Quote:
The ultimate reason why we have a fiat system today is: we are better off under a fiat system than under a gold based system.
Wasn't debasement of coinage as practiced by Western Rome an example of a defacto fiat system that managed to keep their charade going a few centuries longer than a strict gold standard would have done?

There was also an interesting political attempt at gold-silver bi-metallism in the US over a century ago, when a drop in farm commodity prices deflated the income of farmers and made it impossible to pay back bank loans in original gold.

What is interesting today is that that monetary systems that were developed originally as pragmatic responses to existing conditions are now themselves put up on pedestals in the halls of their long dead hero or villain philosophers.

We are what we are, and if there is any future for human society it will be because of the resilience of the human mind to be pragmatic under changed circumstances. We can invent new hero-philosophers along with new monetary systems after the crisis.