The gold standard doesn't prevent any of this anyway because it doesn't count for 1.Changes in supply within the market, 2.People's perception of the value, & 3.Government manipulation of the value through controlling the production cycle. Having the currency based on a fixed point like this is even riskier as only one commodity needs to be manipulated to crash an economy.
Imagine a scenario where we have our currency based on gold, and ten years down the future, a South African mine hits a major vein and dumps 500 tons into our market. It would, over night, greatly devalue our currency. Or worse, what if there were a mining disaster in Peru and the courts there immediately froze all mining, with other countries following. Even a temporary freeze would impact the supply and affect value. The result of course would be the government comes in and manipulates the value by printing the 'gold notes' on credit to protect(sic) our economy.. and we have the federal reserve cycle all over again.
I agree, I think a commodity based currency is very risky. And I see Ron Paul's 4 currency scenario as only slightly better. I still see the current Federal Reserve scenario as the best model I've seen.
It won't reign in congressional spending, but commodity based currencies wouldn't do that anyway. And we'd just legislatively pop off any commodity based currency at the first crisis anyway.