> It is much harder for them to make an argument that we should return to the glory days of bank runs, child-labor, rivers that caught fire, tainted food, and c

> It is much harder for them to make an argument that we should return to the glory days of bank runs, child-labor, rivers that caught fire, tainted food, and childhood mortality. This is one of the things about Bitcoin-as-currency that makes no sense to me: it's basically gold-standard-but-digital. We've tried the gold standard and got rid of it for good reason: * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/why-the-gold-standard-is-the-worlds-worst-economic-idea-in-2-charts/261552/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/arch... * http://archive.is/http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-gold-standard-is-the-worst-idea-in-the-world-in-one-chart-2012-9 http://archive.is/http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-gol... > The idea behind a gold standard is that a currency becomes tied to a commodity with a stable value. The great problem with this is that gold does not have a stable value. Like any other commodity, its relative value goes up and down. For instance, in September 2022, US dollar milk prices were rising over 16%. In gold terms milk prices were rising over 23%—dangerously high inflation. * https://www.ubs.com/it/en/wealthmanagement/insights/article-adp/global/en/wealth-management/insights/chief-investment-office/market-insights/paul-donovan/2024/gold-currency.html https://www.ubs.com/it/en/wealthmanagement/insights/article-... The tight monetary policy (dictated by the rules of then-orthodox gold standard) made the Great Depression worse: * https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/financial-markets-and-financial-crises/gold-standard-deflation-and-financial-crisis-great-depression-international-comparison https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/financial-markets-an... And it was only after leaving it that countries started to recover: > In the end, recovery from the Great Depression does not begin until countries give up on the combination of the Bagehot Rule and of commitment to sound gold-standard finance. Those countries that have central banks willing to print up enough money so that people are willing to spend it--it is when you adopt such policies that your economy begins to recover. If you don’t, you become France, which sticks to the gold standard all the way up to 1937, and never gets a recovery. When World War II begins, Nazi Germany’s production--equal to France's in 1933--had doubled between 1933 and 1939. French production had fallen by 15%. * https://delong.typepad.com/delong_long_form/2013/10/the-great-depression-from-the-perspective-of-today-and-today-from-the-perspective-of-the-great-depression.html https://delong.typepad.com/delong_long_form/2013/10/the-grea... Why would we want to return illiquidity and handcuff ourselves in our ability to respond to economic storms?