"Second lesson: The "devaluation" that you speak of is called inflation. Yes, over time an individual dollar is worth less. We also make more of these dollars for our time. This is not some giant conspiracy."
Bull.
First Lesson - a program of CONSTANT Inflation is in effect a recurring tax upon saved capital. E.G. I am already taxed on wages, inflation then continuously erodes the value of those savings. And don't give me the "put it in the bank" BS because interest earned on deposits is LESS than inflation so I would in effect be losing value by depositing it.
Second Lesson - Since these new dollars are brought into being to fund government deficit spending and benefit the federal reserve banks as well. I'd say yeah there is indeed a "conspiracy". Both people in government and banking are WELL AWARE of the game, who it benefits and how.
Third Lesson - A powerful argument for using gold as a medium of exchange is primarily based upon the idea that it removes the ability of the government to continue deficit spending via inflation as they cannot easily create gold (as opposed to fiat currency). Value is based upon supply, demand and time preference.
When government is given the ability to create money political corruption necessarily follows. I.E. the power to "create" wealth attracts people and lobbyists
who then fund the politicians providing them said wealth.
Your argument that using gold as a medium of exchange is a return to a barter system is invalid. I could make the same argument that trading little green pieces of paper for goods or services does the same thing. E.G. bartering paper for goods instead of gold.
Last lesson - The dollar was backed by gold up until Nixon severed the last remaining ties in the 70's Why did he do this? because other countries were redeeming our currency and demanding the gold it was backed by. Since then government spending has essentially been from from any restraint as there
is no inherent limiting factor upon the emission of money. The only real limit to the debasement will be the destruction of the nation and/or world economy.