The changes in value haven’t come from gold.  The change is due to fiat money and the printing press.  Gold can’t be printed—that’s beautiful.  Prices will begin to rise as the quantity of paper dollars increases.  However, inflation isn’t an increase in the general price level.  It’s the quantity of paper dollars that has increased.  A rise in prices is the near inevitable consequence.  The subjective valuation of those paper dollars has changed.

Recurring crises are not the fault of the free market.  By crisis, I’m referring to the business cycle.  Marx, and his followers, believed the business cycle was inherent in the free market.  Marx noticed the crisis and equated it with capitalism.  However, he didn’t equate it with the rise of central banking.  Was his error deliberate?  Expanding credit—via the central bank—isn’t a substitute for genuine growth.  It could spur the economy into the next election though.

Centralized control will weaken money over time.  In actuality, it will weaken private property as a whole. Money transmits value.  It doesn’t transmit value very well if more of it is constantly printed.  Those dollars you have will buy less and less.  The market determines money, not the state.  The state, once it has control of it, prints more and more.  The value of money falls each time money is printed.

Money should be immediately convertible.  Your dollar should be able to be exchanged for a commodity.  The paper money we use isn’t.  It represents a debt to the central bank.  Commodity money isn’t a liability.  That paper money must be taken from you to pay back the central bank.  Actually, more than one dollar will need to be taken from you to cover the interest.  The debt can never be paid off under current conditions.

Printing money can’t improve the welfare of the masses.  Goods can’t be printed.  More money comes into existence and the price of goods begins to rise.  Credit will be expanded to supposedly fix problems, but this will make things worse.  It basically means more money and that money goes to places where it isn’t demanded.  This violently changes the value of money.  For any good to function as a money, it must have value.

Reference

Ludwig von Mises; The Theory of Money and Credit