"I don't believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can't take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can't stop." - F.A. Hayek 1984
So what happened in the 1970s?
I’m going guess it had something to do with the US dollar becoming a fiat currency:
link
I swear to God monetarists are so fucking boring let them speak for 5 minutes and they’ll explain to you how the end of the gold standard caused the Black Plague or the sinking of the Titanic. I just hate that people will see an enormously complex and subtle subject and reduce it to an edgy hot take then use that take to explain every little phenomenon.
Not saying we’d be better on the gold standard, but fiat currency is literally worthless meaningless paper that has no tangible value.
I wish we could go back to barter n trade, to before currency was invented tbh.
Thing is, fiat currency is exactly as worthless as gold or Bitcoin or pebbles. It’s just a unit of measurement so of course it has no tangible value. There’s no going back to barter because it is so impractical that any attempt to make it work will be the first step to inventing currency.
Well, Gold actually has uses in industry and is an actual tangible thing that people like- but I understand your point.
and yes, I know going back to a barter economy is basically impossible without something like an apocalyptic crash of society & civilization in general.
I think the issue is that gold is way overhyped. Its actual value is pretty low, even aluminium is more industry-critical than gold…
An issue with things in general these days is them being super over-hyped, lol.
Gold was overhyped before it was cool though, which makes it the most hipster of metals 😎