Reply #10: You don't understand the downside of the gold standard.

[trotsky]

Is either system perfect? No. Fiat currency takes responsibility to manage. Up until recently, we had this responsibility, and we had a very stable currency.

With a gold standard, your monetary system is tied to a fixed amount of gold. How does your economy expand, if the money supply is limited?

For a more in-depth analysis of the flaws of the gold standard, I recommend the late Steve Kangas' writeup:

http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-gold.htm

Summary

The far right advocates the gold standard because it gets government out of the business of controlling the money supply. They fear that printing money creates inflation, and retracting money causes recessions. But the opposite is also true: printing money cures recessions, and retracting it cures inflation. Governments in the last 60 years have used these policies with tremendous success. There has not been a single depression or bank panic in any nation anywhere in the world using Keynesian monetary policies. But during the Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, depressions and bank panics were common. The historical record is so strong that mainstream economists reject the gold standard almost universally.