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by vijayboyapati 4088 days ago
This is one of the great economics canards of the 20th century. The gold standard was dropped because western nations accumulated too much war debt during the Great War (world war I) and weren't able to inflate it away under a gold standard. That's not the fault of the gold standard but of the war and the governments that refused to acknowledge their insolvency. The 19th century saw perhaps the greatest rise of living standards in history and it was all achieved on a gold standard, which greatly facilitated world trade. As Keynes wrote, in The Economic Consequences of the Peace:

"The various currencies, which were all maintained on a stable basis in relation to gold and to one another, facilitated the easy flow of capital and of trade to an extent the full value of which we only realize now, when we are deprived of its advantages. Over this great area there was an almost absolute security of property and of person."

2 comments

That's a creative interpretation of history.

Keynes was one of the great advocates for dropping the gold standard, calling it a barbarous relic - as his biographer Skidelsky says, "useful as a constitutional monarch but disastrous as a despot".

The various central bankers clinging to gold - against all evidence - caused the great depression's deflationary spiral.

Okay, sure, that's fine that you believe in a different interpretation on history for the global drop of the gold standard.

I really don't care - but the point still stands that Bitcoin is still almost a century behind other currencies because it is deflationary.