Gold badge for a tag lets you close questions with that tag unilaterally instead of needing 3 users to vote on it. It's assumed you know enough about the topic you can do that, and it can still be overridden by 3 votes to reopen from other users.

That makes the situation even more confusing because a lot of emphasis is put on badges and less on points.

People still want anything like badge that doesn't do anything, see game lootbox