Yet that efficiency has only increased as the money system we have now stabilized, and was adopted by every single country in the world, because it did provide empirical benefits to the populations in those countries.
So the point is correct - stable currencies have allowed vast increases in economic growth and vastly better standards of living than were possible the millennia before it.
Being locked to other forms of money, such as the rate a country can amass gold, slowed growth to that rate. The current system is vastly better.
Your point presumes that the spread of the globalized market is a boon to the countries it touches. Like, fair dues, now people in remote island nations can buy televisions and smart phones, but now they also have Facebook which is being used by their leaders to foster genocides.
"Standard of living" is more complicated than good and bad.
So the point is correct - stable currencies have allowed vast increases in economic growth and vastly better standards of living than were possible the millennia before it.
Being locked to other forms of money, such as the rate a country can amass gold, slowed growth to that rate. The current system is vastly better.