I've been reading Gary North's series of articles on Money on lewrockwell.com.  One of his recent articles mentioned the myth that gold has "intrinsic" value.  His point was that nothing has intrinsic value.  Value is subjective.  This brings me to an episode of "The Twilight Zone" called "The Rip Van Winkle Caper". Warning: For those who haven't seen the episode, don't read any further.

In the episode, some bank robbers steal gold and put themselves in suspended animation in a cave in the desert.  Their hope is to wake up in the future and escape justice.  To make a long story short, one of the robbers who ran out of water tries to buy water using gold.  The future man comments to his wife that gold is worthless because a way to manufacture it has been discovered.  Now, the motive for writing the story may have been the typical liberal screed against "greed" but the point about gold having intrinsic value was made rather well.