See:
There Is No Escaping History. Fiat Currency Eventually Fails.
Notice that this is a critique of fiat money -- not a critique of state-issued money under a gold/silver or other standard. Fiat money is a rare occurrence in modern history. (We live in strange times!) As we can see, the examples found by the author are a small number of short periods here and there.
I have my own critique of gold/silver standards, but that's another issue.
This is true but the big problem here is not that fiat currency fails but the terrible effects it has in the economy in general and in the economy of each person, when the fiat currency fails it tends to sink the country and everyone becomes poorer because of it and then you need to trust that the government is going to finally get it right when they issue a new currency.
Yes, fiat money being not back by anything, lets governments off the leash and gives them an instrument to abuse, and it's not surprising that most of politicians do abuse it following their selfish goals.
And that is another problem with fiat currencies, in theory a fiat currency could work but politicians abuse its power, they do not want to pass unpopular laws to raise taxes and they use the easy way out of just printing more fiat currency and tax people in a subtle way but eventually like always they are going to lose control of the system and it will crash.