Hacker News Reader

But for the case of jewelry, its usefulness as such depends on it being valuable. So the buck can't stop there: what other use propped up its value?

View on HN

The usefulness of gold as jewelry is not only its value; it also does not tarnish or rust, which is a very useful property for jewelry.

Nor does glass or plastic-coated aluminium. There are lots of shiny things that people don't want in their jewelry. If diamond were as common and cheap as glass, we'd probably see just as much diamond jewelry as glass. They're not massively "better" at being shiney. Even artificial gems are worth less in than natural ones even if they have fewer defects!

Neither of those things were around or refined enough like gold was when gold became the traditional metal for jewelry. Gold has a large first-mover advantage here that is being propped up by human psychology.

> Nor does glass or plastic-coated aluminium.

Glass is not easy to work into jewelry on its own (or at least wasn't 2000-3000 years ago). Plastic-coated aluminium didn't exist 2000-3000 years ago.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com