Roman soldiers were actually paid in salt.
And the same with water. If the streams and dams are guarded, you will "pay" somehow (such as doing work or exchanging food or salt).
Or, I could just do what I do now and pay in currency. I pay for water because I need it and it's much easier to pay someone to do the job of gathering the water for me and piping it to my house.
I really don't see how these examples address any of my arguments*
"Value" can mean a lot of different things depending on the context. Food and water are valuable for one reason; currency, stock, metals and gems are valuable for various other unrelated reasons. Not much good in comparing them.
Gold has value because is was a metal that was easily worked, was rare and did not corrode. Rulers and kings used them for ornaments because they lasted.
Nah. Mostly they used them because they were shiny and made out of a relatively rare metal.
Their gold rings were used to seal documents.
A wooden stamp would have fulfilled the same role. They used gold rings because it was much cooler.
Today they are used in high tech especially for non-corrosive electrical contacts.
There are plenty of minerals used in high-tech; few of them have the value of gold. Like I said, gold is valuable because it is pretty and we value pretty things. IOW, the price of gold is much higher than it's industrial uses justify. Just compare it to platinum which is significantly more scarce but mostly used for industrial purposes.
A diamond was recognized as being rare and extremely hard which was useful. Yes they made jewelry. The value was that they told others that the owner was an important person. It was a physical symbol of wealth and power. I recognize the hype has increased it's value by simple desirability.
Right. Diamonds are valuable because they are seen as valuable. Nothing more. Diamonds are actually very common compared to other gemstones. Industrial diamonds are cheap and plentiful. Again, the price is much higher than what industrial use would justify. In fact, we could stop mining diamonds altogether and simply create industrial diamond in a lab these days.
Why is a 2.0ct synthetic diamond engagement ring about $2500 while a Tiffany 2.0ct diamond engagement ring is about $30k? The material is exactly the same; in fact, the synthetics are often superior in color and clarity. The average person (and even experts) would be hard pressed to tell them apart on visual inspection. The answer is that people value the Tiffany "real thing" more than they do the "fake" diamond, even though there is no difference between the two.
What does the dollar do for you? You pay taxes in dollars. Your labor and your capital gains and your transaction are taxed. It is a direct link to the work and capital infrastructure and GDP of the USA. No work no pay.
Yes. It's value derives from the fact that the value is artificially enforced by the government. Otherwise, it's just a piece of paper or bit of worthless metal.
Stock. If you own a share, you own a piece of a company. The code is only a record of that underlying ownership. You get paid dividends (a portion of the profit). If the company dissolves you get paid out your portion of the asset value of the company.
Yes, a stock is backed by the value of the underlying company. But the actual price of the stock reflects nothing other than the perceived value of the company and it's future profit potential. This price is set by traders "arguing with each other" in an exchange based on the demands of the brokers and their clients. They are often wrong. Stock price does not accurately reflect the true price of the company, we only think it does.
When a company becomes insolvent, there may be nothing left to distribute to shareholders after debts are discharged. That stock could actually be completely worthless.
Stocks can be overvalued, and sometimes so badly a bubble forms. Eventually they come back to the true valuation. Fiat money can be printed excessively and become valueless. These aberrations do not change the fundamentals.
Right. The fundamentals are that the value of a stock or currency does not reflect any intrinsic value but instead it's perceived value to people.
The fundamental of bitcoin and other cryptos is that they are a fad whose value is determined solely by speculation. When the bubble bursts they return to true "value". The true value is zero because they add nothing to the economy. They do not build cell-phones or bridges or hospitals. They do not cure illness. They do not provide a "true service" of any sort.
Of course they provide a service, just not to you -or at least, you don't see it. And they do add to the economy -the service they provide is desired by people, especially those in developing countries who don't have the stable banking and financial systems we do. Even here, people do desire a way to increase their anonymity online, banks want faster transaction processing at lower costs, corporations want to run distributed apps and computing systems . . . all of those things have the potential to disrupt a lot of industries. The crypto that can break through will be valuable to a lot of people even if you don't see it.
*Although it does bring up an interesting aside: I can buy a month's worth of groceries and water for a family of four for less than the price of an ounce of gold. As you just argued, the food and water is much more valuable to our survival than gold is. Why isn't food and water priced much higher than the relatively useless gold? Probably because food and water isn't much good as a store of value. Also, they are consumables and as much as we need them, they are pretty plentiful and we don't want to pay a lot for them.
