Gold was valued the world over, Aztecs valued gold as much as Europeans. Gold does not tarnish or rust, it's chemically stable, easily melted down and reshaped, rare, but not impossibly rare, so it pretty much comes down to the periodic table and geology.Martin Hash wrote:I think jewelry, which is really status, is why gold was chosen as the fiat in Europe/ME, then it gained extrinsic value as the fiat, which increased its status value; a kind of incestuous feedback loop.
Status items WILL inflate in price as the money supply increases, even if there is sufficient commodites, because people will pay any amount for status, and items only confer status if they're rare. Once a previous status item becomes commonplace, it no longer confers status.
In terms of a limited money supply, as you've already said, that's all about control, the ruling elites maintaining control of the masses, but the Aztecs had the exact same system, with the exact same metal, for the exact same reasons, on the other side of the world with no contact with the Europeans at all.
To their undoing in the end, as it was the gold which brought the Europeans to conquer them, nothing so incites more war and conquest, than a limited money supply.
It's not nuclear weapons which has kept the peace, but rather fiat currency, Kill Dollah spreads it around, so nobody has to go to war for all the marbles, return to a gold standard, and buckle up, as territorial conquest becomes a thing again.
