Dear Rick, It was enjoyable to read your critique of the "Worth its Weight" article.
One of the things you mention with respect to currency is that structure is subject to entropy. A really nice thing about gold is that it is very fungible. Given present technology, atoms of the gold element are accessible, though with some difficulty. A few molecules of gold is certainly accessible. So, a gold structure, such as a statue or piece of jewelry made of gold would, presumably, be worth more than its weight of gold. But, that extra value involves aesthetics, which are going to be different for individual tastes. Thus, a great deal of really groovy Mayan, Aztec, and Inca artwork was melted into gold bars by the Spanish Conquistadores, because they had a very different idea of what looked good. Gold and other precious metals are very good stores of value compared to semiconductors, Rembrandts, or even gemstones, because of this fungibility feature. Dividing a Rembrandt is not going to go over well with the art crowd. Dividing a bar of gold can produce two bars of gold that are each worth half as much as the original. Dividing a memory stick in half isn't going to produce two items worth half as much as the original, but is likely to make two pieces of garbage out of something that was valuable. Even gemstones are hard to divide effectively. Just polishing and cutting a gem is still an art rather than a technology, with very poor ability to confidently produce identical results with similar input materials. In the book _Cryptonomicon_ by Neal Stephenson, this issue comes up. Stored in the vault in the Philippines are all kinds of loot from Japanese conquests. But, much of that is lost by the recovery effort. To recover this stuff, which is really hard to get at, even though the adventurers have details of the interior from one of its builders, they use explosives to generate a lot of heat and melt the gold to get it out through a pipe. Not elegant, and certainly a great amount of value was lost that way, but effective. And, given the cost of an excavation to recover the material intact, one would assume it was cost effective. Fungibility, ductility, malleability, and other features make for some fun features of metals. Oh, and the comment on structure above applies to the American Eagle gold coin you can find at http://www.Goldbarter.com/viewauction.jsp?id=29 Goldbug still has the high bid, at 30.1 grams for a 31.1 gram item. And, that item has been graded and purified and marked by a major mint, which also put some nice design into it, so it should in theory be worth more than its weight in gold. So, are you going to let GoldBug get away with that bid? Regards, Jim http://www.GoldBarter.com/ --> A free market is your best friend. It could save your life. --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Did you know that e-metal is a wonderful holiday gift? Avoid the hassle this year!
