>Often it was the result of currency that was once backed (a gold standard or silver standard), but the government created too much of the paper due to war or other issues, and had to default on the metal backing by eliminating its ability to be converted back into the metal upon request.

It is very easy to assume that all governments over the last 2000 years were incompetent. The problem with that is that ancient egypt's grain money system lasted two thousand years without any problem. The truth is that the gold standard is inherently unstable and collapses within 80-100 years and usually lives a second life as paper money but due to the exponential nature of compound interest, people only notice the big numbers with paper currency so they think it is governments and paper currency that are flawed and the gold standard which led to the problem is conveniently ignored and then restarted to fail in a 100 years again, due to mysterious government incompetence.

>In that sense, currency devaluation becomes a form of tax and/or wealth confiscation. The public holds their savings in the paper currency, and then the rug is pulled out from under them.

As mentioned, today the money supply is growing much faster than inflation is devaluing it. The fact is that people like to save and they have no plans to stop saving even if there is nobody there who agreed to be the producer for those savings.

>It’s rather ironic- gold was a “barbarous relic” and yet apparently had to be confiscated and pushed out of use by the threat of imprisonment, and hoarded only by the government during a period of intentional currency devaluation.

I have to be seriously disappointed by the author here. The person that called the gold standard a barbarous relic aka Keynes, also proposed the Bancor system which would have avoided the predictable failure of the Bretton Woods system. After all, Keynes was there at the Bretton Woods conference and he knew that the day it was introduced it was doomed to fail as it is just an extension of the gold standard. The Bancor system was specifically designed to eradicate the existence of "Dutch Disease" between countries and excessive debt relationships between countries. The special drawing rights of the IMF were inspired by the Bancor system but I am not sure how close they are in the spirit to the international valuta association that Silvio Gesell proposed. Yes, Keynes was a copycat but unlike Silvio Gesell he was also an economist.

>The takeaway from this section is that the growth in the broad money supply per capita is the “true” inflation rate.

Strange, an increase in savings is apparently inflation nowadays? So if the population gets bigger, saves more for retirement or money concentrates at the top, that is apparently inflation?

>The answer is that it doesn’t have to, but it wants to. By issuing its own currency, it profits from seigniorage, which is the difference between the face value of the money and the cost to produce and distribute it. It is, basically, a subtle inflation tax that compounds over time.

Okay, if that is the case, why do commercial banks get to do it then? Why do commercial banks get to profit from seignorage?

>Their currencies all lost 95% to 99% of their purchasing power over time, but it was usually gradual rather than abrupt. The system is not without its cracks as previously-discussed, but it’s certainly the most comprehensive fiat currency system ever constructed.

Imagine having possessions from a hundred years ago and them not losing their value. Gold is one of the few things and there is an obvious problem there. What do you trade your gold with? Trade gold for gold? You can't use the gold to buy things that have been stored from 100 years ago. Someone must work for that gold and if they have to value savings from a 100 years ago at 100%, they are slaves to the past. We already have that problem with land ownership. The young are slaves to the old because the old own all the land.

I stopped at the cryptocurrencies section because it is most likely just another gold standard system and I honestly don't care about cryptocurrencies.