However, by far the most advanced and successful political construct in terms of managing globalisation has been the European Union. The EU’s founding fathers devised a means of collectively managing the challenges thrown up by open markets without retreating behind national borders. They gave its Member States a unique platform for recovering some of the state functions that had been eroded by globalisation.
However, the cost of physically storing gold is nowadays incomparably higher, per dollar or euro or pound sterling or franc, than holding costs for most substitutes available today; and, while transferring electronic money costs next to nothing, actually moving gold from one country to another, as in the textbook representation of the gold standard, is as cumbersome and costly as it has always been.