Very informative, and helps me go in the the right direction.
So then I am incorrect in drawing the distinction, even though there are parallels, between 'unfettered capitalism' and 'regulated capitalism'. By what you say, the Austrians want government regulation to protect all industry from monopoly (which is a natural consequence of Darwinistic achievement at the top within capitalism) or unruly militaristic perpetuation of that power yet want markets that are free. Austrians want a very specific capitalism with a low barrier of entry to take place, viewing that as best. Besides that, they want government out.
I'm reading about anarcho-capitalism and see a blaring question unanswered: how the hell does a completely privately regulated system address the very natural human formation of monopoly? By default, those that attain monopoly power would perpetuate their own power by privately outfunding everyone else. We see an analog in lobbyist corruption in government.
Is anarcho-capitalism universally accepted as a defacto part of Austrian theory? Seems broken from the start in that way.
About money supply -- to keep a stable price level today and go away from the banking power, to actually convert over to some sort of commodity backed currency, we would in actuality need to print (and procure equal gold or whatever commodity you pick) a crapload of money, to offset supply lost from removal of the fractional reserve system. So if monetary base = 1.5T, with an average 10% banking multiplier, I assume we'd need to 'print' another 14T and offset that with equal gold reserves just to prevent a collapse or major deflationary dislocations.
At $800/oz, that would be 17.5B ounces of gold, or 550 thousand tons (if I've converted right). That pales in comparison to the view of all gold ever mined at 145000 tons. With the US only holding 8133 tons (take a look at wikipedia gold reserves). That means gold would be fundamentally poised to go up in value 67x ($53600/oz), and ironically the banks who happen to hold the reserves would yet again be rewarded. Those who do not would be left with relatively nothing.
Anyone not holding physical would be wiped. Furthermore, we would arbitrarily be empowering gold producer countries just as we do oil producer countries today. South Africa and Peru would become some of the wealthiest places in the world, with the rest of the more developed world falling quickly behind ...
So yet another irony, moving back to a gold standard would facilitate inequities that would probably just piss off another group (those not holding gold, which is most of society).
These are just some ideas. It just seems like the dislocation would be so entirely large that it would be chaos-inspiring. Do any of these Ron Paul-ites actually think through the situation? Maybe what they want is a hand-out of their own, and they can't help but aimlessly focus their frustration on not being a direct beneficiary to the present cartel.
Calling it as I see it, this whole approach is so entirely flawed, it appears to be more a function of wealth and idealogical dissent than actual logic. They want a perfect capitalism where everyone gets a fair shot, sans monopoly/dictatorship, but yet they don't want to deal with the very real problems that moving to a gold standard would cause. They believe private self regulation is possible to achieve this (I dealt with this as flawed as above) etc etc. In essence, it appears to me they are socialists in disguise (since they want a more equal distribution of wealth throughout society, where bankers don't hoard). Yet another irony considering Hayek spends so much time criticizing socialism and central planning as broken. So many logical holes in this thing. It's a swiss cheese idealogy.