There is an old proverb my grandmother used to say: "My house is my castle, my cheap cotton silken, my wooden chair, made of gold". My take from that saying was that our current economics is all gold-backed economics, and that we express the value of something only in terms of how much we value gold. The moment you unlearn that gold is valuable, or has some innate intrinsic value is the moment you can replace gold with your own version of value. That is to say, the currency you use is the language you are speaking in your society. If nobody speaks your language, the task is on you to disseminate your language and propagate it, and this can be tough. This is where the 'hard work' ethic does apply. It's easy to talk gold; not so easy to convince us of silver being more valuable.
Some might argue that gold merely enables us to create these abstract forms of currencies, or in some cases, economies, in the first place, but actually they could form in pirate utopias that have little or no scaffolding at all, or exist cybernetically, for example, like Bitcoin or Ethereum. A bit of a chicken and egg situation, of course, where gold bootstraps /enables the other alternatives. But frankly I think we are left with no other choice. We either innovate our way out of gold backed economics (using gold) or we don't prosper and thrive.
Some might argue that gold merely enables us to create these abstract forms of currencies, or in some cases, economies, in the first place, but actually they could form in pirate utopias that have little or no scaffolding at all, or exist cybernetically, for example, like Bitcoin or Ethereum. A bit of a chicken and egg situation, of course, where gold bootstraps /enables the other alternatives. But frankly I think we are left with no other choice. We either innovate our way out of gold backed economics (using gold) or we don't prosper and thrive.