The years around 1970 are one of those inflection points that is a lot like the causes of the Industrial Revolution: it can't be summed into a few easy factors.

The years around 1970 are one of those inflection points that is a lot like the causes of the Industrial Revolution: it can't be summed into a few easy factors. For me the defining thing is the emergence of the USA from the postwar politics and policies and into more of an assumed administrator of the globalization project, a status that it retained until just recently. Besides the information systems, international containerization standards were settled around this time and jet travel was becoming more affordable. A lot of pieces were in place to renegotiate trade and labor deals. And there was a break with numerous social policies; the calls from think-tanks to reinstate a stratified society started coming out at this time too. Big public infrastructure projects mostly died out in the 70's, and the narcotic drug trade from Mexico and the resulting "drug wars" picked up in the late 60's, conveniently just in time for amphetamenes to fall out of favor. So, the move away from gold is just one of numerous things that changed in a surpisingly short time frame.