Trevor you make a lot of good points here, thanks for posting.
But there is something happening more in US and the Western Countries, by necessity, which we could turn to our advantage, if folk could get their heads around how it works.
In every developed country there are now tens of GigaJoules per second solar energy coming in. That energy converts interchangeably to fuel, food (See "Solein", and pow currency.
And it came for free, after installation of the interface to receive it, no further extraction was needed, the Joules were literally pushed into the system.
That is why money-as-debt can't represent it, because every promise to pay is ultimately a promise to extract.
The only way money can represent it, is for the money to be given out for free, a donation, since the energy was received from donation.
Whilst the money is not issued to do that, the most valuable product we can imagine continues to scale up, as it has to, as the only actual source of energy, in the presence of our decreasing ability to extract energy from various things.
So the money is devaluing in markets, this is an actual physical mechanism, devaluing money, until the money is issued to represent it.
This is the reason bankers throughout the West might be panicking, they can see how they will lose control, if free money is issued, no-one will need gold or capital, oil prices will likely go negative (Again), and all capital will devalue, if no-one needs to invest in it for financial security.
We saw this already when 4Tn per month was issued in US.
We also saw the only spike of recovery in the environment, ever, and whilst the price of oil went negative, the dollar itself went up.
Issuing the free money representing the solar energy coming in to all people, and explaining this, would result in everyone seeing an incentive to further maximise their solar stipend, by implementing whatever remains to be implemented, to get to a 100% solar powered economy.
Folk believing this is not possible should be assured it is perfectly possible, by converting the solar to hydrogen backing up local microgrids, we would start to see an excess of hydrogen fuel, which could power all transportation, including EVs by swapping out the toxc batteries for reversible fuel cells, then they become dual hydrogen electrical rechargeable.
That would very quickly put the US and Western countries back in the leading economic position, because the BRIC countries would again be playing catchup, they would have to do the same to be able to compete economically, and they would actually be handicapped by their dependence still on extracted energy.
They won't do it immediately, since they still have an abundance of oil in Russia, which I guess probably reduces the urgency of the environmental problem in thier eyes, but they are suffering also from the change of climate, now they get fires in Siberia which was once permafrost for example, they see the planet burning up just like we do.
So I don't think a gold standard is what is needed, that would be just trying to prop up the old system of capitalism, which in the end, always needed the high energy density from extraction to sustain it.
if any standard is needed, it is an energy standard; a number of Joules of solar energy per token, received as solar.
I would describe this as technically moving from capitalism, to energyism.
We need to do it, sooner or later.
The sooner we do it, the more pain and misery will be saved, it seems to me, nature has this all stitched up, she has us at check, with one move to mate, it seems to me.
We might say energy is her currency, the sun is the only issuer and enforcer of it, as long as we continue to refuse it, our asses will continue to burn.
