Gold is not less but more rational than paper money. Money holds value so long as it is in limited supply; gold will always be in limited supply, and would require real resources to produce even from the sea; paper and printing ink are not in limited supply. The gold system is much closer to a modern automatic scientific control system than the crude and relatively unstable system of paper.
William E. ReesHuman societies as temporally and spatially far-flung as the Mesopotamians, Mayans, and Easter Islanders likely came to ruin by expanding beyond the capacity of their environments to sustain them.
William E. ReesTo prefer paper to gold is to prefer high risk to lower risk, instability to stability, inflation to steady long term values, a system of very low grade performance to a system of higher, though not perfect performance.
William E. ReesWe do not have an ecological crisis. The ecosphere has a human crisis. Our 'story' about our place in the scheme of things has somehow gone awry in the industrial age.
William E. Rees