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Would life have been better if we had stayed on a gold standard?
719 sats \ 17 comments \ @stack_harder 7h econ
Do you ever wonder if the quality of life would be better if we had just stayed on the gold standard?
Or do you think it would have been not so different? After all, even when officially on it, govs would often go off it anyway.
people say fiat enables war, but we've always had wars, and even in WW1, countries came off the standard, printed and then lied about it, pretending it was war bonds etc
Fiat does enable seemingly endless wars, sure. But i feel like govs always find a way to wage war.
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152 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 5h
I'd argue that the problem is the standard, not the gold.
As long as govs make up some kind of standard that they then break because they spend more than they got, shit shall hit the fan. Since this has been the case since forever, shit shall simply hit the fan, no exceptions.
Reminder for those combining the truly incompatible word bitcoin with such principle of a monetary standard that is enforced by govs: for someone that is in debt, NgD is super important. And guess who are always in deep, deep debt? Governments. They have another standard, where govt debt is measured against GDP - which includes the fruits of your and my labor - instead of revenues, to make it look as if all is fine. BUT IS IT?
Don't fall for their scams.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Akg10s3 2h
What a great answer! Great,⚡
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44 sats \ 0 replies \ @denlillaapan 7h
Yes.
Hands, freakin' down.
Also: kind of a no-brainer... What broke hard money were two world wars, and a scenario where gold standard survives we thus dont have those and humanity avoids the capital destruction associated. It's then pretty undeniable that we'd be muuuuch better off in that timeline.
(Plus, democracy wouldn't have infested everything and women not get the vote etc etc ;))
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102 sats \ 0 replies \ @hasherstacker 6h
Gold suffered centralization issues. It actually failed.
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32 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 7h
I'd say it would have been a little bit better, at least. If it would have made no difference, then the psychopathic ruling class would have just stayed on it. So, it must have imposed some degree of restraint on their ambitions.
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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 6h
yeah, politicians will always be the same, too bad they have nothing limiting or restraining them now
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21 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 4h
https://blog.vinneycavallo.com/posts/2025/06/26/on-the-debasement-of-human-time
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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @justin_shocknet 7h
If my aunt had balls, she'd be my uncle.
Gold never worked and gold is why fiat exists in the first place.
If we're going to conceive of a magical alt-universe we may as well ask what if Bitcoin existed 5000 years ago. Otherwise, the gold experiment ends the same way every time.
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10 sats \ 5 replies \ @stack_harder OP 6h
That's being dramatic, many of the most prosperous periods in world history happened under some form of the gold standard - including the Industrial Revolution.
Shit, the world was on a gold standard for thousands of years.
Maybe what failed wasn't gold, but the governments' not being able to control themselves because, if nothing else, gold limited how much their ability to blatantly print.
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1 sat \ 4 replies \ @justin_shocknet 5h
Many of the darkest periods happened under it too, correlation yada yada... gold didn't invent the steam engine or factory any more than fiat invented the microchip or the internet.
The revisionist gold history is a myth too, wealth has always been measured in land and legion.
As a currency it was constantly clipped, diluted or substituted. Even then, it was only useful to the extent a governmental monopoly on violence made such use-cases possible, because it doesn't work as money without the governments endorsement.
Since money is a tool, it is self-evident that gold is not a useful enough tool in shaping human organization. Governments are themselves human organizations, shaped by the tools they are built with.
There's no escaping the fact that fiat is gold's legacy. Play "what if" all you want, the result will always be the same. Bitcoin had to be created to break that cycle of golds failure.
Goldbugs sound like college leftists, puerile dullards that insist real communism has never been tried.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @stack_harder OP 5h
the simple fact is that for thousands of years, gold was the best form of money, and it wasn't because a gov said so, it was because people valued it.
King's clipping it etc, just speaks to the constant desire of rulers and govs to debase to enrich themsevls.
Anyway, i'm not a gold bug, this was just a question to see if people thought the world would be a better place if there was a hard money standard, imperfections and all
no point asking, would the world be better on a btc standard because it would just be a simple 'yes'
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @justin_shocknet 5h
Kings didn't clip, Kings had to mint coins with edges because of what happens in circulation
Change goalposts if you must, your OP wasn't about if gold was the best attempt at a solution available... But "what if" it hadn't been a failure (which it was)
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @stack_harder OP 5h
it's just a theoretical question, doesn't matter why it failed or ended per se.
it's like asking, what would the world be like if the Nazis won the war, nobody is debating who won or why, who was the better army, it's a hypotehtical question
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Tef 3h
Maybe yes, in terms of inflation control and monetary discipline.
Probably not when it comes to economic flexibility, responding to crises, and promoting growth.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @stack_harder OP 3h
i've seen a lot of arguments that say gov printing to respond to crisis usually creates a bigger one down the road
i can see economic flex being an issue for sure
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @d680ecaa8e 5h
Every day there is a war even if there is no war in the country, all life inquiries are challenges.
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