Claire Fan - Week 12: The Gold Standard
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How do we decide what has value? Ever since humanity discovered gold thousands of years ago, it’s been coveted as a metal that has such immense value so as to spark countless wars. Stories about gold cities—El Dorado, Cibola—and movies subsequently made that revolved around the shining metal.
The U.S. used to have something called the gold standard decades ago. Originally, the dollar could be traded in for gold. The Bretton Woods system, as it would later be called, anchored the American dollar in tangible gold. It was abolished in 1971 by the 37th president, Richard Nixon, though it did not lose its value even then.
The power of gold is possibly best demonstrated in times of economic depression. It is globally recognized as a sign of wealth, and tends to have the highest value in times of economic downturn. But why do we even value gold so much? It’s nothing more than a shiny rock. What differentiates gold from a geode, for example?
It’s hard to answer those questions, but it’s easy to see the cultural and political impact they held: from the California gold rush in the 1800s to countries like Mexico and Peru in Latin America colonized for the gold in their mines, we flock to gold like moths to a flame. Gold is a sign of abundance, of wealth, of fortune and prosperity, but it’s meaningless without us to ascribe any sort of significance to it. I still have yet to understand why we do so, but maybe I’ll go panning for gold to find out.
Hi Claire! I, too, have at times wondered what gives an object value? Maybe it's the rarity of obtaining it, and the feeling of possessing an item that not many others have gives an extremely powerful feeling, like gold. But honestly, when you really come to think of it, why is it so valuable? It is nothing more than a “shiny rock,” and is nothing different compared to painting a rock and calling it “gold.” It's not only about this colored mineral; it also occurs in countless other things. A Lululemon jacket, a similar item someone can get at any other fitness store, Caviar, something that is nothing other than fish eggs (there are countless other fish eggs that are edible?), luxury brands like Louis Vuitton and Gucci, and so many more. This has especially redefined society and shaped our greed, which countless others must face just to possess these things. It honestly may just be an everlasting trend, as ultimately, a human decides what has value. That can easily occur in the future, and maybe something we possess today would be considered “value,” or, in other words, incredibly expensive. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteClaire, this is something that I have thought about a lot in my own life. The idea of value, whether it be monetary or ideological, is something that is entirely made up. Humanity has a habit of assigning value to anything that is visually appealing, which is likely what happened when assigning value to gold. I did not know of the Bretton Woods system but it makes sense that dollars could be traded for gold because gold has always been viewed as having more value. This is put in perspective when you see that when you search up wealth, images of gold coins appear before images of cash, despite the fact that the most common form of money today is paper money. The main reason that I can ration as to why gold has been given so much importance is because gold is both rare and visually attractive. Historically, people felt superior because they had obtained a substance that so few others had obtained. This is likely also what led to the Gold Rush and other occurrences of mass migration in the prospect of gold. But the same question of what gets assigned value could be applied to patriarchal societies. How did so many people evolve to believe that males are superior to females? There is no true biological basis that considers one superior to another yet there are societies around the world that revolve around this idea. Women are considered subordinate in so many contexts. Thank you for sharing such an insightful topic, this was a thought provoking read.
ReplyDeleteI remember watching a youtube video when I was young saying that in the universe, wood is more valuable than diamonds. I was truly surprised and a little mad; "how could wood be more valuable than diamonds? Wood is everywhere!" In the cosmos, diamonds are really common, only a face-centered lattice cubic; while wood is made out of complex cell structures and is only native to Earth (that we know of). Like you said, the value of gold was completely determined by some group of people from years ago that thought it looked cool. So why does it have any value at all? It is not used in much electronics to be that valuable, it is not very good at construction and it is not very durable (according to Minecraft).
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing!