"I am not sure that a central bank has any more problems than a central anything-else."
That's a good point, sort of how I'm beginning to see it.

Ever since StraigthtLineLogic said don't think about money as you know it but what money could be, it's been kicking around in the back of my mind. Fractional reserve banking with a central bank acting as a backstop and expanding/contracting money supply to reduce surplus supply/demand is the devil I know. Its most vocal critics don't have an alternative that makes sense to me. But I'm beginning to think there must be an alternative, maybe cryptycurrencies. I don't see how we use something, though, whose value relative to basket of common goods/services doesn't stay constant and/or decay in a slow predictable way. I do not get the critics. They're mad that state-backed currencies decay in a slow predictable way, yet somehow are okay with using precious metals, which experience wild fluctuations and increase in value as the number of goods/services in the economy increases. They see even predictable inflation as "theft" from savers, and I see the deflation of prices relative to gold as not only impractical but as "theft" from producers.

I only learned about bits and pieces of the Austrian School in college. Maybe behind the vocal tight-monetary-policy nutjobs, there is actually a reasonable alternative to central banks, a secret they hide in books.