What if you sell it to many people? Dignity, as an abstract concept, is self-replenishing and infinite. In fact, all of our dignities should be given for free, as they're infinitely less scarce than any currency that uses finite resources.
I believe you are missing the point I was trying to make.
I was stating that nothing, not even bitcoin or money or gold or water has intrinsic value. Anything can have value to a person who is in need of a seller's goods. That was not my argument. Things have subjective value. Things do not have some mystic intrinsic property that makes them inherently valuable.
Finiteness is not even necessary for value (ideas being the go-to example). Its necessary for a price (actually non-finite things are free, assuming they're produced in a free market).
Currency is a special case of this because most other things have some sort of inherent-use value independent of what someone will pay you for it. In other words, for most things, even if the most someone will pay you for it is $0, it may still be useful to you for some reason and therefore not worth giving it away for free.
I don’t have any ability to make choices about it that depend on any conscious valuation.
But do you doubt I value it because I am not buying or selling it?
I suppose near infinite, in that I would certainly sacrifice everything I have to protect it - given it represents the survival of all of us - which for me at least would be the apex of value.
It is worth noting that value can often be measured in currency, but not always. It is ultimately an ordering of everything, by kind and quantity.
In the end, even money is just another “thing” which we value on a gradient and relative to context (what we need to survive, we value a lot. To live Without stress, a lot, but less. More than that, even less, even if we are ambitious.)
Market value comes directly from each of our personal, “intrinsic” as another commenter called it, valuations. There is no market value where there are no personal valuations. But there can be personal valuations where there is no market.
Each of us still prioritizes what we have against what we want, and the costs to us of that, even if we were hermits. Each of spends our time, the ultimate resource, based on our relative values of things.
That is the source of all “value” or “worth”. Individual or (and before) collective.
But each owner, including the government, gets to spend it once (unless they reacquire it by trading something of value for it). If I give away a Porsche, it costs me one Porsche. If you then sell it or give it to somebody else, and they give it to somebody else, and so on 1000 times, that doesn't help me. The cost to me is still one Porsche.
By your logic, if we could make a penny out of Adamantium that cost a trillion trillion dollars to make, it would be worth it, because the penny would last forever and be re-used an infinite number of times. But the cost of the penny to the government is not amortized across all the transactions it is used in UNLESS the government is a party to all those transactions (which it is not).
Well, prestige is used as currency precisely because we as a society need a mechanism to generate knowledge that isn't (immediately) commercializable. I, for one, would find it tragic if we lost that.
The thing your argument is that no one is arguing about these philosophical ideas of intrinsic value. People are just saying: 'if people didn't use gold as money anymore because they lost faith in it, the gold would still be useful (ie as in jewlery, circuit boards, etc).'
I mean I could do you one better with this type of argumentation and say 'your idea is wrong because all ideas are social constructs, so all are equally the imagination of peoples and all are equally valid,' and we could just have nothing left to talk about and get nowhere with anything.
There is as much money in circulation as is required to clear the promises between people that are worth doing.
At the summit of the tree the assets are just 'other assets'. An accounting fiction.
The state can purchase whatever is for sale in the token it controls. And it can make sure there are things available for sale by imposing a liability on you in that token you cannot avoid.
The value then depends upon how much stuff the state extracts for the public purpose in return for its token. And the belief in the coercive power that gives that process weight.
And what is jewelry’s worth? What is fine arts worth? What is fiat currency worth? The world is chock full of goods with no inherent value. None. Fine art is worth a lot BECAUSE it is worth a lot.
Kim kardashian is famous for being famous. It’s clear the world is not utilitarian.
Necessities is a fixed amount, wants are (nearly) boundless. As we are able to afford things beyond bare necessities, pretty much all value create and consumed isn't 'necessary' - it's one or other kind of comfort, desire, status, entertainment, etc. Those things do add value and do create wealth - if getting enough nutrients and bare minimum of shelter takes just 10% of my resources, then 90% of my wealth is something that's not necessary.
If people prefer hearing a song over getting an (extra) loaf of bread, then hearing that song is by definition more valuable (more valued by that person) as that loaf of bread. There's not much debate needed about Rolling Stones - millions of people have expressed their values, and their choices illustrate that the music of Rolling Stones is literally more valuable than a billion loaves of bread; people have intentionally allocated a billion bread-loaves worth resources towards Rolling Stones because they valued Rolling Stones more than other alternatives.
People paying money for something doesn't necessarily mean it adds value or creates wealth, there are all kinds of edge cases like fraud, exploitation, addiction, etc, but in general, in the vast majority of cases it does mean exactly that - if people genuinely freely wanted to pay money for something and did so, then that's very informative about what they actually value; this is far more informative and truthful than, for example, what they claim they value.
I wonder if you could frame this as an expression of basic economic principles. The very most valuable thing is that which cannot be bought for any price: time.
How many working hours, tons of materials will it take?
Could they be used on more relevant needs to humanity?
If so, why use them on a moonshot we will die before humanity achieves? Essentially approving burning up resources on unverifiable, perhaps unachievable outcomes?
We still fund a lot of agency to iterate on high minded potential as if future humans have an immutable obligation to carry on the work.
Secular norms and justifications are not sacrosanct. The dollar is a made up token of power.
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