See, I think it goes the other way around. We have this brilliant scam to unload some worthless metal on the hundreds of millions of newly well-to-do who can afford to pay ridiculous cash prices for it. Take the money, invest it in real assets, and laugh as they stare at their little bars.
When the gold is gone, we'll have everything we have right now. That paper isn't worthless--it represents the collective value of hundreds of millions of people interacting in the economy. That labor, production, and other effort is and creates value: the food I eat, the house I live in, the energy I'm using to keep the lights on, and everything else. Where is gold in the picture, and where should it be? It has absolutely no relation to economic value.
This is what the world came to realize when the industrialized countries dropped the gold standard and unrelentingly embraced fiat currency. The world didn't collapse--and it won't collapse--because gold didn't need to be the basis of anything.