[quote=walterwhite]No intrinsic value? What does have “intrinsic” value, if not gold. It’s a nice thing.[/quote]
Anything that can perform labor, or increase the efficiency of labor, has intrinsic value. Coal has intrinsic value, because it can be burned in a power plant and the resulting energy can be used to do work. A truck has intrinsic value, because it can greatly decrease the amount of labor needed to transport a load from point A to point B (if you need to transport 5000 lbs the distance of 20 miles, you could hire fifty laborers for one day, or you get the same job done in 20 minutes with one pickup truck, one driver, and a quantity of gasoline).
In this sense, gold has no intrinsic value that I can think of.
