Eliminate Government Imposed Monetary Standards

Money
So they say
Is the root of all evil today
--Pink Floyd

During this insightful interview, Jim Rogers says that he's not for a gold standard--i.e., he's not for a government imposed gold monetary standard. History tells us that government imposed monetary standards of any kind always break down.

Instead, JR advocates that government get out of the way. Let the people decide what they want to use as money.

We can be pretty sure what people would not use: pieces of paper printed in green.

When people have had the power to decide on monetary mediums, they have selected commodity-based money. Tobacco, grain, seashells. Many have been employed. All of them grounded in tangible property.

Over thousands of years, however, one commodity money continually surfaces as superior to others: gold. This is because gold has several characteristics that other commodities can't match in aggregate. These characteristics include scarcity, divisibility, recognizibility, portability, and durability.

It is likely that a free people would once again turn to gold and its close cousin silver.

We can also be pretty sure that they would trade gold by its natural metric: weight. A free people would not force some imaginary unit of measure, such as the dollar, euro, or yen, on the money. Gold and silver trade naturally by weight.

Imagine a world free of currency exchange rates and government monetary manipulation. This is plainly possible and in fact likely if, as Jim Rogers suggests, people take control of the monetary system.

In unhampered markets, it is probable that people would gravitate toward gold based money--a money denominated in ounces of gold.

position in gold