Gold is pretty much worthless as a commodity. Gold is the most irrational commodity that humans trade. It has no use other than it's shiny and it's perception of value. Only a true idiot would believe gold has any meaning or value. It is a business though and a very profitable one. Where profit exists, money will follow.
This is just flat-out false. Gold's chemical, electrical, and even some of its physical properties make it such that its rarity is the only thing keeping humans from using it in a variety of ways on a daily basis.
If gold were as common as dirt, it would be coating our flatware; inside our electronics (much more so than now!); adorning our books, paintings and clothing; inside our bodies (teeth, metal plates and rods, etc.); within most places of manufacture; and would just generally be the second most-used metal next to iron.
Gold's intrinsic value is why it became desirous enough to start being used as money in the first place.
To be honest gold really is only valued for its shininess and density. Gold has, and always will be out of reach to industries for its massive cost. Silver is a much better conductor, although it has oxidizing properties so they use gold where they cannot use solder mask ie. Connecting chips such as RAM / CPU's. However the amount of gold used for these processes is only about 5-6% of the mined supply. That leaves about 70-80% for jewlery, and the rest being investments. Clearly nearly 90-95% of it's value comes from its "Shininess", and a weak dollar/ hedge against inflation.
Gold is valued for it's numerous useful properties. If it was an ugly brown color and had no jewelry market use to speak of, that would just free up more of it for its other uses. Its price might be lower (so if by value you refer specifically to price you might be right) but it would still be a highly, highly valued commodity.
Can we at least agree that if gold were abundant, it would be used pretty much everywhere, far beyond cosmetic situations?
