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I agree with the thrust of your argument but the idea that you need to have a really really large pile of gold sitting in a warehouse to fix it seems silly to me.

Can't they just not print so much?

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That was more or less what Paul Volcker did in the early 1980s. Banks were smaller and more closely regulated, so he was able to put some constraint on the money supply, and raised interest rates. And it worked, it crushed inflation, but it was a very bitter pill--a hard recession followed. Volcker got yelled at by Congress, a lot. In the long run, he was vindicated--inflation remained fairly low until the pandemic.

But the idea that you should manage your economy according to how much of some metal you can dig out of the ground is ridiculous.

Have to find a way to measure long term quality of life. Digging in the ground should be part of it. If you can forge quality long term mutually beneficial relationships with others who agree to do the digging for you it might score more points than digging yourself.

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