Gold and other precious metals usually becomes the default choice when societies have the freedom to choose their money. The reason for this is people tend to do things for their own best self-interests. You will never find in history a society willfully using fiat currency without governmental force. Today most governments use fiat currency and through legal tender laws and central banking force their citizens to adopt this to their own disadvantage. With gold and other precious metals governments are limited on how fast and how big they can grow. With fiat currency governments can inflate the money supply and grow too large.

Also when governments inflate the money supply it usually has ramifications on the economy. One ramification is the prices of goods and services increasing. With this price increase so does the cost of living; which in turn brings down the standard of living. Another ramification is businesses that made more profits before the price increase tend to expand or take on more expenses than they normally would have, then when prices increase those businesses take a big loss.

Gold and other forms of honest money is one of the best tools to help keep governments limited and to keep an economy growing stable and sustainable. Gold and honest money by itself is not enough to keep an economy stable and sustainable but is one of the best tools that can help. Other tools that can help are low and stable taxes where taxes do not fluctuate too often, no central banking and no legal tender laws. Gold and other precious metals when freely used as money not only can help keep governments limited but help society grow sustainable as a whole.