Hashad

Thanks for your thoughts on the value of gold.  There is, I think, a gap in
your account regarding the specifics of the history of thought on this
topic.  I will summarise that matter, after some brief preliminaries
clarifying my opinions.  

1)  A Smith’s explanation of the value given to gold seems to be grossly
inadequate

2)  Status seeking, which you seem to call CHW, is an important
characteristic of human behaviour, but since it is apparently seen, in more
rudimentary forms, in animal behaviour, its ultimate explanation must come
from evolutionary biology

3)  Today high valuation of gold seems to a great extent to derive merely
from tradition, that is to say, generations mimicking their elders

4)  There is however much more to say about the probably pre-historic
theories/myths that underpinned the original high value put on gold, at
least in European/Persian thought.  The best sources to read are old ones. 
Lovejoy “Great Chain of Being” and Plato “Republic” III 414

At the heart of this matter is an explanation of why anything exists at all.
 An ontological argument that God exists because he is perfect, and so must
exist, but also, that all else exists as tiered or ranked manifestations of
less perfect forms, which sort of concertina out of Gods perfection.

Apparent corroboration for this cosmological theory/myth is presented in the
ranking of gold and the other metals (as now seen in the periodic table of
elements) and the ranking of bodies in the solar system, in which the sun is
pre-eminent.  Ranking is also seen in the orders of animals: mammals,
reptiles, fish etc, etc

The obvious corollary of the argument, that men are also ranked, and that
wealth and power are allotted according to fundamental guiding principles of
the cosmos, clearly is going to have attractions for some.

Plato’s position on this is interesting.  He thinks this theory  is
obviously false, but people should be deceived into thinking it is true,
because the theory/myth has such great political utility.  The passage is of
course called the “Noble Lie”

Apologies to the many who I am sure are already well aware of these suggestions

Regards

Rob Tye, York, UK