Comment: That's a good question, which used to intrigue me, too.

"[...]seems to say that we need currency backed by gold and fiat money has never lasted. Isn't that a gold standard? If not, what is he for?"

That's a good question, which used to intrigue me, too.

Here's the thing: the gold standard (whether called that way or not) has been tried many times throughout History.

And what did History show? It turns out that all over the place on this planet, pretty much every time, the governments just cannot resist the temptation to leave it (the gold standard) more or less directly to replace it brutally or progressively by a fiat money system... and as we also know, THERE IS NOT A SINGLE example of a "successful" fiat money system - that is, one which DID NOT collapse BY ITSELF, soon or late, in time ranges of the few decades on average.

My belief, but I may be wrong, is Dr. Ron Paul has the intuition that if we favor competing currencies upfront instead (one of which would have a gold basis, no doubts) it might be much more discouraging / more difficult for governments - for several practical reasons - to repeat the same recurring error in / out their single gold standards over time (as they have demonstratively proven themselves to be very good at messing up things there).

Makes sense?

'HTH,