Who was the first to point out that transmutation of gold would be mostly useless, since it would simply lead to inflation?
Upvote:2
Transmutation of gold would not be useless to those who had know-how to do it
First of all, you need to know that even in case of paper money, does who have ability to "print" (or rather to create) it, and those who receive freshly created money benefit the most. Concept that explains this is called seigniorage. In modern times, FED loans money to certain banks at much lower rates then usual. This is called Discount Window. Those banks could then loan that money to the FED at higher rates and thus earn, or lend it to general public again with higher interest rates.
Now, in your case, if someone had technology to create gold from let's say lead and if the process was profitable (cost of process less then cost of created gold) , newly created gold would increase monetary supply (inflation), but it would still benefit gold creator. To simplify, imagine there is only $1000 on isolate island. Someone brings another $1000 - prices rise (double) but that person still has half the money available to population.
Only case where seigniorage doesn't work would be if everyone had ability to create money. Historically and practically, this doesn't work - counterfeiting was declared a crime and punished severely from ancient times. In your case, if everybody had ability to create gold it would lose its status as a monetary metal. But, it is highly unlikely ancient alchemists would divulge the secret (complex and requiring occult knowledge) to everyone, or that general public would understand the process even if told.
Upvote:4
No-one, because you don't go blabbing to people how you did it! E.g. some people think the Voynich manuscript is coded version of someone's attempt. Isaac Newton wrote about his intermediate steps, one of which was called 'the green lion'. What did that mean? Who knows! But we can deduce that since he was so secretive about his rrsearch, if it had been possible for him to find what he was looking for he certainly would have told no one. https://humtech.ucla.edu/event/liberating-the-green-lion-unsolved-mysteries-of-isaac-newtons-alchemical-practice/
Upvote:7
No one. Because even as a mental exercise, this exercise isn't a well formulated one.
It is all a question of what the cost of transmutation is.
If there were no cost to transmutation, like the Midas touch, then yes, it would make gold as cheap as the cheapest metal.
But if transmutation requires a particle accelerator, or high energy laser (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/423107/how-to-transmute-elements-with-laser-light/)... then the cost of transmutation may be many many times the cost of digging gold out of the ground, making transmutated gold many times more expensive than natural gold....
Ultimately, no serious policy maker/economist/theorist worry about this question, as we do not have the ability to create gold in any meaningful quantity (by that i mean more than a few atoms at a time).
And if you really want to theorize the impact on prices of transmutation of gold, you should look at man-made diamonds.
If you are a man looking to buy an engagement diamond ring, you would be rather disappointed by the effect of man-made diamonds on the price of that tiny shiny cut stone.
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