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Where fiat debt capital issuance is directed by a government in a manner that advances the development of improved wealth and security of its citizens then it can be a good thing.
Where fiat debt capital issuance is largely captured by private bankers who ignore the requirement for fiat capital to be directed toward such purposes then you have a state of crony capitalism that is inequitable and vulnerable to competition from a nation exercising more principled application of fiat capital leverage...
This is in large part how China has won the trade war and crippled the US military.
Parasitic bankers have captured western governments under the neoliberal ideology and the result is the decline and probable fall of western civilisation.
One point that deserves further emphasis is that fiat’s ability to accelerate timelines on large projects is not just a historical accident but an embedded feature of how centralized power and debt interact. The examples you gave from art to technological milestones highlight this. Under a purely hard money standard those same advancements would be throttled by the pace of capital accumulation and the alignment of voluntary funding. The result would be fewer monumental leaps in shorter time spans and more incremental progress spread out over decades centuries even. Whether that outcome is better or worse depends on what you value more speed or sustainability.
The persistence of fiat should also be understood in terms of psychology. Credit creation and decrees work because they tap into the deep social structures of trust and authority. People are willing to act under fiat not necessarily because the money is intrinsically good but because it represents a claim backed by a powerful issuer whose reach and capacity are visible. Hard money offers a different kind of trust one rooted in math and scarcity but it does not align with the traditional power dynamic that most societies have operated under for millennia.