MeisterEckhart wrote on Mar 6^th, 2024 at 10:28am:

That is because these are all forms of money.

Frank wrote on Mar 6^th, 2024 at 10:36am:

They are... But only that.

Cows can also be a form of money while, at the same time, they are also a food source and/or work animals.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Mar 6^th, 2024 at 10:42am:

The status of the medium of exchange being more than just money is predicated on its so-called intrinsic value beyond its function as a medium of exchange.

While cows can be used as money they have an obvious value independent of that.

The argument that precious metals have intrinsic value, as many people includingbullion dealers and banks insist they have, is more contentious.

Their argument is based on: '5000+ years of people and societies valuing them can't be wrong... by that, they must have intrinsic value'. However, hunter-gatherer societies rarely credit or value them with as much.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Mar 6^th, 2024 at 7:18am:



The word "like" is not a new word.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Mar 6^th, 2024 at 11:21am:



OK - as an aside -

I saw 34 yo Taylor Swift on a TV show being interviewed and she
was using the word "like"  at least once in every sentence too.
It was as though she was a 14 year old teenage girl.
I can only speculate that she was trying to speak on their level
in order to connect to their retarded brains?

Frank wrote on Mar 6^th, 2024 at 11:49am:

Money started out as the likes of cows - long before there were kilns to melt precious metals or there was any sense that they had any value.

How do gold and silver have intrinsic value? Have you ever carried, say, $50000 worth of silver? It is about the weight of lead, something that bullion dealers get a laugh out of when silver buyers turn up with plastic bags and cheap backpacks to carry $30,000 worth of silver.

The vast majority of the world's gold is stored in vaults and never sees the light of day.

If you gave hunter-gatherers gold, who did not know how much you and your kind value it, they would throw it back at you and spit in your face.

Give them cows or pigs on the other hand, in exchange for anything, as the British did with Polynesians, and they'd not only accept it, the chief might offer you his daughter as a bride.

Nomadic clans and tribes accumulated (and many still do) cows as a form of wealth preservation and status (i.e. money) over and above what they needed from the cow's intrinsic value.

Both cows and precious metals are measures of exchange value - even though precious metals are massively expensive to secure and carry.

The issue of intrinsic value as necessary to justify the commodity as a medium of exchange is exactly why precious metals owners insist they have intrinsic value.

Frank wrote on Mar 6^th, 2024 at 12:11pm:

I am talking about money.

A nomadic tribe's/clan's status and wealth were measured by how many cows they owned - just as Elon Musk's status and wealth are measured in American dollars.

freediver wrote on Mar 6^th, 2024 at 12:37pm:

Gold's imagined intrinsic value is not obvious to all and neither is it universal.

Some people, tribes and cultures don't like gold or see nothing intrinsically valuable in it.

They may also see it as an evil.

As opposed to a cow whose intrinsic value is obvious, is universally indisputable and is intrinsically good - a blessing from a god, even.

However, precious metals are immensely more convenient as a medium of exchange than cows, and it is that convenience, that would have gone a long way to making them preferable to cows - and never mind the metaphysical mythology that grew around the likes of gold and silver as, say, tears of the sun god and moon goddess.