useful work makes value, but work can also destroy value. I could take my chainsaw and cut down all our fruit trees. It would be work, and it would destroy value.
- Labor is the only thing with legitimate value.
What? Food has value...
- So the house doesn't have value only the work put into it?
Even so, a house has value. And a tree can have value, even if it grew on its own.
- It's the same principle, there is alot of time and labor put into seeking out and digging up gold. Like a house it's a way to measure both labor and scarcity. I can also tell you that much of the labor that goes into mining has no value at all. You can dig and develop on an educated hunch for zero return.
You still know where NOT to dig.
- Labor is the underlying creator of value.
Labor is the main underlying creator of value to humans.
- Nothing else holds value without labor. Potatoes have intrinsic value, you eat them to live. But without working hands to sow and harvest them they just rot out in the fields or never grow to begin with.
A shade tree can have value without labor, as can a spring with clean water.
- Gold has little intrinsic value. Outside of industrial applications, it only has value because we say it does. And even then it requires labor to manifest that value. Otherwise, it's just shiny flecks in sand.
Yes. But we say it does because it makes a good store of wealth (scarce but findable, long-lasting, easily transported and easily identified).
- It's all a confidence game in terms of its all just a narrative and nothing has inherent value.
Mostly true, but knowledge can have inherent value.
- Gold doesn't have any physical value or physical properties. Gold has physical properties but the properties are really it's just a rock.
Gold also has some industrially useful properties.