I wrote the following in a discussion about gold and silver standards on another board. Enjoy!
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Clear eyes, my friends, clear eyes. Over the long term, judge the true nature of a system by its fruits, not by the words attached to it, especially those uttered by central banks.
Did the dollar and other state currencies retain their values in gold or silver? No.
Did the bankers and politicians create lots of money and debt under the standards? Yes.
Did the gold and silver standards suppress the currency price of precious metals temporarily? Yes, by definition, the currency price of gold/silver was fixed.
Did the elites keep installing this system over 300+ years, knowing it had 'failed' and would 'fail' everywhere? Probably. England's financial inflation was out of control less than ten years after the Bank of England was founded in 1690. (It's not as if the elites have been inexperienced!)
Given this history, you have to forgive me for engaging in the wild, conspiracy-theory-nutsy speculation that, juuuuuuuuuuuuust perhaps, the elites used the metallic standards to prop up paper money and debt so they could create more of them.
Gold and silver standards did work as designed, however, when, after the bursting of a financial bubble, it was time to transfer most of the pain to the public, and away from the elites who had created the bubble in the first place, by choking the money supply, in the name of safeguarding the gold/silver standard and upholding the moral commitment to redeem paper for the same amount of gold or silver. (Their golden goose system would have lost credibility fast if they had chosen devaluation/inflation as a response to the crisis -- i.e. they would have paid the price for the bubble.)
Absolutely brilliant. (In reality, 'fiat money' is not worthy enough to tie the shoes of the gold standard, from the elites' point of view. That's why, most likely, it won't last, and we're going back to something like the gold standard, except with multiple 'hard monies,' including Bitcoin.)
And true, there is no free market in money in this world. That was my point (in response to the claim that the dollar is world reserve currency because of supply and demand.)
We should count ourselves lucky for being born in the narrow window of history when the elites lost control. Do not lose the opportunity to profit spectacularly from it.
The paper money don't have intrinsic value, although many people said that the cost to make a paper money is quite high but it is just a paper. Even many trees has been cutting for paper money creation. It is not good for our earth. I think we will replace paper money with gold and silver. And we will use cryptocurrency for our digital transaction. The value of gold and silver are fixed, I agree about this.