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.
That is a strange take because economics builds on this principle to function. If you found a producing company today it will have to buy a material and - by the magic you apply to it - sell it for more. Like a refinery buying crude oil and selling gasoline. Or a goldsmith buying gold and selling jewellery. It’s how everything works.
On a broader take it reveals a Marxian perspective on a market where every item looses its value to the cost of the labor that goes in it. For the alchemist (if everyone found out his Pb->Au secret) the price will drop until it’s worth the labor that went in it because everyone else also can’t sell cheaper.
So labor is all that has value. And owning the means of production hasn’t.
That only works if value is solely determined through labor and it is not. Scarcity creates value through demand without added labor. Sone things are valuable with no labor involved. The labor theory of value is incredibly flawed.