"Good point that the dollar was backed by gold AND silver. It would be difficult to have a purely gold standard."
Actually, it would be easier and better to have ONE and only one of the metals. Otherwise you create an arbitrage situation between the metals which eventually tends to distort the markets. This happened with the "bi-metallic" standard in America, in the late 1800s I believe.
The dollar was originally DEFINED in terms of being worth a certain amount of SILVER -- specifically the same weight of silver as in the Spanish "Pieces of Eight" bullion coin. The international standard, especially promoted by the banks, and thus encouraged in deals between nations, was the use of gold to settle accounts.
I honestly feel the US would be best served by a pure SILVER standard and, as I said, the dollar was originally DEFINED as silver (note silver wasn't priced in dollars -- a dollar was priced/defined in SILVER. The US doesn't produce much gold so any expansion of the money supply would arguably put us at the mercy of international forces (banksters, especially) whereas we have enough silver production domestically. NOTE IT ISN'T NECESSARY FOR THE *ASSET* *COLLATERALIZING* THE ISSUANCE OF A DOLLAR TO BE ANYTHING IN PARTICULAR AS LONG AS IT ISN'T TRIVIALLY OBTAINABLE (e.g., dog turds). THE *KEY* BENEFIT OF AN ASSET BACKED CURRENCY (as opposed to a currency backed by nothing or, arguably worse even if it doesn't seem like it to begin with, a currency backed by DEBT) is that it RESTRICTS government. History will eventually show as the greatest retardation in a people the nonsensical BELIEF that bigger government is BETTER. Government is always and everywhere better when it is the MINIMAL amount required to defend peaceful people from predation.
It's strange to me that I need to explain this to people. First of all "government" MEANS "to govern" MEANS "to restrict or control" MEANS "to REDUCE FREEDOM", MEANS "to reduce options in a system". If you have a hard time with this consider that a governor in a mechanical sense is a regulator of motion. Each layer of governance both reduces freedom of motion and increases frictional loss and increases opportunity for breakdown and "bugs". (Goldman Sachs and Soros can then be seen as nothing more than termites or opportunists which produce nothing but only PLUNDER (pirate). They THRIVE in a highly governed system (that is, THIS TYPE OF PIRATE CANNOT BE "REGULATED" OUT OF THE SYSTEM, NO MATTER HOW MUCH POLITICIANS AND SHEEPLE PROMOTE THE ROLE OF MORE GOVERNMENT IN "REGULATION"!
Wrapping up this over-long scribble, either silver or gold or platinum or copper or numerous other things COULD serve as a decent monetary base; pretty much anything is better than DEBT. But remember the key function of a base it to introduce a real and non-trivial energy COST to "counterfeiting" or issuing new money. Some people say this is the PROBLEM with a hard currency but they only display their greed or their lack of (or inability to conduct) forethought. A LONG-TERM HEALTHY ECONOMY REQUIRES A LONG-TERM, IMPOSSIBLE TO GAME MECHANISM TO RUTHLESSLY RESTRICT GOVERNMENT GROWTH AND ARBITRAGE OPPORTUNITIES WHICH BREED THE LIKES OF GOLDMAN SACHS, SOROS, AND THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
I have come to realize that men are not born to be free. Liberty is a need felt by a small class of people whom nature has endowed with nobler minds than the mass of men. -Napoleon
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