[tiatia]

"... but his economic analysis is terribly flawed."

I doubt that an analysis from the Mises institute is going to enlighten us here. Austrian economics is interesting but fails on long term analysis and deeper insights due to Mises flawed understanding of Money.

A former Austrian...

[irln]

Not as an attack but a real question: Please expand on "Mises flawed understanding of Money."

[tiatia]

I can't. The major book that I would recommend is not available in English.

These are a few links I have posted several times on HN:

"There is No Steady State Economy (except at a very basic level)" http://ourfiniteworld.com/2011/02/21/there-is-no-steady-stat...

Limits to Growth–At our doorstep, but not recognized http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-02-12/limits-to-growt...

Wealth And Energy Consumption Are Inseparable http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2012/01/wealth-and-energy-...

Maybe you can grab a few ideas. A gold backed currency would make no difference. The driving force of capitalism is debt. Debt that needs to be served with more debt (there is no treasure box in the cellar of General Motors that they can use to build car manufacturing plants). To keep the system running you have to continuously create more debt. To be able to do this, you need to have a growing economy, for the economy to grow, you need more energy. To make things worse, this grows exponentially. This is not bad in itself, it has enabled capitalism based economy a tremendous dynamic in the last 150 years.

The Problem: Nothing that growth exponentially can grow very long and nobody has ever been able to show how a system that does not grow anymore or does not create new (higher) debt anymore can work. ("There is no steady state economy").