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Drop your unpopular opinions here because c/unpopularopinions is filled with popular opinions
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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2026
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That's not really how the gold standard worked. The value of gold is also imaginary, so it's not immune from inflationary forces. If the government wanted to "print more money" they would just adjust the value of the gold.
The reason we moved away from this is because the value of gold in foreign markets was difficult to standardize to the value of the USD. Meaning that while we may want to hold the value of gold to a certain USD mark to help control domestic inflation, the value of the gold was lower than it could fetch in foreign markets. When that happened foreign governments would buy up as much gold as they could and begin to deplete our reserves.
Rich people did not have vast vaults of gold, the reserves and banks would just hold onto the gold and keep track of the "ownership" of it on paper, just as we do today. Fiat currency was just an acknowledgement that currency in general has always been a human construct based on trust.
I was mainly using that example to show how a physical attachment to currency makes hoarding impossible at the scale of trillions.
But you're incorrect in your last sentence, because the value of gold is not determined by a single government. It's value is arbitrary and certainly subject to inflation, but only when supply outpaces demand, which happens rarely (Spanish conquest of the Americas being one notable exception) but not to the same extent a non-physical fiat currency can be distorted.
And gold is not imaginary. It is a physical object. It's not currency (although it can be used as such), it's wealth. And it's a more reliable store of wealth than money in a bank account, although considerably less liquid. If all money disappeared tomorrow, gold would still hold value (probably more)... but only to those who have need of gold as a store of wealth.
But here's the thing, if someone manages to get all the gold in the world, the rest of us still get to eat. If someone gets all the money and buys all the means of production - we only get to eat if we give them our labor.
Now, you actually illustrated my point that money is imaginary here:
In other words, when we attached the dollar (imaginary value) to gold (real value) the value of gold declined because the inflationary pressure inherent in the (imaginary) dollar artificially decreased its value. Thus the distortion of value we see inherent in money. And when the dollar was fully decoupled from gold in 1971, well, remember the Carter years and the oil crisis? In fact, look at our economic stability and inequality pre and post 1971 - economics effectively became a constant boom/bust cycle for most of our lifetimes, and now nearly 60% of the county is underwater.
Because once upon a time the dollar was a symbol of wealth because it was worth gold, and its not anymore. It's just an point in a rigged system now.
EDIT: words
When it's treated as a commodity...... When it's backing a currency the government sets the value of gold. Under the Gold Standard (Bretton Woods system) the value of gold was set at 35 USD for one troy ounce.
The value of the gold is imaginary.... You cannot eat it, you cannot drink it, it is not a tool of production. There is no inherent value of gold other than it is a shiny malleable metal that does not tarnish. None of that helps when you are starving.
There are plenty of examples throughout history where gold became as worthless, a notable example is Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to mecca causing a decade long depression in Cairo, medina, and mecca because he spent so much gold. It was severe enough that gold was not worth its weight in food or clothes.
Those scenarios are the same. How would we eat if we didn't have gold to pay for it? Well, another object of value would arise as a currency and gold would lose its value. Why couldn't the person also use the gold to purchase the means of production? Because buying the means of production would distribute the gold. The same way buying the means of production would disperes fiat currency if you purchased the means of production.
They both have a subjective value.... The subjective value of the gold surpassed the subjective value of the dollar. This imbalance in subjectivity created a monetary enticement to people not subject to the US government's ability to regulate price fixing.
Lol, first of all the oil crisis happened because Iran had a revolution and stopped producing oil. Secondly, there has been more economic stability post 1971 than there ever was in the pre war era. The cycle of boom and bust is just inherent to capitalism. The US has experienced 34 recessions since 1854, all but 7 of them happened while on the gold standard.
Sorry, you're flat out wrong here. While the value of gold is heavily inflated due to its association with currency, it absolutely does hold inherent value, particularly in electronics.
Nope, they're not. A central bank can make more fiat currency to make up for the reduction in liquidity. You can't make more gold. Once you've spent it all it, its gone.
Yes, but only gold has inherent value. Yes, inflated, but it still has worth beyond its use as currency. That's the point that you're missing.
As someone who lived through it, no, that's not what happened, although it was a result. OPEC saw a weakness in the dollar as a result of the decoupling from gold, and used the embargo to artificially drive up the price of oil to where it became a commodity with the strength of gold. The Iran coup was a result of the Americans attempting to get in on that same boom and ride the suddenly increasing value of oil. But they bungled it and Khomeni ended up riding that wave.
You're incorrect here as well, and misrepresenting the statistics. There are 48 official recessions in the US, and if you look though the statistics on the link above, the recessions after 1971 occur more frequently, last for longer, and have higher unemployment rates when you compare to the 50 years previous, with the exception being the Great Depression.
Yes, but I believe the root of that destructive cycle is in the failure of the concept behind, currency itself. Until the de facto currency represents true value capitalism will continue to grow like a cancer.
This is why I say money is imaginary - we believe it holds true value, when in fact the only value it holds is what we give it.
Okay, so it should have an inherent value somewhere between copper and aluminum. That does not help your argument, why not just hoard aluminum, it's lighter anyways.
The value of gold is able to be regulated.......which is what we did in the past. I've already explained this.
It's inherent value is not any more meaningful than any other conductive metal. Meaning that your claim is that we should use any material to back a currency. It also means that your argument doesn't apply to the vast majority of time we backed currency with gold before the advent of complicated electronics.
What are you talking about? You specified the crisis that happened during the Carter administration, so that would be the 1979 oil crisis. That was the result of the Iranian revolution that started in 78, which makes it impossible to be the result of the 79 crisis.
Okay, so you are talking about the oil crisis in 73......6 years before Carter was in office.
Again.... The reason we decoupled from gold was because it was a shitty way to back a currency.
"Under the Tehran Price Agreement of 1971, signed on 14 February, the posted price of oil was increased and, due to a decline in the value of the US dollar relative to gold, certain anti-inflationary measures were enacted. A severe drain on US gold reserves lead to higher inflation and lack of confidence in the strength of the dollar, President Nixon issued Executive Order 11615 on August 15, 1971, which closed the gold window. This action made the dollar inconvertible to gold directly, except on the open market, and was soon dubbed the Nixon Shock, leading eventually to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1976"
Did the United States Confederate in 1854........? The reasons I did not date before then is because the "NBER does not date recessions before 1857, economists customarily extrapolate dates of U.S. recessions back to 1790 from business annals"
Lol, that's quite the window youve carved out....
Okay so we're looking at 1921-1971, I'll play ball.
So we are starting in the depression of 1920-1921(-33%), which started just 10 months after the post war depression(-14%), but we won't count that one.
1923-1924 (-23%) recession 1926–1927 recession (-12%) 1929-1933 the great depression (-27%) 1937–1938 recession (-19%) 1945 recession (-13%) 1949 recession -(8%) 1953 recession (-6%) 1958 recession (-8%) 1960–1961 Recession (-7%) 1969–1970 Recession (-6%)
Now we have 1971-2021
1973–1975 recession (-9%) 1980 recession (-8%) 1981–1982 recession (-10%) 1990 recession (-8%) 2000 recession (-6%) 2008-2009 recession (-10%) 2020 recession (-14%)
So yeah, no they were notore frequent, worse for the economy, or lasted longer. The longest after 71 was for 2 years, and the worse only lasted 2 months....
The link that you utilized did not mention employment statistics for each recession, but I'd like to know how you dreamed that up. I guess you could be using a total instead of per capita, like yeah.... There are more people with jobs now compared to the 30s....
There is no such thing as true value..... That's the whole point of capitalism. The market determines value.
How is that different from the value of gold? According to you it's true value is just as a conductor, so gold should be priced slightly by its conductivity relative to aluminum? What are you talking about?
You're missing the point, and the unemployment stats are in the table at the end of the text from the link here . Gold isn't an ideal currency, I agree, but it's better than a fiat currency tied to an arbitrary value.
As to the chronology it goes like this:
1971 - Gold standard abandoned - Nixon/Ford
1973 - 1975 OPEC oil embargo in push to jack price against the dollar, which has lost its connection to real wealth (gold) - Carter
1979 - Iranian revolution (in direct relation to the Shah's use of the suddenly exploding oil wealth) - Reagan uses this in hostage crisis against Carter in the 1980 election and wins
1980 - 1982 recession - Reagan. Massive erosion of worker rights during this period (Air Traffic controllers strike, etc).
1991 recession - Bush - war in Iraq to maintain Kuwaiti oil supply and thus keep Iraq from being able to devalue the dollar (which at this point is tied more to oil than to gold)
1992 - 1999 - Clinton - best economic years in American history, but at the same time, significant erosion of labor capital with NAFTA and various neo-lib policies. Union membership drops further. Manufacturing begins to leave the US, further eroding the labor market.
2000 - Dotcom crash, preceded by the Asian market crash (I was actually working in the market around this time. It was not fun). Bush, 2nd Iraq war and Afghanistan, all ostensibly about oil, and propping up the dollar. Manufacturing accelerates its movement out of the US.
2008 - 2009 the degradation of labor capital comes full circle with the Great Recession, permanently displacing a significant portion of the middle class and beginning a homelessness crisis we've yet to resolve. You can see this in frozen minimum wage, the inflation we now grapple with, and the current collapse of the economy.
Right now, the dollar is holds its value based on faith in the American empire. When that faith in America is too tarnished to hold a shine, the dollar will fully collapse, and with it, the empire.
Gold won't. It will always be used as a measure of wealth, regardless of a particular currency's collapse. This is why Trump wants to "take a look" at Fort Knox. Even if he earns billions, a dollar collapse would wipe out his empire, but if he has a huge pile of gold, well...
Ahh I found the peak unemployment column, but they do not support your argument. Both the great depression and the recession in 37 are well above COVID. Plus we started recovering from COVID in like 2 months
First, the value of currency is largely set on people trusting the American government to pay their bills via Treasury bonds.
Secondly, gold itself is more arbitrarily valued than the dollar and is much more subject to inflation. Just look at the volatility in the gold market.
And what was the reason we abandoned the gold standard.......
Gold can and will eventually become devalued if it ever becomes the standard once again. There has only been little over 200k tons in circulation throughout history. There is about half that of proven and currently economically minable gold known right now, there's about an additional 100k tons of unknown or currently uneconomically recoverable gold in the earths crust. There's also millions of tons suspended in the ocean, more than that in the core, and lords knows how much in space.
If gold becomes the end all be all standard of value then someone will find a way to increase supply. Money has always been about trust, value is completely subjective.
And thus effectively imaginary, proving the point in my original post. And like all imaginary things, it only holds power over us if we believe in it.
As to gold vs. fiat, if I offer you a currency backed by gold or the same amount in a fiat currency back by the faith in a nation-state, which would you choose, all other things being equal? Which is the more stable investment? Which will hold value after the nation-state collapses?
Hint: it's not fiat.
Yes, but you went on to make claims that gold is somehow inherently different. Which it is not. Gold is only valuable valuable because you believe it is as well.
Fiat...... The nation is less likely to have a massive depression and more able to recover from one of it does happen. I don't think you understand that it doesn't matter if a currency is backed by gold or not. You are still trusting the country to pay you that gold, or to release the gold at the price you originally bargained for...... That doesn't happen in a recession.
Why do you think the US made people turn in their gold during the depression and then cease all redemptions?
Stable.... Again, fiat currency. Value after the collapse of a nation state? Who the hell knows? At this point if we experienced a complete collapse I would probably rather have the value in guns and ammo. However, i'm not betting on the world to end any time soon.
I thought that was only gold from criminals or certain people, not the general populace.
Nope, it was illegal to have more than $100 worth of gold.