My understanding of the gold standard

     A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. Consider every morning before work, one must kiss my golden ass. We would soon see, due to the finiteness  of my arse, a line up. This would slow GDP since only those skillful and lucky enough to pucker up on my heinie in a timely manner would carry on peak economic activity. If, however, we were to make replica's of my arse to kiss, we would soon see the line's dissipate. This replica can be metaphorically considered fiat money. Fiat money is currency which derives its value from government regulation or law.