> why you don’t back your currency on things like gold
How did the West learn this lesson?
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/nixon-shock
> We must create more and better jobs; we must stop the rise in the cost of living; we must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators.” To achieve the first two goals, he proposed tax cuts and a 90-day freeze on prices and wages; to achieve the third, Nixon directed the suspension of the dollar’s convertibility into gold.
Particularly
> we must protect the dollar from the attacks of international money speculators
In this case the "speculators" speculated that the US didn't have the gold it said it did to back the dollars it had been printing.
Protecting the dollar meant we will no longer trade the dollar for gold to protect it, but why would it need protecting if we had the gold to exchange?
Sounds to me like gold as a standard wasn't the issue, but printing of dollars without backing.