The gold standard emerged by dint of trial and error over centuries, not from government

From Cafe Hayek.

"from page 24 of Benn Steil’s excellent 2013 book, The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order:

[N]o one had actually “created” the gold standard. It had emerged in Britain in the early nineteenth century by dint of trial and error over centuries, and governments around the world signed on much later only when it became clear that the system served to boost both local and global commerce."