No shuck, Sherlock. I'll bet you'd be among the first to say that you're against having a global one-size-fits-all economic policy. And yet here you are advocating for one.
You'll deny that, of course, and tell us that fixed exchange rates have nothing to do with economic policy, or the performance of economies (which you already said) but that's just because you don't understand this stuff well enough to understand the implications of your own proposals.
What you are essentially telling us is that we should abandon a free market in currencies, and instead fix the prices by fiat. And we can do that just this one time because we're using gold, which is special and magic and makes our price-by-edict system better than a market.
No it doesn't. It would just turn long-term control of the world's economies over to the gentle ministrations of the Russian and South African governments, who have enough gold in the ground to jack the price around all they want. You want Vladimir Putin setting the rate at which our economy can expand? (I know you don't believe you're doing that by pegging currencies to gold, but again, that's only because you don't understand how any of this really works).
You're so bent on removing "the current fiat providers" that you'd replace them with a worse bunch of fiat providers without even knowing you're doing it. You pretend that gold just "is," and there isn't anybody mucking around with its supply. Sure there is. It's not like The Lord releases so much every year from His secret stash in Heaven. Miners decide this, and some of them are governments that need not make economic sense in their production decisions. If there are military or other strategic objectives to be gained, they'll go ahead anyway. Meet your new "Fed" who decides your money supply: the Russian government. And you thought you were doing this to protect the Constitution.
Plus you'd take the currency-trading market out of the system, which is what keeps the current system honest.
Surely with a gold standard we'd have the environmental lobby marching on Washington protesting against the "rape" of the ANWR by gold miners. It would be like going on a monetary "Oil Standard," with new Saudi Arabias or Iraqs able to do to our entire economy what they're presently trying to do to do to only one segment.
What the heck are people here thinking?
What you are essentially telling us is that we should abandon a free market in currencies, and instead fix the prices by fiat.
Strawman. Non sequitur. I believe that a yard should be fixed/defined as three feet. Would you describe that as my saying that I do not favor a free market in distances, and instead want to fix the relationship by fiat.
[Russia and South Africa] have enough gold in the ground to jack the price around all they want.
Above ground “we” have 25% of the world supply; Russia has 1%; South Africa a fraction of 1%. But what does this matter? By what reasoning do you conclude that defining a currency honestly as representing a specific quantity of a commodity puts an economy at the mercy of another country that has a below ground supply of that commodity?
You want Vladimir Putin setting the rate at which our economy can expand? (I know you don't believe you're doing that by pegging currencies to gold, but again, that's only because you don't understand how any of this really works).
Would you explain how it works?
You pretend that gold just "is," and there isn't anybody mucking around with its supply.
No such pretension is required for my desire for honest money.
Plus you'd take the currency-trading market out of the system, which is what keeps the current system honest.
Honest money does not require a currency trading market. In fact, the mere existence of a currency trading market is prima facie proof that the money isn’t honest.
Pick any one of these topics so we can have an intellectual discussion about it.