Quote Originally Posted by Noah View Post
There's the graph. I don't deny that the US has seen spikes during wartime and boom & bust cycles (brought on by banking interests), but on the grand scale they have been fairly minor. Starting at 1665 it's more like 3 centuries of fairly stable price levels with real metal money. Inflation really gets going after the Bankers' Holiday in '33 with the acceptance of fiat. Metals availability doesn't much matter, and there you admitted it yourself, The purchasing power of [real] coins did not change much. Certainly if you don't like metallic units of exchange you don't have to use them; there's plenty of other money. Privately, we're free to use whatever we want as money. But gold & silver have been a preferred type of money for thousands of years.
When people are losing their farms or there is not enough currency to service debts, I would not consider that minor.
A system of just weights and balances is only one of many elements of a stable economy.