3 ms·

"Tulip Mania" wasn't real. The "bubble" was a very small group of speculators and it did not have any larger affect on the industry. The stories about it were m

"Tulip Mania" wasn't real. The "bubble" was a very small group of speculators and it did not have any larger affect on the industry. The stories about it were made up and come from propaganda pamphlets published by Dutch Calvinists who were worried that consumerism was causing societal decay: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-...

IncRnd 4y ago
According to your link it was real. "That’s not to say that everything about the story is wrong; merchants really did engage in a frantic tulip trade, and they paid incredibly high prices for some bulbs. And when a number of buyers announced they couldn’t pay the high price previously agreed upon, the market did fall apart and cause a small crisis—but only because it undermined social expectations." In the link I posted is this gem: "Peter Garber in the 1980s published an academic article on the Tulipmania. First, he notes that tulips are not alone in their meteoric rise: 'a small quantity of ... lily bulbs recently was sold for 1 million guilders ($480,000 at 1987 exchange rates),' demonstrating that even in the modern world, flowers can command extremely high prices." I wasn't making a point about the degree of societal collapse from tulip mania. I made the point that there is a long history of greed and speculation.
- thesausageking 4y ago
  You were responding to a claim that there have never been other cases of sustained momentum of speculation. The price spike for Tulipmania took place over about 18 months. Bitcoin launched 13 years ago and was first above $1k in 2017. They're not at all similar. I agree with the parent comment.
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    No, that wasn't the claim I responded to. Twice, my comment explicitly mentioned the novelty of greed and speculation as the claim.

IncRnd 4y ago

According to your link it was real. "That’s not to say that everything about the story is wrong; merchants really did engage in a frantic tulip trade, and they paid incredibly high prices for some bulbs. And when a number of buyers announced they couldn’t pay the high price previously agreed upon, the market did fall apart and cause a small crisis—but only because it undermined social expectations." In the link I posted is this gem: "Peter Garber in the 1980s published an academic article on the Tulipmania. First, he notes that tulips are not alone in their meteoric rise: 'a small quantity of ... lily bulbs recently was sold for 1 million guilders ($480,000 at 1987 exchange rates),' demonstrating that even in the modern world, flowers can command extremely high prices." I wasn't making a point about the degree of societal collapse from tulip mania. I made the point that there is a long history of greed and speculation.

thesausageking 4y ago
You were responding to a claim that there have never been other cases of sustained momentum of speculation. The price spike for Tulipmania took place over about 18 months. Bitcoin launched 13 years ago and was first above $1k in 2017. They're not at all similar. I agree with the parent comment.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  No, that wasn't the claim I responded to. Twice, my comment explicitly mentioned the novelty of greed and speculation as the claim.