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Tons of resources for understanding how the classical gold standard worked. I could write up a good list, but I'll always recommend Better Money by Larry White.
Why mainstream economists were convinced that an informed fiat monetary policy could outperform gold is a combination of
- wrong ideas about macroeconomic stability, bailouts, and informationally superior central planners (+drawbacks and limitation of gold)
- psychology of runs, fragile banking system, no way to conjure up new base money fast (not realizing that not doing that is the point of a long-term successful and flourishing money)
- evil, megalomaniac desire for control (hashtag tinfoilhat)
- mistaken ideas about a deflation-inducing currency, money velocity, and debt
Thanks. I believe you, but I need to be able to articulate it in my own head and with my own words.
Just took a look at Better Money. Think i'll pick this up. Too bad there's no audiobook version! (I get 90% of my "reading" done on audiobook now)
Best of luck! It's a dense, difficult reading, but it's the best rendition of various moneys.
(Too many mainstream economists don't understand gold... even fewer bitcoin, so it's tricky)
Saif had an interesting paragraph sort of on this just now (in The Gold Standard):
not sure if that was precisely what you were looking for?
Yeah, stuff like this. Just a general sense of the history of it, the contemporaneous reasons for going off the gold standard, the modern mainstream view, and modern alternative views.
I'm looking forward to reading Better Money, I already picked up a copy. I just need to find time, which I'm exceedingly short on these days.
amazing! let me know what you think and what you take from it
I'll definitely post a review on SN
Isn't that basically what we had with the gold standard?
To be honest, I need to brush up on my monetary history. In particular, I need to understand the historical problems with the barbarous relic that make so many mainstream economists skeptical of returning to it. And I need to be able to make the case of why Bitcoin wouldn't fall into the same traps.
Got any recommendations?