Wealth distribution

[Tellos Athenaios]

As an interesting aside, the price of gold is fairly arbitrary but it is not quite the same as fiat money. The reason is mostly the chemical properties of gold (which mean that you can store it and transport it in a practical fashion) and the fact that is not actually rare without being plentiful (unlike, say, Xenon, Helium or Iron). You need your money to be not too difficult to obtain or else very few people can use it. Its chemical properties also mean you are quite likely to find it in its metallic crystalline form, which means it's likely to be shiny which humans happen to find interesting and attractive. So it makes for a good gift or money as it is both expensive (so the recipient can appreciate the effort) and quite useless (so there is little incentive to demand too much of it, damaging real productivity).

The flipside means that in a modern, advanced economy gold is subject to speculation and other manipulations like any other common commodity. In these days you might as well pick 'oil' as your money.