100% true.... But why do you think every gold/silver based civilisation debased their currency?
Since you dont delve into WHY ALL the Gold/Silver standard civilisation debased their economy, are you just repeating a common simple mantra.
I think had you considered WHY, you would not even put out your statement as an counter to my post.
You are one of a few members of this forum whom I don't think are capable of changing their minds about anything or engaging in good faith discussion, so this reply is not addressed to you directly, but for anybody on this forum curious and reading this thread, this isn't true. There are plenty of societies which refused to debase their currency. The Athenian Drachma, for example, was never debased even as Athens was conquered, lost their empire, and disappeared from relevance. Confidence in the drachma was strong that it was used by Alexander's empire as the standard, and it was in circulation all throughout eastern Rome centuries after Athens was incorporated into the Macedonian and Roman empires, until eventually it got Gresham's Law'ed - the drachmas in the state coffers were melted down for newly debased (Roman) coins, and the rest which remained in private hands disappeared from circulation.
Yakka is correct when he says it is the government needing money. I don't agree that it could be described as evil, but the reason is the same. The government/king/state etc. needs the money for one crisis or another, whether war, or famine, or whatever - there is every example throughout history. It can't tax the people more because the people will starve, and if the people starve, they will revolt, the government won't survive. To pay for the upkeep of the government, army, etc, the state has to either debase the currency, if it is on a gold or silver standard, or issue paper, or issue even more paper if it already issues paper. It has been this way for thousands of years and it's remarkable people even bother denying this. I don't think it's good or evil, it just
is. Arguably a government can debase or inflate for good reasons, such as defending itself against aggressors. But to deny reality despite having the advantage of hindsight is crazy.
To say there is a shortage of money is equally ludicrous. There cannot possibly be a shortage of money. The statement itself is just bonkers. What is really meant is that there is a shortage of assets in relation to liabilities. This could mean a huge army that needs to be paid, a large amount of sovereign debt, or whatever. Any sort of liability. And a shortage of assets
in the state coffers. That doesn't mean there is a shortage of money in general. It just means the government has brought upon itself too many obligations, and cannot service those obligations through regular means - taking it directly from the people. It has to do so indirectly, via what is essentially just an accounting trick to rebalance assets and liabilities.
For a good historical example on this particular question of "enough money" I would point anyone curious to read about French monetary history from 1600 to 1800 where a lot of these experiments were tried and tested thoroughly, especially pre-John Law. The answer par excellence was the periods in which the king was forced to cut his budgets and the people were taxed to the bone, times were (comparatively) not awful. When the king spent whatever he wanted and taxation could not be levied further, there was extreme suffering and mass starvation. Eventually over hundreds of years along came Napoleon, who had thoroughly learnt the lessons of the past 200 years of French history, but especially the very recent history of the Assignat. The gold and silver standards Napoleon introduced lasted far after his defeat (he refused to debase the currency) and were the standard throughout Europe until 1914. In this manner you can make some allusions to the drachma, I suppose, they're historically quite similar from a monetary perspective.
