Man, if I ever get a chance to get one up on Dr. Gary North, I'll take it!
He argues himself into a definition of intrinsic that is exclusively theological. "Only God has intrinsic value?" he gets into a muddle in this essay, but nonetheless, even when he get off track, he is still instructive. His error got me t think more clearly.
Towards the end he gets to his problem: "intrinsic economic value." I see where the problem is, economic value is subjective, and intrinsic value is the objective. The intrinsic value of a tube of toothpaste is it cleans teeth. The economic value (let alone its efficacy) is something else. The intrinsic value of a house is shelter. The intrinsic value of gold is which of the myriad uses it will be applied: conductivity, stability, pretty, density. Age quod agis: it does what it does. It is when it emerges from its place among commodities that it becomes money, and there it has an intrinsic value as a medium of exchange (it does what it is supposed to do in that role), but it has no objective value economically speaking. It can be quite easy to get from intrinsic value of medium of exchange to "objective economic" value, an internal contradiction in Austrian thought.
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