Economic progress was actually far better under the gold standard. That was the time of the industrial revolution. That was the first time great masses of humanity were lifted from poverty.

> Economic progress was actually far better under the gold standard.

Would love for you to point me in the direction of the supporting evidence.

Millions were lifted out of poverty in the 19th century, whereas billions have been lifted out in the 20th and 21st centuries on the back of enormous credit expansion.

I'm not arguing the fiat currency and credit cannot be incredibly dangerous...they can be. But it's absurd to think that money supply should be fixed to the arbitrary quantity of a random element that we can dig out of the ground.

> Would love for you to point me in the direction of the supporting evidence.

There is scholarly work arguing for this. George Selgin comes to mind as someone who I believe has written about this. There's probably also scholarly work arguing the other side. I can't take the time to dig this up for you right now.

> But it's absurd to think that money supply should be fixed to the arbitrary quantity of a random element that we can dig out of the ground.

It certainly isn't absurd. There are lots of people who think this is a good idea, with good reason. Plus, it is historically precedented, and for good reason.

Should it be fixed to an arbitrary quantity of random numbers we burn electricity to find, either?

"Absurd" is the new normal in post-modern society.

If I had to pick which better exemplified post modern society and absurdity, I'd pick unlimited government money printing by the Fed, over bitcoin.

Weimar Germany pretty much defined what it means to be "post-modern," and they printed themselves into extinction (admittedly, that's not the whole story).