> why you don’t back your currency on things like gold

How did the West learn this lesson?

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/nixon-shock

> We must create more and better jobs; we must stop the rise in the cost of living; we must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators.” To achieve the first two goals, he proposed tax cuts and a 90-day freeze on prices and wages; to achieve the third, Nixon directed the suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold.

Particularly

> we must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators

In this case the "speculators" speculated that the US didn't have the gold it said it did to back the dollars it had been printing.

Protecting the dollar meant we will no longer trade the dollar for gold to protect it, but why would it need protecting if we had the gold to exchange?

Sounds to me like gold as a standard wasn't the issue, but printing of dollars without backing.

I can think of a single case in history where policymakers decided to reverse (as you put it) "printing of dollars without backing" in favor of maintaining a peg to the gold standard (or equivalent), and probably over a dozen cases where it was the gold standard that was lost.

While I can understand why something like the gold standard serving as a fiscal straitjacket could find appeal, I can't understand why people ignore the repeated demonstrations of its ineffectiveness in that role.

Gold standard serving as a fiscal straitjacket is precisely why it has be removed by governments time and time again. Removing a gold standard benefits the government and those in power and is a detriment to the people and the value of their labor. Not having a gold standard removes the physical requirement for government to behave with fiscal responsibility.

The number of times that gold standards have been ended isn't proof that gold standards don't work. It is proof that people in power will remove obstacles in the way of achieving their agenda.

People in power are still people. People cannot be trusted to be responsible with massive amounts of money when there is no personal penalty for being fiscally irresponsible.

I visited the Statue of Liberty a few weeks ago and noticed a quaint bit of history. The Liberty Bond. Bonds issued with the Statue of Liberty on them in an attempt to get funding to enter war! Talk about a straitjacket!

Now we (Americans) don't have such a silly constraint and launch all the wars we want. No need to even call them a war or to ask for permission. Or even notify the public that one is being launched. Funding is already secured.

Your last paragraph is so simple and plainly correct, and yet people will argue endlessly against it.

> and probably over a dozen cases where it was the gold standard that was lost.

This doesn't prove that the gold standard was bad for the people.

Governments grow until they collapse. That growth eventually is constrained by the inability to print gold.

This is particularly obvious if you consider that dropping gold and silver from currency is near the first thing to happen when war starts. Inflation is a hidden tax. Governments use it to continue their largess beyond what would be possible with direct taxation.

> I can think of a single case in history where policymakers decided to reverse

Everyone knows politicians are liars and cheats. Why would the actions of politicians or those appointed by them be a signal of virtue or correctness?

> Sounds to me like gold as a standard wasn't the issue, but printing of dollars without backing.

True, that’s why the United States basically declined economically after going off gold and printing as much as they’d like.

I'm personally convinced (by no evidence other than game theory, which is what trust in block validators to be honest as a group is based on as well) in cases like these, that there must be people with a huge stake in btc who are essentially bribing legislators to adopt crypto. Why else would they accept as legal tender a currency their government and people don't hold except if the people who do hold it convinced them in some way? Looking forward to the documovies in 15 years of these crypto "investors" flying to CAF and El Salvador and bribing their government officials.

I highly doubt they were bribed by Bitcoin miners. What's more likely is that BTC is emerging as a global store of value asset, and with the additional advantage that the supply of BTC is not entirely controlled by exploitative global central banking apparatus. Do some googling on what the IMF has done to small countries with their loans, and what happens to small countries when their currency is manipulated.

You can't deny though that there is an incentive for some, especially hedge funds with massive crypto positions (who are known for not being above doing nefarious things with foreign government officials), to bribe legislators of countries open to the idea to adopt it, to improve their financial asset. Whether or not that is indeed something they're doing, as I mentioned, is pure speculation.

Convinced eh? Sounds like baseless supposition to me.

> Sad that Africa is going to effectively get exploited again by westerners

Robert Mugabe, your publicist needs a raise, again

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe

Not only westerners even China is interested this time. Central Africa has so many minerals that they don't have any hope of being left alone in the coming future.

They are being exploited by the current tie to France and requirements for keeping reserves in French Treasury. In two words: ongoing colonialism.

Bitcoin allows for choice.

The article isn't about controlling inflation or floating currencies, but access to new technology.