Physical scarcity and demand, as opposed to political will and trust, which have proven to be detrimental.
Discussion
I think it’s weird to have prices fluctuating based on the availability of a mostly useless metal. Like, what happens when we’re in a trade deficit and another country asks to redeem all its dollars for gold, so we end up with very little left? What happens when a gold miner stumbles across a large cache of gold?
These are not theoretical questions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Bullion_Famine
https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/gold-standard.asp (specifically the world war 1 part)
It’s also silly because it doesn’t grow with our economy. Eg what happens in 30 years when people have hoarded all the gold? Or hell, a random google search shows that there’s only $12T of gold in the world. You want to contract the worlds economy so much?
It has to have an honest size. The game, however, is not hoarding metal but pursuing diverse interests, (hoarding, building, manufacturing, etc) which can’t be carried out if one is occupied all day beating others up to take their gold. How would the security men get paid? Who would feed them? Where’d they get their weapons? Hoarding doesn’t pay for any of that. So the game is breaking a few eggs to make an omelette that is larger each time. That’s how the economy grows and we get specialized and get to charge more for more complex things.