«Money is backed by purchasing power. That in turn is backed by productive capital.»

I gained that insight today, so I share it with you. I feel like my superpower is distilling masses of cross-disciplinary information as a generalist into compact precise expressions that capture the essence. (Fewer words, more punch.) I feel like this skill is important toward being able to compactify knowledge into a tweet or a meme. I've said for decades: use simple messages.

Now, as to the substance of the insight, I feel like the goldbugs got it wrong. Money backed by gold's intrinsic value can only be assured to hold up to the gold's utility value. My insight is obvious once said aloud, so I claim no brilliance to have said it. I am a little resentful that Austrians didn't say it ubiquitously before me, so that public discourse would not be filled with idiocy like "Bitcoin is backed by nothing" or even "fiat money is backed by nothing". Both statements can now be seen as untrue.

A resource view (a non-monetary view) helps to understand the value of things, so that we are not confused by the obfuscation of value in monetary terms. Which seems strange if one purpose of money is as a unit of account for a common way to assess value across all domains. Where money fails in that purpose is in assessing itself.