The Gold Standard

[forsyth]

There's still people who claim we need "real money" based on gold, not just "fiat money", because gold's really worth something, regular money's only worth something because the government says so.

But gold's only worth anything because people say so also. (Yes, gold has applications in electronics and a lot of other things, but when people talk about the "value" of gold, that's usally not what they're talking about.