Alchemists discover a way to easily turn salt into gold

>Alchemists discover a way to easily turn salt into gold

What would happen?

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THE value of gold plummets

until the age of electronics

What if they preserve the secret and don't flood the market too much?

The internet becomes even more lucrative.

Then they become rich and nothing really changes.

Then they would be rich. Unless people knew they were making it from salt and made some form of economic sanctions because they found it unfair.

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Salt becomes even more valuable as a trading commodity

Wizards will claim that the mothod is too complex and their gold standard is based upon dragon treasure hordes anyway.
If your talking about some real world person working out a process to turn salt into gold you have a bigger issue then the ammount of gold.

>One night those who know the secret are killed
>All but one

At first I misread it as
>turn salt into god
and I think I like my version better.
Your condiments suddenly gain TRUE POWER, what fucking now?

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Salt was also expensive for most of human history. So it's not quite the clear winner you might think, but I suppose some amount of salt would be transformed, until the price equalized. But there's a reason they were trying for lead as the base material.

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>Salt is rare
>The ocean is full of salt
>Nine tenths of the planet is ocean

Makes you think

They won't. We only figured out inflation about 200 years ago. It's not something you discover until it happens.

Can they turn it back?

>Gold is rare
>The ocean is full of gold
>Nine tenths of the planet is ocean

Consider for example Spain and its gold from the new world.

>What would happen?
Not much propably, salt was almost as expensive as gold in some places already

>We only figured out inflation about 200 years ago.
We've known about it longer than that. Mansa Musa caused the gold price to plummet by being to liberal with his wealth on his pilgrimage to Mecca(something he had to fix with more money). Before that Julius Caesar did the same on a smaller level with his conquest of Gaul and their gold mines. Heck the Romans devalued native Italian farmers by importing slaves, which led to more poverty and higher city populations.

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>salt was almost as expensive as gold

Don't you have salt in your eyes though?
Surely tears can't be worth as much as gold?

try to salt your meal with crying faggot

You have a point, but that's like comparing science and Science. The caveman that dissected cuttlefish to sate his curiosity wasn't a scientist.

>He doesn't know about the coinage wars between the Italian City-States and Byzantium

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We recognize what they did in retrospect. They didn't know.

But economics started somewhere just like science. It just so happens the start was thousands of years ago and with grain subsidies, temple lenders, and the hyperinflation of the bronze ax head.
Did you not read what I posted?
Mansa Musa found out what he did. He went on to rectify it by borrowing money at high interest.
The Romans continually passed land grants and altered coinage to keep the economy afloat.

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there were a ton of times in history of man, when salt had the same value as gold. So an alchemist doesn't have to invent anything.

this

not really, there isn't that much gold used in/for electronics to affect the gold-price in any significant way

in old times, it wasn't easy to harvest salt from the ocean

A shortage of salt.

Well, it was about time my salary were paid in gold.

>We only figured out inflation about 200 years ago
That is patently false.

being an abundant resource means nothing if the means of proper extraction are very expensive.

Aluminium was way more expensive than gold until people found ways to harvest it properly in large quantities.

youtube.com/watch?v=3KquFZYi6L0

Goiters. Goiters for everyone.

lots of very bland meals

Gold suddenly becomes almost worthless, cheap toys from china are now made out of gold rather than plastic.

Gold still looks nice, but wouldn't hold the same prestige.
Would be more common in jewelry and such.

Down to below salt levels at least.
Salt is still pretty valueable.