4 ms·
War is the most costly when a government cannot fund it through debt and inflation. Nations used to go bankrupt waging war when precious metals were money. Now,
by netbioserror 3y ago
War is the most costly when a government cannot fund it through debt and inflation. Nations used to go bankrupt waging war when precious metals were money. Now, they can defer the financial consequences approximately indefinitely, at least until we discover the straw the breaks the camel's back (IMO this is when debt servicing cost overtakes all other expenses and starts to consume more wealth than economic output).
- imtringued 3y agoI don't know why people mention precious metals as "harbingers of peace". What happened in the Roman empire is that private citizens assembled their own armies instead to usurp the emperor, repeatedly, several dozen times. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracks_emperor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barracks_emperor
- netbioserror 3y agoThe Romans still physically debased their money, and in the late Western empire, this was a strong contributor to its inability to hold onto its military units as citizens and barbarians became increasingly unwilling to accept denarii as pay. Thus, the erosion of its authority and the rise of barracks emperors. I should note that much later in the Eastern empire, after a long period of wallowing in inflation, corruption, and an ineffectual army, Anastasius I reformed the monetary system by refining the purities (and thus supplies) of coinage, which allowed him to clamp down on the state's accounting and tighten up the army. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasius_I_Dicorus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasius_I_Dicorus