Not worth thinking about imo

A) Not going to happen, and

B) [Mostly] Nothing, since gold will be valued appropriately at that time.

(Unless you're talking about the apocalyptic scenario where governments collapse. Then the value of gold drops and the value of guns and ammo spikes)

Complete agree it won't happen, but if we did return to a gold standard the price of gold would soar.

Yeah, I know it won't happen. I just was interested in the theory of it.

Really?

A) So you don't think gold will ever have anything to do with the global monetary system in any form? You think this failed experiment of fiat currency and credit expansion will persist? Interesting. Gold has played a very active and dominant role in monetary systems for the majority of history. Nations have gone on and off it plenty. I mean, technically when Nixon took the US off it, it was only meant to be temporary, so the idea that going back to some system where gold is involved not being an option on the table seems odd. Especially with the world scrambling at the moment for an alternative to having the dollar as the world reserve currency. It doesn't have to be some 100% gold backing standard, but using gold as a basis for measuring a currency's value or partial backing seems quite likely.

B) If we did return to a gold standard, the price of gold would clearly have to rise in relation to the amount of currency in circulation. Unless what you are saying is that when/if a decision were ever made to return to a gold standard, that the price would be revalued right at that point in time when the backing occurs, then yeah. But that would be after a revaluation upwards.

Gold standard does not mean that you have the same amount of gold as you have money in circulation.

No, it means the price will adjust based on how much gold is in circulation relative to currency in circulation. And if a gold standard were done today, it wouldn't be done at $1700/oz.

You ain't seen nuthin' yet.

I'm confused how you are thinking it might be. 1 dollar would just be defined as "x oz of gold", and you could go to any place to redeem your gold for that many dollars. Before, 1 dollar just meant 1/20th of an ounce of gold. You could redeem those dollars for gold (theoretically, at least) at a bank.

If you used today's dollars, there would have to be gold somewhere that isn't currently there. The gov't could use the Ft. Knox gold to back them, but the amount of gold would have to be incredibly low per dollar of what they would give you.

True, but that's what forced Nixon to go off the gold standard in the first place.

I actually don't like the idea of a gold standard. I would rather just actually use gold as money. There could be gold coins, polymer bank notes containing actual gold (ala Borodog), as well as bank and credit card accounts denominated in gold.

1 gram of gold is about $55, so a good basic unit could centigrams ($0.55). These could be called "cents", so that something now costing $2.75 would cost 5 gold cents.

Merchants could quote their prices to the tenth or hundredth of a gold cent (or even smaller), and would adjust their prices much as they do now, according to supply and demand. The fact that demand for gold can fluctuate is immaterial, as so can the demand for dollars.

The fiat currency hasn't failed. It has had very consistent, deliberate, and controlled inflation for generations. Your doomsday, imaginary hyper inflationary scenario has not and will not happen, no matter how much you wish it would.

And please don't compare historical use of gold to current conditions. Those economies have ridiculously little in common with the modern world.

There's no reason to use a stupid shiny rock over paper.

Your response to point B is also apparent to everyone but you:

Fist,

Every fiat currency in the history of man has failed and so will this one. There are many good reasons to use gold over paper, but I know you disagree. I guess time will tell who is right.

EDIT: why am I participating in this?