We know now that you can’t turn “base metals” into gold through chemical processes, but if you could, gold would no longer be scarce and therefore no more valuable than the base metals.
We know now that you can’t turn “base metals” into gold through chemical processes, but if you could, gold would no longer be scarce and therefore no more valuable than the base metals.
well the understanding of the world was, that everything has a soul like attribute. and they are in a hirachy from close to god to far from god. so gold was inherantly a very close to god metal and therefore inherantly more worth than lead which was somewhat far from good.
So based on that world view of fixed values based on the christian god, they had no reason to belive the economy might suffer.