It was about creating a rules based monetary system. It made engineering sense to start with a mimic of a system that was already known to be consistent (gold), but the feeling I got was that it was much more about letting the people choose which rules they wanted to follow, and less about favoring any particular ruleset (i.e. ones that create scarcity).
I don't know what you're talking about. We build society either out of rules or out of threats and favors. Preferring innovation on the rules side has nothing to do with who breathes whose air, unless you want to make a rule about that and enforce it with software--which you probably shouldn't, because it's dumb.