A Martian gazing down from his red perch — Mr. Warren Buffett once razzed — would marvel that Earthlings dig gold from the ground..
. merely to re-entomb it in vaults. That is, the business is senseless.
It is pointless. It is juiceless. At first blush, our space man is justly puzzled.
Why indeed would humans shovel up hunks of metal merely to lock them away, idle? Yet the Martian — and the Nebraskan — jump past a fundamental truth of human nature. Men act with purpose. They do not squander their time, energies or resources on senseless, pointless and juiceless pursuits.
The question then arises: Why would men expend time, energies and resources to haul up gold...
and risk their lives deep in dangerous mines to seize it...
if they lacked compelling reasons? Indeed: Why do men — to this day — toil extravagantly to wrest gold metal from stingy earth? The Gold Standard of Money Perhaps men continue plucking up gold for this reason: Thousands of years of history demonstrate that gold is worth plucking up. Gold is perhaps the ideal money — if you will forgive the expression — the gold standard of money. Money must be rare.
Rocks cannot be money — for example. Simply consider the quantity of rocks lodged within the skull of a single United States senator. Multiply it by 100 skulls and you have a near infinity of rocks.
Multiply it by all the skulls in Washington and you have your infinity. This vast abundance discredits rocks as a form of money. Nor can sand meet t.
