I think that trying to tie the value to some arbitrary standard is artificial - for one thing, the value may depart substantially from that other standard and needs to be allowed to vary in order to stablize at an authentic (ie reflecting supply/demand etc) rate.
However, reducing extreme volatility would indeed make BTC more appealing as a medium of exchange or investment. The extreme volatility seen in June was due to illiquidity of the bitcoin market in the face of a sudden increase in demand. It's just like a 'penny stock', where few shares are traded and there is no market-maker or institutional investor.
Picture a cup of ice cubes, vs the same volume of water. If you add or remove the same amount of water, the level in the ice-cube cup will jump in increments, vs the level of liquid water varying smoothly.
Liquidity of the BTC market would improve if many traders were always present to make small transactions on mtgox, and if several institutions or big investors would step in to 'make a market' in bitcoins. Making a market would require holding a BTC reserve large enough to satisfy most requests to buy OR sell BTC in a current day. Examining bitcoincharts.com, we see this would mean holding about 250K BTC each. The market maker(s) simply post active Bids and Asks slightly wider than the spread, so they are always making some profit just buying and selling.
It would also help if the bitcoin exchanges consolidated to one, or what will happen is someone will build arbitrage bots which exploit 'flipped markets' - eg situations where a bid on one exchange is higher than ask on another exchange.
Thirdly, it would help if a venture fund existed to invest in businesses which accept BTC payments or build BTC technology... people would then invest in that fund and act to protect their interests in BTC succeeding. I am working towards creating such a fund but can't talk about it yet.