best defense of a gold standard i've ever heard

You know your money is fucked when barter begins to replace monetary exchange.

"Furthermore, gold, or some other commodity, is vital for providing an international money—a basic money in which all nations can trade and settle their accounts. The philosophical absurdity of the Friedmanite plan of each government providing its own fiat money, cut loose from all others, can be seen clearly if we consider what would happen if every region, every province, every state, nay every borough, county, town, village, block, house, or individual would issue its own money, and we then had, as Friedman envisions, freely fluctuating exchange rates between all these millions of currencies. The ensuing chaos would stem from the destruction of the very concept of money— the entity that serves as a general medium for all exchanges on the market. Philosophically, Friedmanism would destroy money itself, and reduce us to the chaos and primitivism of the barter system."

-Murray Rothbard