I should point out to both you and to RealMichigan that the past may not be relevant to the future. The nineteenth century was in a mode of exponential, FF-driven industrial growth. A stable money supply would actually be (and often was) deflationary in such circumstances. Of course, the gold supply was not always stable, as one gold rush after another would pump massive amounts of gold into the money supply. Thus, wild swings of inflation and deflation would occur. And yes, there were people ready to make the most of the opportunities that each swing presented, to the detriment of the more vulnerable members of society.

What we are facing in the future will be an inevitable, unavoidable, and unprecedented long-term economic decline, hopefully leveling off into a permanently sustainable zero-growth economy.

In a zero-growth sustainable economy, what you want is a stable money supply. Both inflation and deflation send misleading signals, and result in wrong economic decisions being made and resources being misallocated and wasted. In a zero-growth economy, nothing could be more harmful. Efficient use of resources becomes all-important, and a stable monetary value becomes essential to facilitate this.

In theory, I suppose that a gold standard could provide such a stable money supply. However, that assumes that we are all done with gold mining, and that none will be used up and lost. It also assumes that there are never any trade imbalances between any countries, and that there are no currency speculators. Those seem like big assumptions. It would seem to me that a better approach would be to simply fix the money supply at a specified amount and don't let it increase or decrease. This in turn would suggest that there would be little, if any, room for fractional reserve banking in a steady-state economy. Eliminate that, and a competently managed fiat currency would probably do the job just fine.