[romwell]

>The reason why precious metals have been an important part of money is trust -- an issue which the author fails to address.

The author does not fail to address this:

>We find, however, the same pride of accuracy with the Roman mints; and also in later days when the coinage was of base metal, the directions to the masters of the mints as to the weight, alloy and design were just as careful, although the value of the coin could not thereby be affected. Accuracy was important more to enable the public to distinguish between a true and a counterfeit coin than for any other reason.

The need for a strong government to make its subjects accept coins is also talked about in detail, e.g.:

>There can be no profit from minting coins of their full value in metal, but rather a loss, and it is impossible to think that such disagreeable punishments would have been necessary to force the public to accept such coins, so that it is practically certain that they must have been below their face value and therefore were tokens, just as were those of earlier days.

What you said is mirrored in the article.