If you take a person's body and reduce it to its constituent parts - water (70%), minerals (copper, potassium, iron, etc) and sell those on the open market, I think the value of a human is about $15 these days.

However, I think most people see the value of a human not for their physical value but their metaphysical value.

Schiff talking about gold's physical utility value is like a wife taking about her husband's physical utility value.

Call me naive, but I'd like to think that most (not all) women would not value their husbands on those terms.