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Monetagium – monetary extortion in feudal Europe

jpkoning.blogspot.com

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Re: Monetagium – monetary extortion in feudal Europe

#4

Post by readthenotes1 »

"democracies have not resorted to modern version of debasement as a revenue source due to the unpopularity of rising prices."

The USA got rid of silver in its coins in 1964 and I believe copper in its pennies recently.

The modern version of debasement is in the feds balance sheet, they've gotten so efficient there's no need to affect the physical substance.

Re: Monetagium – monetary extortion in feudal Europe

#6

Post by Arainach »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #4

"democracies have not resorted to modern version of debasement as a revenue source due to the unpopularity of rising prices." The USA got rid of silver in its coins in 1964 and I believe copper in its pennies recently. The modern version of debasement is in the feds balance sheet, they've gotten so efficient there's no need to affect the physical substance.

The US penny switched to copper-plated zinc in 1982, so not that recently (and it still contains a small percentage of copper).

Re: Monetagium – monetary extortion in feudal Europe

#7

Post by pavlov »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #4

"democracies have not resorted to modern version of debasement as a revenue source due to the unpopularity of rising prices." The USA got rid of silver in its coins in 1964 and I believe copper in its pennies recently. The modern version of debasement is in the feds balance sheet, they've gotten so efficient there's no need to affect the physical substance.

Some democracies in the 20th century have tried a form of cash debasement to fight inflation.

The example I’m familiar with is from Finland in 1946, when the most popular and largest circulating bills were required to be physically cut in half and lost 50% of their upfront value.

The Wikipedia article seems to be only in Finnish: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setelinvaihto

The idea was that the left half of the bill remained valid cash (although not for long — you needed to exchange it for a new type of bill within a few months). The right half of the bill became effectively a treasury note with three-year maturation: in 1949 you could present it to a bank and get your money back from the government, but no sooner.

The operation was expected to reduce inflation, but apparently it didn’t work out that way. It did provide the Finnish government with about half of the funds loaned that year, but it was very unpopular among voters and never repeated.

Re: Monetagium – monetary extortion in feudal Europe

#8

Post by immibis »

c22 wrote: post #5
tempodox wrote: post #3

Today's feudal lords plaster you with advertising and enshittification. Paying a ransom fee doesn't help any more.

The ransom is the 8 dollar a month subscription that turns the ads off.

It turns the obvious ads off, and the quality still goes down the drain.

Re: Monetagium – monetary extortion in feudal Europe

#9

Post by Mistletoe »

Bitcoin fixes this for the first time in human history. I’m excited about a future without monetary debasement. How many wars have been started by the “print more money until it is worthless, oops I have to start a war to fix it” spiral?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debasement

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