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Why prices rise — and why "inflation" is a story about the dollar, not the goods. Articles, references, and tools across the site that touch this question.

The 90-year period when the dollar was redeemable for a fixed weight of gold, the events that ended it, and the calculator that lets you see what those changes mean today.

The "people's metal" — silver coinage from the 1792 Coinage Act through the 1965 cupronickel transition, plus eight country guides covering the global silver record.

How fiat currencies die, the patterns that repeat across centuries, and what today's currencies tell us about where they're going.

The Community Sovereignty Series — five free, printable guides on building resilience at the household, neighborhood, and community level. Free to share without restriction.

A five-essay arc on how a major commercial economy ran a working silver monetary system for two and a half centuries with no state-issued silver currency. Chinese merchants verified, weighed, melted, and re-circulated foreign silver — Spanish 8 reales, US Trade Dollars, Mexican pesos — through a polycentric system that did real economic work without a sovereign authority running it. Companion arc: Stateless Pricing — six case studies of how credit and contracts worked, across civilizations, when the state didn't supply them.

Seven essays that strip the dollar out of household economics and price the milestones of American life in gold. A house, a car, a year of college, a week of groceries, your paycheck, the blue chips in your 401(k) — all in real money instead of debased dollars.

A seven-essay arc on how communities priced goods, extended credit, and enforced contracts where the state did not supply the money or guarantee the bargain. Six historical case studies spanning Mediterranean medieval merchants, Tang and Song China, the Hanseatic League, colonial America, and the Caribbean buccaneers — followed by a capstone synthesizing the common architecture. Companion arc to Stateless Money (the silver arc), which covers the unit of account; this arc covers the contract.

Six essays tracing how American money went from gold-redeemable to pure fiat, and why every fiat currency in recorded history has eventually died. The Federal Reserve, the gold confiscation, Bretton Woods, Nixon's 1971 default, the petrodollar, and the 1,000-year track record of paper money.