[mcsluggo]

Well, I would ALWAYS rather surf the internet for porn, so its difficult to use that as a benchmark for anything. You can define, as an identity expression (ie, an expression that holds true in ALL circumstances):

Surfing porn > discussing politics


BUT, starting from that point, your statement raises ANOTHER key weakness with specie backed systems: increasing the money supply is NOT an inherently inflationary act. In an expanding economy you have to expand the money supply continuosly in order to maintain a nuetral monetary policy, and that assumes no international markets. In the case of the US, with the dollar's role as international currency, you not only have to increase MS to keep up with domestic demand, but you also have to constantly increase MS to keep up with foreign demand for dollars. In this environment, keeping the nominal MS fixed is an inherantly contractionary (rather than inflationary) policy.

Which leads to a problem with specie backed systems. Gold (or whatever commodity) has some value independent of its role as a currency backer. Additionally supply of gold is not controlled. Taken together this means that a monetary authority has a MUCH tougher time controlling the MS in a specie backed system than it does in a system where the currency has no backing other than the "full faith and credit" of its issuing government. It is very difficult for a government to maintain a money-nuetral policy under a specie system, instead they used to have to rely on inflation and recessions to move the ECONOMY to stay with the MS (rather than the other way around, as we try to do today).