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> We know, however, that they don't.

We know no such thing. The only objective fact is that there have been fewer financial crises since the dollar went off the gold standard than before.

Financial controls don't work perfectly, but having money tied to a commodity is fraught with its own difficulties. It's actually quite handy to have fine-grained control over the money supply that is not coupled to external physical circumstances because then at least we have the option of controlling it to produce better outcomes even if we don't always succeed.




' we have the option of controlling it to produce better outcomes '

Following that logic, every country can simply print fiat money until everyone is rich.


It's true that every country can print as much fiat money as they want. It is obviously not true that this will make everyone rich because money is not wealth. Money is just an accounting system. It is useful to have a money supply that tracks actual wealth because it is useful to have stable prices. It makes planning easier. Fiat money is useful because it allows inflation/defaltion to be controlled by policy rather than the whims of fate. But it's still up to us to choose the right policy.




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