The absence of any fixed definition of the dollar, such as in gold, means that its value is solely dictated by the actions of the government. Yet that reality never figures much into our politics. Vasko Kolhmayer has an insightful column about this in Canada Free Press, where he hammers home the fact that money is too important to be left to the politicians:
Our currency’s fate has been sealed the moment it came under governmental control. Most conservatives are blind to this and assign blame wrongly. They assume that irresponsible politicians are responsible for the dollar’s travails. We tend to think that once we vote the good guys in everything will be all right. But this is the same as to say that the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block did so poorly, because the wrong people were in charge.
He’s exactly right: we can’t simply wait around for better stewards of the dollar to come along. We’ve been waiting for nearly forty years, and the floating dollar arrangement has continuously disappointed. The job of dictating the nation’s monetary affairs is too big for one man or one institution, which are prone to large-scale mistakes. We must return control of the nation’s money supply to the people.
