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Interesting thread.

I don’t care whether it’s gold, cattle, houses, or companies — they all equate to the same thing, some one’s time and labour in its aggregation/creation. You don’t find gold lying around on the street, someone had to find and collect it, assay it for purity, and get it to a marketplace. That is what gives it value.

You mentioned eating that gold, muawiyah? Let’s see you eat one of your cows. You don’t just walk up and pull off a steak; you have to kill it, clean it, skin it, and carve it. Time and labour — no different. But at least with gold there’s not as much mess to clean up, or worry about where to put the balance of the meat to stop it spoiling.

Oh, another similarity — they both have to be cooked. The gold gets smelted, the cow gets roasted. Bon appetite! :^)

Something tells me you've seen Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Howard: Say, answer me this one, will you? Why is gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce?
Flophouse Bum: I don't know. Because it's scarce.
Howard: A thousand men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.
Flophouse Bum: I never thought of it just like that.
Howard: Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with and gold teeth.
Howard: Aah, gold's a devilish sort of thing, anyway. You start out, you tell yourself you'll be satisfied with 25,000 handsome smackers worth of it. So help me, Lord, and cross my heart. Fine resolution. After months of sweatin' yourself dizzy, and growin' short on provisions, and findin' nothin', you finally come down to 15,000, then ten. Finally, you say, "Lord, let me just find $5,000 worth and I'll never ask for anythin' more the rest of my life."
Flophouse Bum: $5,000 is a lot of money.
Howard: Yeah, here in this joint it seems like a lot. But I tell you, if you was to make a real strike, you couldn't be dragged away. Not even the threat of miserable death would keep you from trying to add 10,000 more. Ten, you'd want to get twenty-five; twenty-five you'd want to get fifty; fifty, a hundred. Like roulette. One more turn, you know. Always one more.

The deal with eating a whole cow is to dig a very large pit. Throw in lots of rocks ~ maybe even pack the sides of the pit with rocks. Then, bring in the trees and other burnables. Set fire to it ~ make nice coals. Take that cow and slaughter her right there, remove the entrails, etc. and hand them over to the women folk to boil and prepare into more stable foods. Give the hide to the Eta to tan. Toss the whole carcass into the pit, cover it over with pineboughs and stuff, and let 'er cook for several hours.

Call in your friends and neighbors for a feast.

The people will love you for your generosity. As you move from village to village, cooking a cow here, a bull there, and so forth, you will earn everyone's admiration and loyalty.

It's good to be the king.