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Originally Posted by fountainAtlas  Dependable? Inflation and deflation still occurred. Gold or metal money was constantly manipulated by filing down the edges of a gold coin you were able to "create money". I believe that at times this got to be so bad that all financial transactions would be done with a scale. |
Are you describing the 19th century gold standard or gold coins in general? You're right that gold money was debased throughout history. The Roman Caesars were notorious for this. They would clip coins, mix them with impure alloys, all kinds of tricky stuff.
That was easy to do when minting technology made crude oval stamped blobs of metal. But it is pretty easy to tell whether modern coins like the gold eagle has been filed or clipped. That's why coins have ridges on them.
And during the gold standard, the currency was still mostly paper. Silver or gold certificates. Most of the gold sat in the banks.
Nevertheless there are flaws with all forms of money, so point taken.
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How could you possibly control the discover of gold? You can't, if there is ever a huge discover there would be massive inflation.
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Exactly. In a gold standard the money supply can't be easily manipulated by bankers.
You talk about massive inflation. We are feeling the effects of massive monetary inflation right now in the form of a popped housing bubble and rising commodity prices. These all resulted from an increase in credit and an expansion of the money supply by the central banks.
I think you need to do some research of your own. You can start here:
The Case for Genuine Gold Dollar
On average the gold supply increases at about 2% per year. In the past there were some large discoveries that caused inflationary shocks (1849 for example) but these price shocks were relatively short term.
Ultimately one must know what money really is. Even the gold standard has its flaws when the majority of the people allow themselves to be manipulated.